Extreme Weight Loss Diet Plans aka Crash Diets (Should You Follow Them)

Extreme Weight loss diets are also called fad/crash diets which are followed by lots of people to lose weight as quickly as possible. Some of these diets are General Motors Diet, Master Cleanse Diet, Cabbage Soup Diet and even Blood Group Diet which can make you lose weight quickly. In fact some of these diets can even make you lose as much as 5 kgs in less than 14 days, sounds Great Right??? But let me give you few reasons as to why you should not follow such weight loss diets —

1. All the weight comes back — All the weight that you lose with these weight loss diets comes back. All these diets reduce your daily calorie intake as low as possible because of which you lose weight quickly unfortunately its impossible to keep your calorie intake low forever. So max to max you can follow these weight loss diets for 7 days, 14 Days or even 21 days but the moment you come back to your normal eating pattern all the weight comes bouncing back.

2. Extreme weight loss diets leads to muscle loss, slower metabolic rate and even serious health problems — More the amount of muscle you have faster is your metabolic rate but lesser the amount of muscle you have slower is your metabolic rate. Now when you drastically reduce your calorie intake your body goes into a survival mechanism state wherein it starts holding back on to your fat tissue and starts eating onto your muscle tissue for your energy requirements. This is not good for fat loss as muscle tissue is the only thing in your body that enhances your metabolic rate (calorie burning capacity), now that you have lesser muscle tissue you have an even slower metabolic rate (compared to what it was before the diet) and that’s why you will gain all the weight back. Now when I am talking about muscle loss I am not just talking about losing muscle tissue from your chest, bicep,triceps or legs, I am also talking about losing muscles from inside your body like heart, brain, liver and kidney which is serious as losing weight from internal organs can lead to serious health problems.

3. Extreme Weight Loss Diets cause Irritation, Mood swings and Depression — Your body needs vitamins namely C and B 6 to produce two neuro transmitters like Dopamine and serotine which helps you keep your mood stable and happy. Now when you drastically reduce your calorie intake your body does not enough of these vitamins which in turn leadS to irritation, mood swings and in some cases severe depression.

4. Extreme Weight Loss Diets leads to Poor skin quality, hair quality and osteoporosis –Fad diets lack nutrition and can cause nutritional deficiency of various vitamins and minerals in your body. Following these weight loss diets regularly can cause poor skin quality, which is about having skin with spots and wrinkles, can cause poor hair quality which means hair fall, poor hair texture and baldness and can even cause osteoporosis which is about thinning of your bones.

All in all crash diets are extremely unhealthy and you should seriously think about all these consequences before following such weight loss diets.

Raghav Pande is a Certified Fitness Trainer and Specialist in Performance Nutrition.