Crash dieting is dieting that goes well beyond normal fast weight loss. Crash dieting is a poorly defined term, but, I'll explain it at some length, so that you will understand what crash dieting really is. As you may be aware, a certain body weight requires a certain number of calories to maintain that weight, so if you are so many kilos over weight, you will also have to consume extra calories to maintain that weight. Dieting works because it lowers the calorie intake below that required to maintain the extra weight, which is well and good, as you also maintain a calorie intake that will approximately be that needed to maintain your ideal body weight, or a bit more.
Slow weight loss aims to cut back the calorie intake each week or month, until the caloire intake equals the ideal body weight. With fast weight loss, the idea is to drop the calorie intake pretty well immediately to that required to maintain the ideal weight
In crash dieting, your calorie intake drops well below the calories needed to maintain your ideal weight, and you are, in effect, starving your body of the calories needed to maintain life. For that reason, crash dieting cannot continue for very long at all.
Millions of people resort to crash dieting every year with the same staggering effects: They feel worse after the crash dieting than before! Crash dieting can be dangerous for your overall health and fitness. Let’s take a look at some of the dangers of crash dieting and consider if you’ve done some of these things before.
When you try to lose weight too fast, you run the risk of not only losing weight, but you may also be losing muscle. Losing muscle will affect your ability to lose fat and then you end up making your body basically work against itself to lose weight.
When you try to lose weight fast, your body will react by slowing down your metabolism to reserve your energy that the body has stored in fat. When you skip meals or drastically reduce the amount of calories that you normally eat, your body will look to its fat stores as a way to supplement the calories that it’s not receiving. This means that your metabolism will slow down a lot, and if your metabolism is slow, then that means that you’re not naturally burning fat quickly.
Most people that crash diet rebound with a stronger appetite than they had previously simply because their body still wants the higher amount of calories that it was used to before the diet. This leads to quick weight gain because by this point your metabolism is so slow that it can’t burn the calories as fast as before. You end up gaining the weight that you lost right back in record time, feeling miserable along the way, and you may end up putting on even more weight rather quickly in the next few weeks following the crash diet.
The easiest and simplest way to avoid all of these dangers is to simply lose weight more slowly. This is the healthiest approach that you can take to losing weight and you’ll feel better and healthier every step of the way. Be sure to include some exercise each day, about an hour of brisk walking, as that helps maintain muscle tissue and burn fat tissue.