Common Food Trends #7

Crash dieting is a common solution for people who are trying to lose weight quickly. But, it can actually cause the opposite reaction. While people think that restricting your daily intake of calories by 500 or even 1,000 calories a day will be easy after a long period of time, they’re wrong. Our bodies will eventually if not sooner than later start to crave the lack of food that they are used to getting. So when you allow yourself to start eating more food again, it may be harder than you think to stop, which can lead to weight gain and high calorie intake. After you let yourself go once, it’s easier to do it again and again after you feel guilty from doing it the first time. While restricting yourself from food, your metabolism slows causing problems in your body’s regulatory mechanisms. Although at the beginning you may be losing weight very quickly from this diet, you’re are not giving your body the essential nutrients you need which is far more important than losing weight rapidly. Other than weight gain and lack of nutrients, there are many other risks that come from crash dieting. Some examples are low levels of sodium, potassium, dehydration, heart palpitations, reduce your intake of carbohydrates which are important for your energy, increase your intake of protein and fat which can increase your cholesterol in a harmful way, cardiac stress and leaching iron from the blood which can all lead to anemia or risk of heart attack. Overall this diet isn’t healthy in any way especially if you are trying to lose weight in a long – term period of time.