A post-00s girl starved herself to death due to fatty liver disease! Starving herself to lose weight is not advisable and may also lead to mental illness

In life, many people try their best to lose weight, but some people not only fail to lose weight, but instead become sick. What's going on?

Post-00s girls diet to lose weight and develop fatty liver

Recently, a 22-year-old girl was admitted to a hospital in Jinan, Shandong. When she was sent to the hospital, her face was sallow and she needed to sit in a wheelchair. After examination, it was found that the patient had fatty liver due to long-term dieting.

In this regard, doctors say that excessively reducing food intake will affect the liver's synthetic function, slowing down fat metabolism and accumulating in the liver, eventually forming fatty liver.

Doctors recommend that losing weight should be done in a standardized and reasonable way. A diet that focuses on high protein, high fiber, low fat and low sugar should be consumed. Appropriate weight management can be achieved by doing about 300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week.

Dieting to lose weight has many dangers

Eat less, move more. When it comes to losing weight, everyone probably thinks of these four words.

However, experts recommend eating less = appropriately controlling the total amount on the basis of a balanced diet, and eating less or no processed foods.

However, many people actually eat less during the process of losing weight = no staple food, no dinner, no meat, and use meal replacements instead of regular meals... Such dieting behaviors often bring a series of harms to the body.

Damage to gastrointestinal health and lead to malnutrition

In addition to the fact that dieting can easily damage the gastrointestinal tract and cause malnutrition, it will also make the body lack the energy and physical strength to complete normal work and life, and reduce the possibility of physical exercise.

Causes atrophy of mucosal glands

Long-term hunger and lack of food will lead to insufficient stomach acid, affecting the digestion of food. At the same time, because the glands that secrete stomach acid are used less, the glands will atrophy.

Induce gallstones

Due to the lack of food stimulation, bile is retained in the gallbladder for a long time and not discharged, resulting in increased water absorption, which can easily induce gallstones over time.

Causes osteoporosis

Because adipose tissue is an important place in the body to produce estrogen besides the ovaries, and the lack of estrogen can easily lead to osteoporosis and fractures.

Malnutrition, decreased basal metabolism

Long-term dieting will cause the body to lack nutrition, and in order to maintain normal life activities, the body's metabolism will slow down, leading to obesity, and in severe cases it will cause hair loss, low immunity, etc.

Experts say that the stomach is a storage organ, and the gastric mucosa is indeed extensible. Long-term fullness will increase the stomach capacity, and long-term hunger will shrink the gastric mucosa and reduce the appetite. However, long-term hunger has many harmful effects, such as disrupting the rhythm of gastrointestinal function and even causing hypoglycemia.

Our body is like a bank. When it finds that its daily income - the food it eats - is less, it can only reduce its expenditure. In addition to maintaining the body's necessary functions, other operations should be suspended as much as possible - hair loss, anemia, menstruation running away from home, malnutrition, etc. will follow.

Dieting may even lead to mental illness

When a middle school girl was at her thinnest, she was 148 cm tall and weighed 24 kg. Her body was like a matchstick, but she still felt that she was not thin enough and was very particular about eating.

She needs to eat at a fixed time, and a meal can take an hour; the dishes must be placed in a fixed order; the fruit must be cut into fingernail size; and the rice must be swallowed almost grain by grain. If her family adds too much milk to her cup, she will scream. Even in class, she often loses focus on calculating calories.

The following year, her mother described her situation on social media, and someone reminded her to seek medical attention. She was diagnosed with an eating disorder.

If you stay hungry for too long, your body may have a compensatory reaction. On the road to anorexia, some people turn to bulimia - one day they suddenly can't control themselves and eat more in one go. Because the nerve that is sensitive to calories is still tense, they can only choose to vomit in the end.

A 30-year-old woman chose to induce vomiting because of guilt about food.

After four or five years of vomiting, her body developed some pathological reaction mechanisms: her teeth could not withstand the repeated erosion of gastric acid, and four of her molars were severely decayed. Gastric juice would suddenly reflux, and the sudden nausea would wake her up from her sleep, and she could only lean over and vomit on the floor. She felt overwhelmed by the fear of food. After each vomiting, her throat and the entire esophagus were filled with a burning sensation.

The official definition of this symptom is an "eating disorder": abnormal eating behavior and excessive concern about food, weight, and body shape. It is a type of mental illness.

Eating disorders are mainly divided into anorexia and bulimia. Patients with bulimia will have repeated, uncontrollable binge eating, and will take compensatory behaviors such as inducing vomiting after binge eating to avoid weight gain. Because of binge eating, the stomach will be stretched little by little, and the stomach wall will become thinner and thinner.

Eating disorders themselves are not fatal, but excessive weight loss can cause heart arrhythmias and organ failure, which can shorten life. Often, patients become depressed. Some die by suicide.

Some patients were on the verge of death due to eating disorders and were admitted to the intensive care unit. Some patients had just resumed a regular diet after treatment, but their body functions suddenly collapsed and they were transferred to a general hospital for more than a month.

