Category: <span>Weight Loss</span>

Slim and fit young womanIn the pursuit of weight loss, people will try anything to shed off the extra pounds. Long term weight loss strategies such as exercising may not appeal the quick-fix type of people. Most of the people will go for crash diets.

A crash diet is a technique that helps individuals lose weight in a short time. The diet has a restricted calories intake, about 700 daily, enabling one to lose 5-20 pounds within however many days. For anyone trying to lose a few pounds before a special occasion such as a wedding, the crash diet will often work. It can kick back at you in the long term, however, as you will often gain more than you lost when you stop. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you’d be better off checking out a better weight loss plan like Metabolic Renewal.

The crash diet can work fast, is inexpensive, and involves no exercise. However, the fad diet has its dangers and disadvantages.

List of Crash diets

Here is a list of crash diets that may be effective for fast weight loss for some people. However, crash diets should not be a long-term weight loss strategy.

Juice Fast Crash Diet

It is a form of juicing diet. It involves drinking vegetable and fruit juice for up to 60 days. The recommended calorie intake under this diet is 1200-1800 daily.

Cabbage Soup Diet

The diet promises a 10-pound weight loss in 7 days. If you love cabbages or have plenty of them, try the diet. Besides the cabbage soup, one can include a few selected foods.

Master Cleanse

Developed in 1940 by Stanley Burroughs, the diet is a favorite among celebrities. It is also known as the cayenne pepper or lemonade diet. The 10-day cleansing diet is an all-liquid diet. Dieters can lose up to 15 pounds according to the publicity.

The 3-Day Diet

Salad with arugulaThis one is an interesting diet without an author or a source. For three days, the dieter is allowed to eat a prescribed meal. No substitution or deviation whatsoever. The prescribed diet limits calorie intake and dieters are said to lose up to 10 pounds. It is easy to implement, but you’ll be hungry for those three days.

Grapefruit Diet

The theory behind the diet is that grapefruits are low-calorie diet and contain fat-burning enzymes.

Xtreme Fat Loss Diet

Dieters claim to have lost 25 pounds in 25 days with this diet. It follows a 5-day cycle that should be repeated five times. It combines certain meals and exercises enabling one to lose fat. Additionally, it focuses on building and maintaining metabolism and muscles while burning the fat.

The Danger of Crash Diets

A crash diet restricts the daily intake of calories and misses out on entire food groups. They are not nutritionally balanced; it leads to long-term poor health. Some of the effects of the restrictive diet, depending on the diet include:

  • Weakening of the immunity system
  • Muscle loss
  • Slowing the metabolism, leading to weight gain after
  • Some crash diets encourage you to eat unhealthy foods, thereby increasing risk of stroke and heart diseases
  • Many crash diets prevent the body from getting the required nutrients and vitamins for proper functioning

    Also, they often lead to severe consequences that can last for years, such as eating disorders (bulimia/anorexia/binge eating disorder) and depression.

  • While crash diets are quick and inexpensive, following them is not a good weight loss strategy. Even though you can lose plenty of weight in a short time, the dieters gain their weight back after the dieting regime.

    Weight Loss

    What are calories and why are they important for weight loss – or are they even important at all? Now and then, you will hear people talking about the need to cut your calorie intake if you are hoping to lose weight. Whereas this might be true, the biggest assumption that is made here is that everyone understands what calories are.

    It might sound crazy, but yeah, very few people actually understand what calories are. That is why I will start this article by first letting you know what calories are and later letting you the role that calories play in our bodies, more so when we are planning to lose some weight.

    Kitchen scale and ingredientsCalories are used as a measure of the amount of energy the food we eat gives us and how much of this energy is essential for our survival. The food we take is digested and metabolized by our bodies to give out energy and some other products. It is this energy that allows us to carry out basic processes such as breathing and functioning of our hearts, just to name a few of the physiological processes in our bodies.

    So why do medics and nutritionists advise that we take a cut in our calories intake? Let’s find out.

    On a scientific point of view, it can not be plainly said that this is the amount of calories that human beings require. This is so because, factors such as gender, your age and type of work that you involve in determines the level of calories intake that your body requires. If someone takes more calories than the body requires, the excess calories are stored as fat. This is what leads to weight gain.

    It is therefore very clear that our calories intake have everything to do with our weight gain or loss. It is therefore very important that the amount of calories that you take should not surpass the amount of calories that your body burns to produce energy.

    To burn the excess fats, you need to have a way of making your body utilize the stored fats. This can be done by creating a difference between the amount of calories your body burns every day and the amount of calories that you take every day. If you want to lose a lot of weight, you need to make this gap bigger as the more deficit you create, the more of your stored energy is consumed by your body for metabolism and for energy.

    To increase this deficit is very simple. What you need to know is to take a very significant cut on your daily calories intake, while at the same time increasing your physical activities.The physical activities will mean that your body will require more energy. Your body will, therefore, be forced to burn more of the fats stored in your body to meet this huge need for more energy. This will lead to significant loss of weight, hence healthy living.

    It is important to note that, although exercises play a big role in weight loss, it can never work in isolation as the food we take determines how much energy we have for the activities we involve in. It is therefore clear that calories intake and diet are very important factors to consider while working on a weight loss plan.

    Weight Loss