Everybody today wants to lose weight or get in shape for something. A lot of the time it is a young bride trying to lose weight to get into her wedding dress and sometimes you may come across a young man who wants to bulk up really fast and they often opt for a crash diet.
In both of these scenarios there is often a crash diet implemented. For weight loss it is often lack of eating or eating a certain type of food or cutting out so much food that it becomes hazardous. There have been reports of young women collapsing, having cardiac complications and even dying as a result of crash diet plans.
For the weight gain people tend to binge on fatty unhealthy foods to increase body weight which means they are a sincere risk of developing cardiac conditions and other complications especially since they do not go to the gym or exercise during this period. They will of course gain weight but it will all be fat and not muscle.
The media does not help in these situations with celebrities dropping and gaining weight for various roles and after certain situations, like after delivering, which creates unrealistic expectations on the average person. These celebrities often have nutritionists on the payroll who calculate their dietary requirements as opposed to the average person who will Google a diet plan and start on it not knowing that every individual has their own unique requirements.
Their shortcut to success is answered in yo-yo diet, described as an extreme form of losing weight. It has a cyclical pattern of weight loss and gain and often seen as a harmful weight-losing technique. There are many tips and ways to getting thinner but there is no shortcut. For proper healthy weight loss and total health fitness it takes time and hard work. To lose weight successfully and healthily there are a few pointers as noted below.
- To lose weight you need to be in a caloric deficit, meaning you consume fewer calories than you are expending. Think of it like this: calories coming in need to be fewer than calories going out. It really is pretty simple.
- To lose one pound a week you need to be in a caloric deficit of 3,500 calories. The best way to do this is to combine eating fewer calories and burning more calories — that means exercise! Cardio is great for burning calories.
- You should never eat fewer than 1,200 calories a day. Eating fewer than 1,200 calories slows down your metabolism, since your body thinks a famine is coming. It’s not nice to tease your metabolism in this manner. Play nice and eat healthy well-balanced meals loaded with nutrient-rich veggies, fruits, and grains.
- The longer it takes for you to drop the pounds, the better chance you have of keeping them off. Remember: slow and steady wins the race. This is why you should really think of losing weight as making a lifestyle change rather than dieting. Once you lose the weight, you want to maintain all the healthy habits that helped you shed those pounds in the first place.
- Losing one to two pounds a week is considered healthy. Losing more than two pounds a week is a serious shock to your body. This also means you are not starving yourself or depriving yourself. Fad diets or diets that have you cut out an entire food group leave you feeling less satisfied, which leads you to cheat on your diet and then give up. Remember, you are working toward a lifestyle change and having a healthy relationship with all kinds of food.
- When you decrease the amount you eat, your body uses up energy stored in the liver and muscles. However, most of this initial weight loss will be water and muscle. Your body’s response to dieting in this manner is to reduce the speed it burns off calories. This means you’re actually slowing down your ability to lose weight.
- Crash diets could lead to multiple side effects, problems like haggard look, dark under eyes; dull skin, sloppy posture, zero strength and less stamina are very common among such people. According to studies, a liquid diet high on protein may lead to headaches, fatigue and nausea. Protein-based liquid diet can also cause constipation because it lacks fiber; it can also cause loss of lean muscle mass and a decrease in metabolism.
- Quick gaining and losing causes havoc with the metabolism. The body systems get adjusted to food patterns and take some time to change from a set routine. The digestion process gets affected if the body is put on crash diets or binge eating.
In summary, for a totally healthy look and if you are looking to feel better about yourself, for weight loss and weight gain it is best to start with a lifestyle change then gradually exercise before starting off on a new diet plan that way you will increase your chances of healthy weight loss or gain and at the same time be much more productive and be able to maintain your body health.
