Studies have shown that fasting and calorie restriction in general can have positive effects on health, but there are extreme cases where they can make things a lot worse. For example, a young woman from Hangzhou, China’s Zhejiang province, allegedly developed acute pancreatitis by severely restricting calorie intake for six days a week and feasting on fatty foods and sweets on the seventh.
A few months ago, Qingqing (pseudonym), who weighed 55 kilograms (121 lbs) at a height of 1.55 meters (5ft 1in), decided that she needed to lose weight and came up with an extreme diet to achieve her goal. It involved eating very little for six days a week and then binging on whatever she liked on her one cheat day.
On weekdays, Qingqing restricted her calorie intake to 800 calories, consuming small quantities of boiled vegetables, chicken breast, and fruit, but tried to make up for it on Sunday by indulging in all kinds of savoury foods, including hotpot, fried chicken, hot chicken-flavour noodles, and milk tea.
The woman’s diet worked wonders, and she reportedly managed to lose 7.5kg (16.5 lbs) in just a month, but last month, after going through a big bucket of fried chicken at noon and two packs of hot chicken-flavour noodles in the evening on her cheat day, Qingqing started experiencing discomfort in her stomach, waist, and back.
Photo: Gabe Pierce/Unsplash
After she started vomiting, and her discomfort worsened, Qingqing was rushed to The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, where she was diagnosed with acute pancreatitis.
“In an attempt to slim down, many people eat only one meal a day, believing they could become thinner. However, this method would easily drive the pancreas to the brink of collapse,” a doctor at the hospital said, adding that this extreme form of dieting can cause a host of other health problems.
Apparently, Qingqing’s long periods of extreme dieting caused the pancreas to go into a “low load standby” mode, only to struggle to produce high levels of digestive enzymes when the woman consumed high quantities of fatty, savoury foods on her cheat day. The prolonged routine eventually led to acute pancreatitis.
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