My friend has been starving himself and vomiting up his food consistently for the past 2 years i’d say, he’s about 65kg whilst being around 6’1, i try to tell him that it’s bad for your health and that sooner or later he’ll just put the weight back on again anyway, but he hasn’t, he’s stayed being relatively skinny and there has been no changes in his behaviour or personality in fact i’d say he’s much happier than he’s ever been.
In: Biology
Your friend probably has bulimia and needs professional help.
To answer your question in the context of an otherwise healthy person:
Besides all the vitamin deficiency problems others have mentioned muscles play a huge role in dieting. Muscles use a lot of calories. If you starve yourself they get broken down.
Less muscle means less calories used. Which means you must eat even less to keep off or lose weight. This is why a lot of fad dieters and soccer moms yo-yo diet. They lose a bunch of weight (a lot of which is muscle) but don’t do what’s necessary to retain muscle, when they hit their goal now their maintenance calories are lower than ever and they gain it back.
The way to counteract this is resistance training (weightlifting) and high protein relative to calories. It’s hard to get high protein if you’re starving yourself
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