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What exactly is crash dieting? And why is it so harmful for your body? Here's what you should know.
Most of the time, I’m approached by clients, especially women who want to lose weight in a specific time limit, either for a wedding or a holiday. I often hear, “I’m ready to crash diet, but please help me lose 5 kg in 2 weeks.”
So, what exactly is crash dieting? Well, it’s a diet intended to help a person lose a large amount of weight in a short period of time by typically reducing the amount of food consumed.
Sounds cool right? I mean, who doesn’t want to lose maximum weight in the minimum time span?
While a high Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), helps in losing weight, a low BMR reduces your rate of weight loss and crash diets can lower your BMR. BMR is the amount of calories you burn at rest. This means if you burn fewer calories, you lose less weight.
When you starve to lose weight, you lose muscle mass. Why is losing muscle mass such a big deal? Muscles are more expensive to maintain. Your body needs to work harder and therefore use more calories or needs more food to maintain more muscle. When you lose muscle mass, you automatically reduce the body’s efficiency to burn calories.
Lost muscle mass is replaced by fat. The more fat you have in your body, the less efficiently your body will burn calories at rest. For e.g. If your body needs x no of calories to maintain fat, it requires 3x or 3 times more calories to maintain the muscle mass. So the more fat you have, the fewer calories you will burn, and thus your BMR will lower.
Have you ever wondered why you lose weight so quickly by crash dieting? That’s because you are losing water weight, which is not ideal for long term weight loss. When you start eating again, the body replenishes the water weight and weight gain follows. One can run at risks of dehydration, leading to headache and dizziness.
If vanity is your thing, then this might convince you to avoid crash dieting. When we crash diet, we limit the amount of vitamins and nutrients the body absorbs. This in turn affects your physical appearance.
Your hair might lack luster, look dull, you might have hair fall issues and your skin will look dull, dry, and you might have acne breakouts.
While crash diets can lead to instant weight loss, they deplete the water stores in your body, leaving you fatigued and with low energy levels. Also, due to reduction in intake of vitamins and minerals the body is unable to produce energy, leaving you sluggish, fatigued and tired.
No one would like to be grumpy and irritated on a holiday. Crash diets can trigger the release of corticosterone from the brain, which will in turn increase your stress levels, irritability and depression. You may also experience poor concentration and sleep disturbances.
With so many negative pointers, I’m sure crash diets will definitely be off your list. Instead of short term solutions, look for long term lifestyle changes which will aid weight loss and give you permanent results.
This can definitely be achieved by a healthy, balanced and nutritious diet. The results might be slow, but they will be long-lasting. As the saying goes, slow and steady wins the race.
Image Source: By A and N Photography via Canva Pro
I am a dietitian by profession,blogger by passion. I regularly blog on health,fitness and mental and physical wellbeing.For more such interesting articles watch this space. read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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