Can Teens Lose Weight by Fasting?

In the past, fasting has just been a religious celebration or movement. It has always been the primary reason for fasting, as it's not really an easy thing to do and proves your faith in doing so. To fast means to go without food completely, and in some cases water. It really all depends on your own goals.

However, in today's society, more and more teenagers are looking at fasting as a way to lose weight, specifically girls. They try to lose weight by not eating anything for prolonged periods of time, allowing their body to consume the excess calories without packing more down.

But is this really effective? Is it good for your body to lose weight in such a way? In this article, I plan to help break down why this does or does not work, in a language easiest for a teenager audience to understand.

As a teenager, you're going to experience some pressure to be in shape and sexually attractive. Sometimes, this is harder to achieve for different people. You may have a hard time being in shape because of your own personal genes. However, some people decide to take that extra step against their body and try to lose weight through fasting. They completely avoid eating by any means necessary.

Of course you're going to lose some weight using this strategy. Your body needs so many calories per day just to maintain itself. On average, people use about 2,000 calories per day just to stay alive. However, this is going to increase quite drastically with physical activity. If you choose to not eat over a few days time, your body has nothing else to do but to use the calories you already have stored (fat) as its energy source. The most immediate effect will be a physical weakness, feeling of faint, and some weight loss.

If you're a teenager not really concerned about your personal health, this may sound good so far. However, this is much more bad news to come. What happens while you're fasting, is your bodie's survival mechanism will kick in. Your metabolism will drastically slow down to decrease the amount of calories your body consumes to stay alive. You're going to feel really weak, and once you start eating again you're going to gain more back than you lost.

Fasting for prolonged periods of time for complete weight loss, or some weight goal will also cause much more serious damage. Along with the fact that you're going to gain a vast majority of the weight right back due to your drastically slowed metabolism, your body will also eat up muscle and tissue. You're going to lose all strength eventually, and you're going to be weaker than ever before.

Humans need to eat to stay alive. We need calories to build protein, form bones, maintain and build muscle, and live! If you're having trouble with losing weight, fasting is one of the least effective means of approaching it.

I know you've heard it time after time, but the best way to lose weight is to eat less, healthier, more often, and to exercise on a regular basis. This will give you an immediate calorie burn, as well as boost your metabolism.

One decent way for males to lose weight effectively is to work out for a muscular build. The more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn per day, because muscle takes much more energy to maintain. Essentially, the more muscle you have, the more you can eat and the faster your metabolism will function.

That's about as far as I can help you. I'm not any sort of certified doctor, but I hope I've made it clear that fasting is not an effective means of losing weight in teenagers, or any age group for that matter. Lose the weight the healthy way, and it'll stay off and be much easier to maintain!