It’s time to admit – all of us have done something really crazy at some point in order to lose some weight “really quickly” – from buying gimmicky sauna belts to slashing down calories drastically aka crash dieting aka food deprivation. While sauna belts are exactly what we previously termed – “gimmicky,” crash dieting can prove counterproductive, sometimes affecting your health adversely. While it may seem logical to cut down as much food as possible in order to get lean, we bet you would regret the decision later on. A weight loss diet should not be based on food deprivation because it can be ineffective, and all your hopes of fitting into that old pair of jeans would get dashed mercilessly. Most people think that getting on a diet to lose weight equals to food deprivation, and the more hungry and exhausted one feels while on the diet, more calories get torched! Completely wrong! If you ask people who have successfully lost weight, they would tell you that there’s no need to starve the whole day in order to get lean. Food deprivation is promoted by certain fad diets that only work for a short period of time and once you come off them, you tend to put on more weight. To lose weight successfully, one needs to be in calorie deficit, eating just the right amount and the right kind of food to successfully drop all the extra pounds, and there’s no need to punish or deprive the body of food. In fact, eat the right kind of food, in moderation, to burn excess fat (and Rati Beauty Diet would help you achieve that). Furthermore, read about 12 Reasons Not To Try Food Deprivation For Weight Loss.
1. Weight loss will be harder because it’s not sustainable: Crash dieting is simply not sustainable because it affects your energy and the constant state of hunger would make it difficult to adhere to this strategy for long. A majority of people come off the diet in just one week or less.
2. You would end up Binge Eating Towards the End of the Day: Since you have deprived yourself of any food the entire day, a ravenous appetite would build up towards evening and intense cravings would lead to overeating and binge eating at dinner.
3. Losing Weight Will Be Difficult After the Initial 5 kg Drop: With severe energy deficit and low calorie intake, the body brings in adaptive strategies, one of them is adaptive thermogenesis (metabolic adaptation) which makes your body less effective at burning calories in an effort to preserve as much energy as possible. Losing weight after the initial 5 kg drop would become extremely difficult from thereon.
4. Will Trigger Health Issues and Hormonal Imbalances: We get our nutrients (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, healthy fats) from food and when you cut down food consumption drastically, nutrients to synthesize hormones go missing. As a result, you develop health issues and hormonal problems.
5. Metabolism Would Become Sluggish: A robust metabolism is essential to burn extra calories and drop extra weight. Metabolism is the rate at which calories are burnt and converted into energy form by the body. If someone’s metabolism is high, he/she will burn more calories even at rest! When someone slashes calories to lose weight, the body lowers metabolism to burn fewer calories and conserve energy – it switches to a “starvation” mode.
6. You Lose Muscle Along with Fat: With crash dieting, the body loses both muscle and fat, and with loss of muscle – metabolism too dips. A slow and sluggish metabolism will burn only a few calories even with intense activity, and that’s why even with regular exercise and less food, you would not see the extra pounds coming off.
7. Increased Cravings that Would Make Staying on Diet Difficult: Food deprivation leads to intense cravings (most of them for unhealthy and calorie-rich food). These cravings would cause binge eating and overeating.
8. No Energy for Exercise: With starvation diets, energy levels plummet, leaving the person with little energy to workout or exercise.
9. You Would Most Likely Fall Back on Pre-Dieting Eating Habits: Once they come off crash dieting, most people tend to fall back on pre-dieting eating habits because such diets do not encourage you to make lifestyle changes as well
10. May Trigger Hair Fall: It’s a nightmare of nightmares – food deprivation can trigger severe hair fall because there are no nutrients available to support healthy hair.
11. Nutritional Deficiencies: As we have mentioned earlier, people who cut down on food and starve, often suffer from nutritional deficiencies and related diseases.
12. Immunity Might Get Compromised: Food deprivation can increase the risk of developing infections because immune system becomes weak.
13. Menstrual Cycle: Some women report missed periods or no periods at all after they went on crash dieting.
14. Premature Ageing: Since your diet lacks essential nutrients to keep the skin healthy and supple, wrinkles and fine lines show easily.
15. You Would Gain All the Weight Back: Food deprivation is an absolutely bad idea to slim down because it actually prepares and primes the body to gain lots of weight in the near future, and a sluggish metabolism is one of the main factors that lead to weight gain.
Summing up, a weight loss diet should not be based on food deprivation and extreme calorie cutting. Check out Rati Beauty weight loss diets on the Rati Beauty app (both on playstore and app store) that help you to lose weight by encouraging you to eat the right kind of food in the right quantity, so that you continue to lose weight at a steady pace including nutrient-dense foods that pack a lot of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants in relatively fewer calories, so do eat right, not less!
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