When it comes to losing weight, the aim of the game is to get to a point where you are healthy and happy with yourself and your image. You want to feel better as quickly as possible.
Therefore, we perceive crash diets as appealing – losing weight quickly and seeing fast results gives you instant gratification and even further motivation.
The problem is, whilst crash dieting seems like a great idea in theory, drastically decreasing your calorie intake with crash dieting is incredibly unhealthy.
Crash diets enforce an extreme and sudden change on your body. Undereating doesn’t give your body enough of what it needs. You quickly become nutritionally unbalanced, and restrict your intake of vitamins and nutrients that are vital to keeping you fit and well. Some fad, crash diets even encourage you to cut out important food groups entirely! Whilst this tactic may cause you to lose weight initially, you are likely to end up feeling unwell soon after.
There is also another reality to crash dieting that is often overlooked. When you fail to give your body sufficient amounts of everything it needs to function normally, it does everything it can to conserve energy. This means that your metabolism slows down, burning calories slows down and your ability to lose weight slows down too. Not ideal when you want to shed the pounds!
Another thing to consider before embarking on a crash diet is there total unsustainability. When you adopt a drastic food plan or cut your intake by a large proportion, you cannot stick to such a scheme for a long period of time. With much lower energy levels day after day, something has to give eventually.
Crash dieting is also a double edged sword. Whilst you can lose some weight quickly, drastic diet plans are only ever a short term fix and you tend to put weight back on at a similarly increased rate, taking you straight back to square one in no time at all. There is no point in losing weight if it piles on again immediately after. This often leads to yo-yo dieting, which puts the body under a lot of pressure and can also put strain on your heart.
When it comes to proper weight loss, the most important thing is not losing the first few pounds, but reaching your target weight and maintaining it. Keeping the weight off for good once you have lost it requires you to change your habits and your attitude towards food – something that can simply never happen with a crash diet.
So, crash diets may seem like a desirable thing to try when you want to lose weight, but the reality is they simply do not work. In addition, they have also proved to be incredibly dangerous to your health.
If you are serious about losing weight, and keeping that weight off subsequently, don’t attempt to crash diet or it may just come back to haunt you. Instead, look for a means of losing weight gradually and sensibly and you will feel far healthier and happier in no time.
If you would like to find out about the available alternatives to crash dieting and the GMBand approach to sustainable weight loss and changing your eating habits to ensure you never pile on the pounds again, why not have a read of our FREE eBook How You Can Smash Your Weight Loss Goals Without Crash Dieting? Download it now by clicking on the image below!