The Truth About Crash Diets
Truth about crash diets, this is part 6 in our twenty-part series designed to help you better understand Serious Weight Loss For Women.
Part 1: Mind Body Wellness
Part 2: Secrets to Weight Loss Success
Part 3: High Intensity Interval Training 101
Part 4: Blazing Your Way to Fitness with HIIT
Part 5: Beating the Calories with Wise Dieting
Part 6: You are here – The Truth About Crash Diets
Are you after fast weight loss – or sustainable, long term weight loss?
Instant gratification is a powerful lure. That’s the truth about crash diets the people behind these products don’t want you to know. It’s no surprise that both men and women are magnetized towards any possible way to lose weight quickly.
We tend to be drawn to “shortcuts” like fad diets because we’ve tried other methods and they require focus and commitment. In other words, the hard work of losing weight makes the appeal of any method promising quick results, that much more attractive.
Traditionally, most effective methods of losing weight focus on a balanced, regulated diet. They also suggest regular exercise as a key part of creating sustainable results. But truthfully, only a small percentage of dieters can consistently stick with the big changes required to lose weight in a healthy and permanent way.
Losing it is one thing. Keeping all that extra weight off is another thing altogether. Once the target weight has been achieved, celebrate your milestone. But if you don’t continue with the action steps that led you to your weight loss goal, you risk gaining all the weight back. A weight maintenance plan ensures that the pounds you’ve dropped don’t find their way back.
Staying motivated can be difficult because it takes time to lose extra pounds. For most people, results are slow in arriving. That is, unless you are in a strictly controlled environment with experts monitoring every move.
What is crash dieting and how does it work?
A crash diet is a diet plan that requires you to drastically reduce your caloric intake for days or weeks.
This is usually done by having dieters avoid most of the foods commonly consumed altogether – foods like cereals, breads and meats. The diet might also require dieters to fast for a period of time.
Fasting is the process of avoiding any kind of food (especially solid food) for the duration of the fast. Some crash diets – the Master Cleanse among them – requires participants to consume a beverage (that serves as a meal substitute) during their fast.
There are other crash diets out there like the “baby food diet. These crash diet plans require participants to shift to entirely different food from what they’re used to – in order to reach the weight loss goal they’ve set for themselves. Sure, eating nothing but baby food might be easy for the short term. And you could certainly establish a calorie deficit this way. But seriously – how in the world could this be considered a sustainable way of losing weight? No sane adult would want to eat baby food forever.
Why do you think people quit crash diets when they do?
The answer is obvious. We want real food again. Naturally we seek out flavor, texture and variety from the foods we eat. It makes dining one of life’s simple pleasures.
But crash diets like the baby food diet are doomed from the start. Nobody wants to eat the same old blended food. The texture and taste is largely repetitive. It deprives you of a more naturally enjoyable meal.
The danger is that dissatisfaction can quickly cause you to abandon ship and grab the next available food product – whatever it is. This is disastrous for the dieter who would prefer to maintain their lighter weight once the motivation to regulate food consumption dwindles – these diet plans fail.
This kind of eventuality is not limited to the baby food diet. Any weight loss plan that deploys the use of low-calorie food items to establish a rapid calorie deficit is difficult if not impossible to maintain for any length of time. Diet shakes, high-fiber cookies and those low-calorie protein bars fill in as substitutes for complete meals.
What makes these crash weight loss programs work is simple. By consuming theses shakes or protein bars in place of a regular dinner, creates a significant caloric deficit. But the inherent problem in all those programs is that you cannot be happy and satisfied forever by having a shake in place of a meal.
What makes crash diets potentially dangerous?
The secret to the short term results crash diets produce is due to the extreme caloric reduction required. But you can’t get all the nutrition you need from a shake, so a nutritional void emerges. At some point, the body depletes any stored glucose. Then it starts to consume its own protein stores (muscles) in order to keep functioning. The short answer is that crash dieting leads to malnutrition.
This can be dangerous to with a metabolic health condition, such as coronary heart disease or diabetes. With such a dramatic calorie deficit from a crash diet, the body can shift into an emergency state where some of the organs no longer function in the normal manner.
The body will eventually break down as it taps into scarce resources to keep your organs like the brain, heart and liver functioning.
Long term crash dieting that lasts for months may lead to fluctuations in your vitamin and mineral reserves. This in turn affects the functioning of the heart, the strength of your bones and the condition of your skin.
Yes, you will notice those pounds dropping off quickly…
But at what cost?
The body needs consistent nourishment and regular exercise to be healthy. Crash dieting deprives the body of what it needs. You may be putting yourself at risk by trying to radically lower your calorie consumption.
Where can you get help for weight loss?
Talking to a weight loss specialist might help if you feel you’re not losing weight fast enough despite your best attempts. A weight loss specialist is a doctor who has devoted his career to studying obesity and weight loss. Chances are they can shed some new light on your situation.
Private weight loss clinics are located in every major city and town. These businesses offer consultations to people seeking to lose weight in a realistic timeframe.
Most hospitals also have departments or clinics set up to serve those suffering from obesity. Now that you know the truth about crash diets, you understand that’s an avenue best avoided at all costs. But most clinics and hospitals offer safe havens for those who want to weight loss. All real clinics have medical professionals on staff.