According to reports and public disclosures in medical papers, there is a "quarter" rule for people with eating disorders: without intervention, 1/4 of people can recover on their own; 1/4 of people will get better and live a normal life with their symptoms; 1/4 of people will develop a chronic disease that affects their lives; and 1/4 may die.

Improper weight loss methods not only damage physical health, but also mental health. "Eating disorders" have a great impact on the lives of patients.

Should take weight loss seriously

Should you really lose weight?

In recent years, extreme weight loss and slimming behaviors have occurred frequently, which not only causes harm to oneself, but also sets a very bad social example. Ultimately, it is the distorted aesthetic orientation that is at work.

For a long time, the aesthetic preference of "thinness is beauty" has made A4 waist and chopstick legs the goals pursued by many people; marketing methods and consumerism have fueled "appearance discrimination" and "body anxiety". Many people take risks to be thin and sacrifice their health for beauty. When such a trend erodes the soil for the growth of young people, it shows the urgency of correcting it in time.

As for weight, we can measure ourselves through the body mass index (BMI), which is a body shape judgment indicator commonly used in the medical field. We can use it to determine whether our weight is healthy and whether we need to lose weight. The body mass index does not reflect fat distribution. At the same time, it should be noted that some people have a normal body mass index, but a lot of abdominal fat accumulates, and the risk of chronic diseases is very high. Therefore, the body mass index should be combined with waist circumference to determine whether fat should be reduced.

Body mass index = weight (kg) divided by height (m) squared. For example, for a woman who is 1.6 meters tall and weighs 60 kg, her body mass index is: 60 ÷ 1.6 ÷ 1.6 = 23.4.

Values ​​between 18.5 and 23.9 are normal.

If it's above 23.9, you need to lose weight.

A value below 18.5 indicates emaciation and nutrition should be strengthened.

There is no shortcut to losing weight

Chen Wei, deputy director of the Clinical Nutrition Department of Peking Union Medical College Hospital, has a vivid metaphor for losing weight by eating less or even not eating: cells are like flowers. The so-called "hunger therapy" means to extract all the water in the cells, and the weight of the flowers will go down quickly and easily. After the water is reduced, it will come back to absorb it, and the flowers will open again and rebound quickly. It is actually a change in body fluids, not real weight loss.

So what is scientific weight loss? How much should we eat to be considered too much and how much should we eat to be considered too little?

Chen Wei said that a diet that can achieve nutritional balance and is indeed slightly lower than your body's minimum requirement, thus achieving a negative energy balance, is called scientific weight loss.

One of the weight loss methods advocated by Chen Wei is a high-protein diet. In this process, you only consume about 1,000 calories a day, which is one-third to one-half less than the normal intake. You will not feel hungry because protein will bring a high sense of fullness.

The second method is intermittent fasting - eat less only two days a week. During these two days, eat two-thirds less than you normally eat, and eat normally for the other five days. Because everything we do is to fight hunger, this method makes the brain feel less hungry. The advantage of this is that it lasts longer and the chance of rebound is lower.

Li Quanmin, director of the Endocrinology Department of the PLA Rocket Force Special Medical Center, also recommended some scientific weight loss methods:

Reduce calorie intake

If you reduce your daily calorie intake by 100 kcal, you may lose 4 kg in about 5 weeks.

Change your diet

Instead of reducing the amount of food you eat, change the structure of your food accordingly. Replace high-fat foods with a variety of fruits, vegetables, and grains.

Eat liquid food

Replace your daily meals with liquid foods, but be careful to choose foods that provide the nutrients you need. Don't drink too much cold drinks, and use water instead of beverages.

sports

Walking: Walk for 45 minutes a day, at least 5 days a week, covering about 5 kilometers (maintain a certain speed).

Outdoor exercise: 3-5 times a week is a good way to burn body fat and increase vitality, but each time should be more than 30 minutes.

Weightlifting: Strength training can also help you lose weight because weightlifting can increase muscle. The more developed the muscles, the faster the body's metabolism. To avoid injury, it is best to hire a professional fitness coach.

Reducing fat and calorie intake while exercising is the best way to lose weight. It can increase muscle strength while reducing weight and promote cardiovascular health.

A lot of facts show that there is no shortcut to losing weight. It requires long-term persistence and cannot be achieved overnight. Trying to change your diet, exercise and other lifestyles is the most fundamental and effective way.

Nowadays, many people join the weight loss team and are determined to lose weight in order to be thin and beautiful. However, the ultimate goal of weight loss is health. Only with health can beauty be achieved, and health must not be sacrificed. Take action, insist on controlling weight, and lose weight scientifically, so that we can stay away from the troubles of excess fat and have a healthy body.

Everyone has their own opinion on what is beautiful, but it should not be a narrow beauty with a single standard, let alone a morbid beauty that is harmful to health. Not judging people by appearance, not feeling inferior because of body shape, and cultivating a healthy aesthetic concept in the whole society requires the government, society, and individuals to work together to correct the deviation.

Source: Communist Youth League Central Committee

Map: Yang Ming

Editor: Li Sirui

Proofreading丨Li Zhiyuan

Proofread by Xiao Jian

On-duty editor: Zhong Yanan