Saturday 9 November 2013

Are Rapid Weight Loss Diets Safe?

Rapid weight loss diets are quite popular nowadays. If you're like most women who are trying to lose weight, then you probably want to have a slimmer figure as soon as possible. This is why these crash diets can be very tempting. However, are rapid weight loss diets really safe or is it better for you to stick to more gradual methods of shedding extra pounds? Read on to learn the various risks of rapid weight loss diets.

Protein Deficiency
When you undergo a diet for rapid weight loss, chances are you will be required to eat a very restricted diet. Unfortunately, most crash diets are only designed to make you lose pounds as fast as possible, without taking nutrition into consideration. This is why these diets are often lacking in essential nutrients such as protein. Some of the main functions of protein in the body include boosting your immune system and helping your cells grow.
When you are eating a diet that is lacking in protein, your body begins to look for other ways to get this nutrient. One of these ways is by digesting your muscle cells. Not only is this harmful to your body, but it also affects your appearance. Instead of a toned and slim figure, you end up with what's called a "skinny fat" body.
Protein deficiency also causes your hair to lose its strength. Therefore, your hair eventually becomes brittle and may even fall out.

Bone Damage
Most rapid weight loss diets are also deficient in certain vitamins and minerals that are essential to bone health, such as vitamin D and calcium. This is why crash diets can automatically increase your chance of developing osteoporosis. When you develop osteoporosis, your bones lose their strength and become susceptible to damages like fractures. Unfortunately, osteoporosis shows very little symptoms until the disease is at an advanced stage. In fact, the only way you can detect if you have the disease is by taking a bone density test. So if you regularly engage in rapid weight loss diets, then chances are you are also losing bone density while shedding pounds.

Heart Stress
Crash diets promise to make you lose weight in as little as a couple of weeks, but they don't tell you about how such weight loss can stress out your heart. As you know, your heart is a muscle that's responsible for pumping blood and supplying oxygen to the rest of your body. When you lose weight rapidly, your heart naturally has to make sudden adjustments with the blood and oxygen that it supplies. This adjustment can put plenty of stress on your heart, resulting in a higher blood pressure which can even result to heart failure.

Weight Gain
Even though some rapid weight loss diets can succeed in making you lose pounds in very little time, chances are you will gain the weight back after you have resumed your normal diet and lifestyle. This might be due to the fact that the pounds you lost are mostly from water weight instead of fats.


http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/fitness/weight-loss/are-rapid-weight-loss-diets-safe.html#b