Many people think crash dieting is the easiest way to lose a kilo or two quickly. If you don't know what that is, consider yourself lucky! Crash dieting is where you lower your daily calorie intake to dangerously low levels with the aim of losing weight quickly.
You might have first heard of this somewhere in an interview with a celebrity talking about how they ate just one meal a day to get to a size zero for a role. In fact, these celebrity tales really popularized crash dieting among the general public.
It seemed to be the go-to solution for everything, but crash dieting is never healthy and almost impossible to sustain. Here are the side effects of this extreme dieting as per doctors.
Reduces metabolic rate
The higher the metabolic rate, the faster you lose weight. But a metabolic rate depends on the muscle mass you have. Eating drastically fewer calories makes you lose this muscle mass and this reduces your metabolic rate. And your body doesn't immediately recover from this.
Leaves you with low energy
When your body is not getting sufficient fuel to run, how can you perform your day-to-day activities properly? Crash dieting is neither safe nor sustainable.
Dehydration
Many crash diets work on one principle, losing water weight. Water makes up 70-80% of our body, not eating or drinking enough can cause us to lose a few pounds of this water weight. But in the longer run, this can cause headaches and dizziness.
Once you start eating normally again, you'll gain this weight back. So in reality, crash dieting is inefficient and not worth the risk of losing your health. Never indulge in the temptation to do it, because it is said to trigger heart problems as well.
Slow and steady wins the race, if you want to lose weight, you need to burn calories and be in a calorie deficit. But this calorie deficit also has to be in accordance with your body and age.
Choose a healthy lifestyle and keep swapping!