What’s Wrong With Crash Diets?

Crash Diets? No Thanks!

Many desperate people try crash diets, particularly after the Christmas holiday season, hoping they will lose a lot of weight in the shortest possible time.

The appeal of fast crash diets can be due to previous experiences of losing weight successfully with this type of plan, or there’s some new celebrity crash diets that work, or at least appear to work, for some high profile people.

The main issue with crash diets is that the weight loss is virtually always short-term. If you abruptly change to a restricted diet, your body will react by holding less water. You will lose weight and be less bloated, i.e. thinner, but you will not essentially lose any fat. When you finish the diet that weight will more likely go straight back on.

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Why do crash diets have such a bad reputation?

Depending on the diet and how long you keep at it, you may lose some fat. However, your body often goes into starvation mode throughout these diets. It thinks a famine has struck, and it will reduce your metabolism and store as much fat as possible because it thinks that no food will be avaiable. Then, when you increase your food intake, even if you do it in a healthy way, that famine metabolic process can remain and cause your body to gain some or all of the weight back.

The Psychological Effects

On top of that is the psychological effect of breaking what you think is the best crash diet that you’ve ever tried. Regardless of whether this happens at the end of the planned diet or in the middle out of desperation, it has a tendency to include overeating. For this reason, many people who follow crash diets find that a month later, they are heavier than they were before the diet.

There are also some important health issues to be wary of with crash diets. First, diets that focus on losing weight fast are normally very restrictive in the kinds of foods that you can eat. Many foods and sometimes whole food groups will be removed. This is not something you could do in the long term without having difficulties with deficiencies. It’s not good for the body in the short term either.

A Temporary Solution

On many crash diets you will not be getting the nutrients that the body needs. Of course, you can take supplements, but many supplements rely on substances in whole foods to make them work most effectively. Nutrient deficiencies cause cravings, making it harder to stick to the diet and more likely that you will break out in a binge. At the same time, you may be getting more of some nutrients than is healthy.

To summarise, crash diets can only ever be a temporary solution, for example for a situation where you need to lose a little weight for a particular event, and you do not mind if you gain it back – and more – afterwards.

AVOID THE FAILURE OF CRASH DIETS

In the long term, people who follow crash diets are likely to gain weight, not lose it. Take a hard look at your diet and workout plan as well as your calorie-tracking system to ensure everything is on the right track. Take advantage of apps like My Food Diary. This highly-acclaimed food database contains over 100,000 foods to improve your diet and the exercise log can calculate calories burned for over 700 activities to help you achieve your weight loss goal.