Modern day diet programs and plans promise weight loss
results that sound very appealing. If you're looking to lose some fat, there's
a good chance you're looking for a fast weight loss diet to help you do this.
Low carb diets are one example of such diets and involve drastically limiting
your intake of carbohydrate foods.
Some of these fast weight loss diets have phases where you
lower your carb intake to the point where your body goes into a state called
"ketosis" and switches from using carbs for energy to using fat. Such
diets include the Atkins Diet and the South Beach Diet. This is an unnecessary
extreme and will leave you lacking many important nutrients, not to mention
being very difficult to stick to.
What no-one tells you is that it's only realistic for your
body to lose two pounds a week of fat and anything else you lose on a fast
weight loss diet will be either muscle or water loss. Not only is this very bad
for your health but your body uses up fewer calories as you lose muscle. Water
loss also causes you to become dehydrated, since your body is 75% water.
In addition to the above, fast weight loss diets have many
other side effects. For starters, when you suddenly change your diet and start
eating less than normal this may trigger your body's starvation response. When
this occurs your body wants to conserve its energy and doesn't want to let go
of your body fat, which means your fat loss will slow down to a halt.
Another factor to consider is that it is very likely that
you will re-gain any weight you lost on a fast weight loss diet when you
complete your diet. This is due to the extremely restrictive nature of low-carb
diets which can result in cravings and subsequent binges as you fall back into
your old way of eating, and is also due to the muscle loss which slows down
your metabolism.
Some fast weight loss diet programs promise very optimistic
results but charge you lots of money for the shakes and food bars which are a
"necessary" part of the program. What's more, 95% of dieters put the
weight they lose back on, and end up going back on a diet. How would you feel
if you invested hundreds of dollars every month on a fast weight loss diet, and
then put it all back on when you got off the diet?
The key to successfully and permanently losing the fat is
not to drastically lower calories, nor to label carbs as evil and avoid them
like the plague, as many fast weight loss diets advocate. Instead, you will get
more effective results by changing your eating habits and eating smaller, but
more frequent meals and cutting way back on processed, fatty and high-sugar
foods.
If you want to lose the fat naturally and safely you cannot
do this with fast weight loss diets. Rather, this requires changing your eating
habits for the better so to not pack on more fat, and regularly exercising
which should involve aerobic exercise to strip the fat off as well as
resistance training to help build muscle. If you do this instead of going on a
fast weight loss diet, you will find your metabolism speeding up and the fat
melting off without any water or muscle loss.
