When it comes to losing weight fast, it usually means one of the unhealthy ways to do that, as healthy weight loss ways do not give quick results. You should bare in your mind that you have gained all this weight in a long time, so it would be unwise to hope losing it in a short time.
There are a lot of adverts and articles on the Internet offering you to lose 10 pounds or even more in a week. Maybe it is possible and maybe you will manage to do that with one of these miraculous diets, but you should ask yourself – “what am I gonna eat when I quit this diet?”
Quickly lost weight will return right after you quit extreme dieting and get back to your usual eating routine. What is more, it can harm your health and imbalance your metabolism. Sudden changes in food intake and diet can disturb the potassium-sodium balance, which is especially dangerous for people with heart and kidney disease.
We strongly recommend losing weight in a healthy way – slowly, purposefully, eating various, well-balanced and nutritional foods, rich in vitamins and minerals. In that way, healthy eating will become your habit and will give you long lasting results.
Further in this article we will discuss 5 most unhealthy ways of losing weight fast, which we strongly recommend NOT to EVER try.
1. Juice diet
Juice diets are popular for their simplicity and quick effect. The essence of juice diet is drinking juices from various fruits and vegetables: apples, oranges, mangoes, beets, spinach, kale. It is also possible to include cashew or almond milk in a diet. All week long you only drink juices – for your breakfast, lunch and dinner, you are not allowed to have any other food.
Fruit and vegetable juices might be rich in various microelements, but drinking ONLY juices all week long does not provide you with all the necessary nutrients such as protein and fat. Protein is a building material of your body, involved in various chemical reactions. Protein powers and enhances your immune system. Fat is important for the smooth functioning of your hormonal system. Unsaturated fats are especially beneficial for weight loss, for the functioning of your cardiovascular system, they reduce the risk of heart disease, lower your LDL cholesterol levels and decrease inflammation in your body. Your body must get all these nutrients if you want to feel great.
To be honest, nothing bad happens if you try juicing for one or two days. However, if you stick to the juice diet for a week or longer, you may start to feel the bad effects of this diet: increased stomach acidity, indigestion, diarrhea, as well as mood swings, fatigue, hunger attacks that result from large jumps in insulin after each glass of juice.
Juice diet is super effective for weight loss because you only get about 1000 kilocalories daily, but it is also super unhealthy because it’s not only fat that you’re losing. You’re also losing your muscles due to a lack of protein. What is more, your kidney function is impaired, your metabolism slows down and your body enters a “power saving mode”, which eventually ends up with gaining weight instead of losing it.
2. Mono diet
Mono diets are also very popular among people struggling with overweight. Recently it has been one of the most searched diets on the Internet. These diets are extremely low in calories, so they give quick effect in a short time. The most popular products, usually chosen for these diets, are apples, rice, chicken breasts and eggs. No fat. To make it clear, on this diet you can eat only ONE product for several days or all week long and you are allowed to drink water and unsweetened green tea.
Let’s discuss each product, usually eaten on a mono diet.
Apples are a healthy choice in general, as they contain a lot of vitamins and minerals, fiber, potassium, they also lower your LDL cholesterol levels and speed up your metabolism. It would even be beneficial to naturally cleanse your intestine eating only apples one day in a month. However, eating only apples for 5-7 days in a row is very harmful for your health. Not to mention that you don’t get all the necessary nutrients (you only get carbohydrates, but not protein and fat), it is also harmful for your teeth. Moreover, you may start to feel the bad effects of this diet: bloating, diarrhea, hunger attacks and even anger attacks, as mono diets are very difficult psychologically.
Rice mono diet is popular because it guarantees short-term weight loss and is very cheap. However, if you choose rice for your mono diet, you will be getting many carbohydrates and very little of protein or fat. Moreover, rice do not contain vitamins A, B12 and C and some essential amino acids. Eating rice for a long time and repeating this mono diet from time to time, might cause the lack of these vitamins in your body and that can result in serious disease. Science research shows that there is a connection between rice and diabetes – people who are often on a rice diet have a 27% higher risk of developing diabetes. Finally, rice can cause a severe constipation and you might even need laxatives or enema.
Choosing chicken breasts or eggs as the only product for your mono diet is not a healthy option either, as you get a large amount of protein and very little of fat and carbohydrate. Consuming too much protein with not enough fat and carbohydrate, can lead you to the condition, called protein poisoning, also known as “rabbit starvation”. This is a dangerous health condition, which can result in fatal accumulation of toxins in the blood and cause severe symptoms of malnutrition: weakness, fatigue, headaches, nausea, diarrhea, constant hunger, mood changes, slow heart rate and low blood pressure.
We do not recommend mono diets. No matter which product you choose for you mono diet, your body will not get all the necessary macronutrients. Continuously repeating these diets can result with serious medical consequences.
3. Pills, teas, food supplements, laxatives and dangerous forbidden drugs for weight loss.
There are plenty of adverts on the Internet, offering you to lose weight without any effort. You just have to buy ridiculously expensive miraculous pills or tea and start using it. These adverts are created by real marketing professionals, what makes them very convincing, and many people really believe that they can lose weight by simply taking pills or drinking tea. Well, here we have to disappoint you. If you don’t change your life style, if you don’t start eating healthy food and exercising, none miraculous pills or tea will help you. The good thing about most of these weight loss products is that they don’t contain any dangerous ingredients. Usually they are based on various herbs, which make no harm to your health, but don’t help you lose weight either.
