What is Crash Dieting?

Every day of your life your body requires a combination of many nutrients to function properly and stay alive.

These nutrients include the main macro-nutrients: proteins, carbohydrates, and dietary fats. They also include micro-nutrients such as vitamins and minerals.

If you have been duped into adopting a low-calorie crash diet thinking that is the key to getting you to your desired weight quickly how do you expect to fulfill your nutritional requirements?

The reality is, crash diets are not the way to lose desired weight and only set you up for serious nutritional deficiencies. And, while some supplements can help to prevent certain nutritional deficiencies they will never be as effective as those that you receive from Mother Nature herself and the foods you eat. In addition, you will be missing out on other important things that food provides us such as fiber.

What good is it to get to your desired weight by using such extreme measures if in the end they only cause a greater risk of long-term health problems that can possibly impact you for years down the road?

Is dropping 5 pounds within one week really worth risking damage to your health? You know the answer to that. Nothing is worth sacrificing your health over.

Putting poor low-grade foods into your body, or eliminating foods to reach a certain weight is like putting low-grade fuel into your car or no fuel at all and expecting it to run at peak performance.

Your car cannot run and work properly without proper fuel and neither can your body.

Muscle Loss

The most detrimental issue you will suffer from when adopting a crash diet is setting yourself up to lose lean muscle mass.

Muscle is highly metabolically active – muscle mass is what strokes your metabolic engine. Low-calorie diets significantly slow down your metabolic rate because your body is not interested in getting skinny (that’s something that your mind is attached to) …the body’s focus is staying alive and healthy.

If there is one tissue that you absolutely do not want to lose…it’s your lean muscle mass. Losing muscle mass makes maintaining weight loss harder down the road because the more muscle mass you have the more calories you burn on a day-to-day basis.

On the flip side, the more muscle mass you lose, the less firm and fit you’ll look, eventually leading to “skinny fat” syndrome. You may look thin but your body composition is far less than ideal, sporting a higher amount of fat mass but a very low amount of muscle mass.

We need to give our bodies credit. The body is much smarter than we give it credit for. When it senses that there is a shortage of fuel coming in it immediately begins the process of conserving the fuel that is already there. So, rather than burn 1400 calories to maintain basic life functions (just keeping your body running) it slows things down so that you are now burning only 1100 calories to keep you alive.

Now, you are in a position where you must consume 300 fewer calories each day just to maintain your weight – never mind experiencing any weight loss.

As your body starts slowing your metabolic rate down other processes that are not necessary for survival start to shut down as well.

For example, reproduction is an energy drain that you don’t need so it suffers and begins shutting down. Your libido levels plummet as well. And that’s just the shortlist.

How in the world do you expect to experience optimal health if your natural body functions are shutting down?

Finally, low-calorie diets will turn into a hormonal nightmare for you as they impact nearly every hormone in the body from serotonin which is your “feel happy, mood happy” hormone to testosterone which improves your ability to stay lean and keeps your sexual drive where it needs to be.

Insulin, cortisol, and ghrelin (among other hormones) are all affected by these crash diet tactics. Since hormones are master controllers of every function in our bodies – they literally affect emotional, mental, and physical health. Is it really worth the risk to mess with them?

Not only are low calories crash diets dangerous to our health, but they are also nearly impossible to stick with. Trying to stay satisfied and fend off hunger is virtually mission impossible as your body cries and screams at you to give in. No one is determined enough to combat the defenses of their body when it is crying out for food.

When the body wants to eat badly enough…you will be eating before long. Unfortunately, when you finally reach for food, it will likely be the first thing that is within your reach and in most cases, not something that contributes to your health.

Stay Smart and Fit

For more tools and resources from Carolyn Hansen to assist you in attaining your health and fitness goals and achieving the success you desire in life, please visit: http://carolynhansenfitness.com/