Death by starvation.

[KentuckyWoman]

6. No - and it surprised me too.

I happened to have a doc appointment yesterday and she gave me a sheet with this info on it.

Within one or two days of your last meal, your body will have exhausted all the glycogen stored in the liver and muscles. Most of your energy requirements will be met by breaking down stored fat into ketones, but brain cells and red blood cells can't metabolise ketones, so their glucose requirements must be met by breaking down muscle.

Even if you have lots of body fat left to burn, you can still starve to death if you don't have enough muscle because vital muscles like the heart will have been weakened to the point where they stop working. For this reason, doctors normally consider 40 to 50 per cent weight loss as life-threatening, regardless of your initial body weight.

Total starvation is normally fatal in eight to 12 weeks. In less extreme cases, however, where you are still receiving some calories - particularly if these calories include a high proportion of protein - being fat will help you survive much longer, because your body will be able to meet the majority of your calorie requirements from stored fat.

There is no magical ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution.

But do any diets actually work? The answer is, surprisingly, yes, although perhaps not for the reason that is often being marketed.

In one respect, the truth about diets is a simple one: for a diet to work, there has to be a calorie deficit. If we forensically examine ALL the diets that show some evidence of working, the vast majority all share one (or more) of these three characteristics:

They explicitly restrict calories (do not go below 1000 calories a day)
They are high in protein
They are high in fiber