4 Reasons Rapid Weight Loss can Negatively Affect your Body

One thing is certain and that is the diet world has led us to expect fast results. You see the ads in magazines and online for losing pounds quickly. Even on television shows like the Biggest Loser we are seeing a loss of 5-10 pounds a week. These diets typically work by putting people on a very low calorie level (less than 1,000 calories a day) and/or include rigorous exercise. This may make great TV, but we already have significant evidence that this is counterproductive for long term results. Here are the four reasons rapid weight loss can be harmful for your health and your weight loss efforts.

1.  Slowed Metabolism

This occurs for several reasons. The first is that when we go on very low calorie diets our bodies' try to conserve energy and end up decreasing our metabolic rate to meet our needs. The second reason this happens is that rapid weight loss means we are breaking down a combination of fat and lean muscle mass. On a very low calorie diet you lose around 50% fat and 50% lean muscle mass. Muscle burns 35-70 calories just being muscle. Therefore, the more muscle you lose, the slower your metabolism becomes. This is one of the reasons it is so easy to gain weight once you have lost it. This cycle of decreasing our metabolic rate makes it difficult to keep it off and very easy to put it back on.

2.   Too Little Carbohydrate

Certain body tissue such as brain tissue and our nervous system depend on carbohydrates for fuel. Without adequate carbohydrates, our bodies' naturally begin breaking down protein for fuel leading to decreased lean body mass. Again, when we decrease our muscle or lean body mass we slow down our metabolism. There is a balance of eating enough carbohydrates to fuel these tissues and still maintain proper blood sugar levels for weight loss to occur.

3.   Chemistry Imbalance

Very low calorie diets can lead to mineral and electrolyte imbalances which can be harmful and in some cases, life threatening. The very low calorie diets of the past were always under physician supervision because of this issue. Now they are prominent in nearly all diet books and all over the internet. This goes to show that just because something is posted on a "health" website, doesn't mean it is healthy.

4.   Regaining Weight

Very low calorie diets and rigorous workouts are not realistic for the rest of your life. Can you commit to eating hardly any food and going to the gym 4 hours a day? This would be a hard momentum to stick with. There is extensive evidence that the more rapid the weight loss, the more extreme the rebound weight gain.

As much as weight loss is an important goal for many, the best approach is by making healthy lifestyle changes that you can stick with that make a moderate calorie decrease and at the same time optimize your metabolism. This is the perfect combination. The small changes may not make you lose 5 pounds in a week but they will keep you out of the rebound weight gain cycle that keeps you gaining more and more weight. Rarely do we put on the weight rapidly, gaining 5-7 pounds each and every week, so we can't expect our body to lose weight this rapidly without pushing it to severe limits.

I know it is exciting to see people lose lots of weight right away and view their before and after pictures, but take into account that they may not be able to keep the weight off. When looking at pictures, look for before and after pictures where the person has kept the weight off for at least 2 or more years. This is not to minimize anyone's success, it's just that the issue is not necessarily losing weight, it is keeping it off.

(c) 2006, Meri Raffetto

Make sure the nutrition information you read is accurate. You can do more harm than good by following inaccurate information especially with weight management. As you can see from the article above, some of these things can lead you to gain weight and make it increasingly difficult to get it off. Our mission is to provide professional weight management programs for people so they can get accurate information from nutrition experts and stop guessing about what they should or shouldn't be eating. Want to know more? learn about our online weight loss program!