Lose weight fast! Be the BEST YOU, you can be! This fat burning secret makes it easy to lose the weight! Sound familiar? Every month there seems to be a new diet, pill, or trade secret to solve all your weight problems. But is it really that easy? Are there any risks? Are the results long lasting?
Diet Defined
The word, diet, simply refers to your eating habits. So you may have a healthy diet or you may have an unhealthy diet. When someone says, “I’m going on a diet”, they are usually referring to restricting themselves to certain foods or a certain amount of daily calories for a predefined amount of time (maybe a month) in order to achieve a goal (lose ten pounds).
There are different types of diets or ways to lose weight. Some are healthy and revolve around eating right combined with exercise. The more extreme diets involve a form of starvation, pill, supplement or require the elimination of a certain food group, such as carbs. What people don’t understand is that the long term effects of these extreme weight loss methods are unknown and can be altogether dangerous.
Dangerous Diets of 2014
Here are some of the most extreme diets of 2014:
Fast Food Diets
This one has recently been sensationalized by a female blogger from Seattle that lived off of Starbucks for a year. While this diet didn’t necessarily prove or disprove anything about surviving off of fast food, living off of purely processed and fried foods that are full of trans fats is not recommended. What’s more, trans fats have been linked to obesity and heart disease. This experiment wasn’t very revealing as far as diets go but it did increase exposure to the Starbucks brand. If you want to see some real results of what living solely off fast food can do to your body, check out the documentary Super Size Me. You get to see a guy eat only McDonalds for a year and watch him not only gain weight but also watch his overall health diminish.
Corset Diets
This diet requires you to wear a corset all day and night. The idea behind this method is that the corset will make you want to eat less and train your waist to be thinner. There have even been celebrities that admitted to using this get fit quick tactic, such as Jessica Alba after her pregnancies. While it is understandable that you would eat less while wearing this constricting garment, there is no proof that wearing a corset is a safe and effective way to lose weight. The risk in wearing a corset all day and night, however, is that it can shift and compress internal organs and fracture your ribs. Corsets also restrict your lungs from fully expanding and with less oxygen your metabolism is actually lowered.
The Cotton Ball Diet
Now this one sounds like a winner. You simply take the cotton ball, dip it in orange juice and eat it. Sounds delicious right? But, how does it help you lose weight? Simply by tricking your body into thinking it’s full.
While just the name, cotton ball diet, may be enough to ward you off, let’s dig a little deeper. Cotton balls may sound okay to ingest because it’s cotton after all and cotton is natural right? Eating cotton may not sound too dangerous, but today’s cotton balls are not even made of cotton. They are balls of bleached polyester fibers mixed with other chemicals, none of which are meant for consumption. Long term side effects are not yet known, but it is pretty obvious that on a diet composed of cotton balls and juice, you are not giving your body what it needs to properly function. This type of nutrient deficient diet can lead to hair loss, diminished bone density and negative impacts on your organ and brain functions.
The Truth Behind The Different Types of Diet Fads
In order to properly function your body needs the following nutrients:
- Protein
- Fats
- Carbohydrates
- Minerals
- Vitamins
- Water
The truth is that a lot of diet fads revolve around a form of malnutrition meaning you are not giving your body what it needs. Depending on the extremity and duration they can cause serious damage to your body or even be life threatening.
Starving Your Body
When you starve yourself, your body tells itself to go into starvation mode. This default setting is reserved for times of emergency and survival as a result your metabolism slows down.
Starving yourself may help you fit into that dress, but your body needs food so it’s not a long term solution. Once the starving period is over you are more than likely going back to your usual eating habits. Only this time your body is less equipped to process these foods so you gain the weight back and then some. You have not only caused your metabolism to slow down you have trained your body to stock up on fat for the next time you go into survival/starvation mode. You are basically training your body to operate at an extreme level. It’s either starve and live off reserves or stock up on reserves.
There are many diets out there that say cut this out and lose weight, such as; meats, carbs or gluten etc. The thing to keep in mind is that you give your body the necessary nutrients every day. There are usually alternatives out there in order to make these diets work. For example, vegetarians eat a lot of beans and nuts to get the protein they need. Then there are other diets such as the no carb diet, this requires your body to get its energy from protein and fats. But your body is designed to burn carbs for energy. The effect of this diet can have dangerous effects on your liver and heart.
Supplements and Pills
The thing about supplements and pills is that they do not have to be FDA approved. Some miracle drinks or pills can come out only to be recalled a few years later or end up in product liability lawsuits. Be sure to do your research and remember that natural is always better. For example, there is a new pill that promises weight loss and more energy. But really it’s just some vitamin B and caffeine priced at 20 dollars a bottle. Try green tea instead, it’s more affordable and has been used for boosting metabolism as well as other healthy benefits for hundreds of years.
How do you know when a diet is bad?
The natural rate to lose weight is 1-2 pounds per week. This is difficult for many because they may fluctuate and results are not immediate enough. But, it is truly the only way to get long lasting results. When you are promised rapid weight loss, more than 2 pounds a week, it is not natural. You have to consider the repercussions of an unhappy body and remember that when trying these “diets” long term effects are undetermined, so you are basically volunteering to be a guinea pig.
(Check out these tips on naturally speeding up your metabolism)
Losing weight the right way
The basic rule to keep in mind when trying to lose weight is BALANCE. The truth is, there is no shortcut when it comes to our health. It is our job to know our bodies and how to take care of them on a regular basis. Losing weight may be the goal, but the real goal should be a healthy lifestyle. So remember your body is a natural entity and for every action there is a reaction.
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