We could say the same thing about food supplements for weight loss, which you can buy in a drug store. These supplements are approved by The Food and Drug Administration and that makes them trustworthy for customers. Just like the pills or tea, which we discussed above, weight loss food supplements do not make harm for your health, but their effect on weight loss is questionable. On the description of such supplements there is always a note: you will get more effective weight loss results, if you eat healthy and exercise regularly. Well if you do that, we bet you will start losing weight without any supplements.
If herbal weight loss pills, teas and food supplements, which we discussed above, are not dangerous for your health, using laxatives for weight loss is rather extreme. However, many people choose laxatives as a weight loss option, especially when they want to get rid of only a few pounds. According to Wikipedia, “Laxatives are substances that loosen stools and increase bowel movements. They are used to treat and prevent constipation”. Laxatives should be used only if you suffer from constipation and exactly like your doctor prescribed. Nevertheless, it is an easy way to lose a few pounds without any effort, so people simply cannot resist trying it. Using laxatives for weight loss is silly, as you only lose your water weight, not your fat, so you get a short-term result. What is more, laxatives cause dehydration and mineral deficiencies, followed by these symptoms: headache, dizziness, fatigue, confusion and extreme thirst. The worst part about laxatives is that you can become dependent on them. If you abuse laxatives, your body might stop moving waste through the intestines on its own and it can lead to serious long-term medical consequences.
The scariest thing that we want to pay our special attention to is dangerous forbidden drugs, which people buy on a black market. Usually such drugs contain fenfluramine and sibutramine.
Fenfluramine is an appetite suppressant, used by doctors for obesity treatment. If your doctor prescribed it to you, you must use it in exact doses and with the strict maintenance of the professional. Fenfluramine is an amphetamine derivative, it is extremely dangerous to use it without doctor’s permission. The side effects of fenfluramine speak for themselves: depression, anxiety, panic attacks, nightmares, headaches, nausea, vomiting, fast heartbeat, increased sweating, trouble breathing, blurred vision, suicidal thoughts, a person might even start to see or hear things that really aren’t there. Sibutramine is forbidden in the USA and most other countries of the world. It was used for obesity treatment years ago, but this practice was discontinued because of its terrible side effects.
Sibutramine causes serious heart and cardiovascular system problems. Moreover, it increases blood pressure and pulse rate, gives headaches, causes insomnia and many psychological issues, like depression, psychosis, mania, suicidal thoughts and even suicide. It is hard to believe that drugs containing fenfluramine and sibutramine are illegally sold on the black market. It is even harder to believe that people know about the side effects of these drugs, but their desire to lose weight is so huge, that they risk their health or maybe even life, hoping that the side effects do not occur. The desire to lose weight fast is understandable, but just not this way, not risking your health and life.
4. Starvation
By starvation we mean a long-term food refusal, not intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting (usually 16, 18 or 20 hours break between your last meal yesterday and your first meal today) is very beneficial for your health and for weight loss, and we strongly recommend it. Starvation is fasting for a long time, when a person stops eating for days or weeks and only drinks water. We agree that starvation gives obvious and noticeable weight loss results. Unfortunately, it can end with severe medical issues.
Why is starvation so harmful?
Slowed metabolism. When you stop eating for a few days and longer, your brain enters a “starvation mode”, when your body starts to reduce calorie expenditure to maintain energy balance. This mode is a natural body’s protective reaction to extreme calories reduction. Unfortunately, it slows down your metabolism. Chronic starvation can result with severe changes in your metabolism.
Muscle mass loss. During starvation, your body is in a constant lack of energy. Eventually it starts to use the proteins within muscle tissue as a source of energy, which results in muscle mass loss.
Medical consequences caused by starvation. Continuous starvation can cause severe health issues: liver, kidney, bladder, pancreas problems, dysbacteriosis, chronic constipation. Not to mention eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia.
Weakened immune system. Because of the lack of nutrients due to starvation, your immune system starts to weaken. Immune system is an army of various cells, protecting your body against bacteria, viruses and anything else that can cause infection. Having weak immune system, it gets complicated for your body to resist to viruses and infections.
Psychological issues and lost work efficiency. Starvation causes constant hunger, which leads to anger, stress, irritability and anxiety. Moreover, starvation reduces sexual desire. Your body is in a constant lack of energy, which reduces your work efficiency. It gets hard to focus, you start losing your memory, exhaustion, fatigue, and drowsiness become your every day’s companions.
Research shows that people, who have been starving for a long time, gained back all the lost pounds right after they got back to their regular eating habits. Starvation is like jail for your body. As soon as it gets free, it gains back everything that was lost.
5. Liposuction
Actually, liposuction is not even a way of weight loss. However, many people think that way, so we decided to discuss it. Liposuction is a plastic surgery procedure that removes fat from problematic areas, the fat, which is impossible to get rid of with diets or exercising. If you have a big overweight or suffer from severe obesity and think that all you have to do is save money for liposuction, we have to disappoint you. Liposuction is possible only for people with healthy weight, who struggle with fat in problematic areas or have localized fat pockets that they would like to reduce. During liposuction, people usually lose only two to five pounds. Every plastic surgeon will tell you that at first you have to lose weight on a healthy diet and exercising. Doctors recommend undergoing liposuction only when you have reached your desired weight and think that you can maintain it.
Obviously, liposuction is not an unhealthy option to lose weight fast, it is not an option at all until you reach your desired weight.
Summarizing everything we have discussed in this article, we have come to the very same conclusion: when it comes to losing weight, there is no correlation between words “healthy” and “fast”. You can lose weight either healthy, or fast. If you want a long-term result, do it healthy. The best time to start was yesterday. The second best time is NOW. Good luck!
