ARE YOU DIETING?  & On A Crash diet??

Do you know CRASH DIET can be FATAL?

ARE YOU AWARE what a Crash Diet is?

The most important thing about all crash diets is that they are the most restrictive means of weight loss that you can follow. Obviously, they involve severely cutting back on calories, and allow only 1,000 or even 500 calories per day. They are even paired with other "quick fixes" like juice cleanses, diuretics or diet pills. Even as the length of time varies from diet to diet, crash diets are meant for quick, short-term weight loss.

How Do They Work?

Crash diet fads shock the body, sending it into starvation mode. The severe restriction in calories often appear to be working after only a few days, however, despite the rapid weight loss, the body is not solely burning fat as fuel. First of all, it utilizes the stored up supply of carbohydrates, in the form of glycogen. And as your body utilizes glycogen, you lose water as well, creating what seems like great weight loss within the first few days of the diet.

The Facts about Nutritional Deficiency

Low calorie diets tend to be very restrictive, and during a period of crash dieting, your body will not be able to get the key nutrients that it needs for optimal health. If long term deficiencies persist, a number of things can occur, including loss of minerals from your bones, leading to osteoporosis and fractures or the depletion of iron from the blood, leading to anaemia. Things apart, low calorie diets can lead to a deficiency in particular nutrients such as sodium and potassium. These electrolytes are used in nerve and muscle function, and play an important role in regulating heart beats. Low levels of sodium and potassium can lead to increased danger of heart attack.

What is The Yo-Yo Effect

When you go for extended periods of time depriving your body of its nutritional needs, your body switches into starvation mode to conserve energy until adequate nutrition is restored. In order to conserve as much energy as possible, the body's natural metabolism will slow down in order to burn fewer calories, and fat conservation will be preserved. In practical effect, eventually you will find yourself hitting a weight loss plateau, during which time it will become more and more difficult to lose weight. For the majority of the crash dieters, the plateau is followed by a period of weight gain. It is like the up and down motion of a yo-yo, and crash dieters often find that their weight constantly fluctuates with each diet that they go on.

Emotional Side Effects

Not only can crash diets impact your physical health and well-being, but they also have a harsh effect on mental and emotional health. As your body is deprived of the nutrients that it needs to make energy, restricted calories often leave dieters feeling irritable, tired and lethargic. Crash dieting can also lead to more serious emotional consequences such as depression and eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia.

As among the different diets be it a grapefruit a day, cabbage soup or a fancy juice cleanse - there is a reason why "crash" is in the title of these diets. The truth is, there is no quick fix for weight loss. Instead, it requires hard work and dedication to find a weight loss program that works for you. Finding a method to achieving slow and gradual weight loss will not only be sustainable for long-term weight loss goals, but will also have no negative impacts on your health, leaving you succeeding, rather than crashing.

Studies show that rapid weight loss can slow your metabolism, leading to future weight gain, and deprive your body of essential nutrients. What's more, crash diets can weaken your immune system and increase your risk of dehydration, heart palpitations, and cardiac stress. Experts have found that extended crash diets can be dangerous -- especially when the diets become a fad.

FDA-(USA) The Food and Drug Administration found in a study that as many as 60 deaths occurred among liquid dieters. Although some of these deaths occurred in people with underlying diseases such as atherosclerosis (and therefore could have been coincidental), government researchers who examined otherwise healthy dieters who died of ventricular arrhythmias found that the pattern of deaths suggested "the effects of protein-calorie malnutrition on the heart," including atrophy of the heart muscle. The experts have since tried to pinpoint the dangers of crash diets (technically known as "very low calorie" diets). - Shortages of potassium, magnesium, and copper have been suggested as possible causes of the arrhythmias (irregular heart beats) seen in crash dieters, and studies have also found that the diets can cause a drastic/dangerous drop in blood pressure and sodium depletion.

The real extent of death caused by crash diets is not clear. However, much of the research has been conducted in obese people (who can actually benefit from these extreme diets) and in most studies the health of the participants was carefully monitored.

It is stressed by experts that very-low-calorie diets should only be followed with a doctor's supervision. But crash dieters are more likely to consult their friends than a doctor -- which can get them into trouble.

How to lose weight -- safely

If you're overweight, slimming down is critical for your overall health. Even moderate weight loss can lower your risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, and some types of cancer.

But it's important to lose weight safely, which usually means slowly: Most experts recommend dropping just 1 to 2 pounds a week. And despite what some brand-name diets claim, the best way to do so is to exercise regularly and stick to a diet that limits saturated fat and sugars and emphasizes fruits and vegetables, lean meats and fish, and whole grains.

"The key to losing weight is a combination of diet and exercise," says. "One alone will not do it."

As a method to lose a significant amount of weight within a limited time period, extreme diet or crash diet, is resorted to by many health / weight conscious people. But crash diets are not meant for long term weight loss plans, as crash diets usually cut down on one or more food groups to reach a desired weight level, and these diets skip out on important nutrients that your body needs.

The ways crash diets can affect your body include:

1.    Dehydration: You realise you are losing weight after implementing the crash diet, but this is just an illusion. All the weight lost isn’t fat, but water. When you restrict calories, your body first burns glycogen—not fat, for energy. Glycogen is a form of carbohydrate stored in the muscles and liver, and water is attached to every gram of glycogen. So when your body burns glycogen, you end up losing water, which causes dehydration.

2.    Unstable blood sugar: When your body doesn’t get a steady supply of fibre, fat, protein and carbohydrates, your insulin and blood sugar levels run amok. Some diets, such as the detox diet, can lead to type II diabetes.

3.    Muscle break down: Energy comes from calories and restricting calories adversely affects your muscles. When you start losing weight, your body starts harnessing muscle proteins for energy. This leads to muscle loss and your physique deteriorates. For instance, liquid diets (that have low calories) cause rapid muscle loss and can lead to ventricular arrhythmias.

4.    Slow metabolism: Your metabolic rate crashes automatically when you lose muscles. This implies that you burn less calories when you talk, exercise and walk. You start feeling sluggish, and even after you get back to your normal diet, your metabolism won’t change back to how it was before.

5.    Malnutrition: A lot of crash diets recommend eating less than 700 calories a day, which will help you lose weight, but it harms your body. The body needs calories, since they are an important energy source. Soon your body adapts to the lack of calories and becomes malnourished.

6.    Intellectual problems: Some crash diets cut down carbohydrate consumption, and this ends up affecting your brain. The brain needs carbs to function properly. So, when there is a severe carbohydrate deficiency, the level of corticosteroids (the stress hormone) increases in your brain, making you vulnerable to stress, depression and binge-eating behaviours. If you wish to discuss about any specific problem, you can consult a dietician-nutritionist or consult me by going to www.lybrate.com/drsajeev.