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500-600 Calorie Diets, Muscle Loss Imminent

Thor is going the starvation route! OK, so 500-600 calorie crash diets were used decades ago to help the morbidly obese. Yes, people lost weight but in the process the body ate as much muscle mass as possible to keep the system up and running. After numerous deaths these went the way of the dinosaur and for good reason.

There is a goal in mind here. He is preparing for a new role and needs to drastically reduce the weight. While Chris Hemsworth's will is clearly stronger than others its interesting to note what we were given as some of his daily eating.

1. Couple salads a day.
-We don't get much more info then that but have to assume its loaded with the daily veggies he would need to maintain nutritional levels of vitamins and minerals.
-My hope is that it has at least some fatty dressing, olive oil, nut oil or other healthy oils in order to allow for the absorption of fat soluble vitamins A, E, D, and K. Without the fat, he will eventually run into problems.

2. Some kind of protein.
- I would hope this is some form of fatty beef or fish so as to up that fat intake further. Yes, the calories go up, which is what he is trying to be careful of. However, the fat satiates and due to its low stimulation of insulin won't pack on the weight, especially with his extremely low calorie count. FYI, insulin itself is not a marker for fat storage but a caloric surplus plus high insulin secretion will get you there (ie high fats + high carbs).

There you have it. Stars starving for work. Unfortunately we read all the time of stars simply stuffing themselves with fat free diets to reduce the weight for parts. Wolverine consumed copious amounts of chicken, Ryan Reynolds consumed copious amounts of turkey, etc.

Ill give them this, they are committed. They are able to "will" themselves through these tough starvation diets and likely suffer some unpleasant side effects due to reduced dietary fat intake they don't associate with same. Supplementation is likely a huge part of these diets we hear little about.

Its my opinion that for these extreme diets it would be best to supplement the greens (or keep the salads) and focus strictly on the protein. Keeping the fat at half the dietary protein would be ideal to make sure the protein isn't being spared for lean tissue. This will still occur with these extremely low calorie intakes but the energy has to come from somewhere and if not from carbs and not from fat, it will come from protein and therefore the muscle. In this severe state if we are looking at 80g of protein and 40g of fat, Chris would be hovering around 600-700 calories. A bit higher than he wants but will no doubt bring him down to where he is attempting to go. This would be far superior to the 300 calories he is getting from salads. If his goal is to remain lean but not lose all the muscle and health he currently has he should supplement the vitamins/minerals or get some green drinks loaded with veggie goodness for less than 100 calories. This way he is just focusing on the basics, protein and fat. This is not something to maintain for any period of time, especially while training.

As I continue to point out, its not that these methods of high protein, low fat don't work, its that people are succeeding IN SPITE of it and having to suffer through it. The same results can be achieved by simply keeping the protein moderate, increasing the fat to healthy levels and reducing the carb intake to just veggies. I will explain this in the future, the health benefits and hormones that bring about this change and how they all work together to achieve these same results with less effort and discomfort.

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