So you're gonna starve yourself?

I just read a question on Yahoo! Answers. Some girl wanted to know how much weight she would lose if she starved herself for 10 days. She told us not to preach to her about how unhealthy it would be. Well, first off, I'm gonna say good luck to her and I hope she makes it out alive. Secondly, I'm going to preach to you guys why it's really bad to starve yourself or barely eat anything to lose weight.

Please remember that 1200 calories a very good guideline when it comes to the minimum amount of calories you should EAT a day.

If you starve yourself or deprive yourself of calories for a long period of time, you will lose weight. However, that comes with a lot of luggage. Not only will you lose weight, your body will have eaten it's own muscle for sustenance. Also, you'll lose a lot of water weight because your body uses water molecules to break down fat and muscle for energy. You'll be incredibly frail and weak, and you'll most likely hate your life...assuming you come out of the starvation alive. Once you do reach your goal weight, and decide to eat again...your body will so far into starvation mode, that anything you eat gets stored immediately to fat because your body thinks it is still starving, so it's going to conserve energy and store fat to use later on. You won't get the muscle back, you gotta work even harder now to restore that.

So please, folks, leave starvation mode to the poor people in third-world countries. Remember to eat at least 1200 calories a day minimum and don't try to lose so much weight in so little time. "Rome wasn't built in a day."