Do crash diets work?

Crash diets are something we’ve all seen come and go over the past decade. We know celebrities and various other people do them in order to lose weight quickly and easily, but the real question is: Does it work? Can you actually get a victoria secrets models body by following a “just-liquids” diet? Or is it just companies that want to buy their weight loss miracle?

There are many diets that are meant to help lost weight quickly and that you should start seeing results within 2 weeks of starting the said crash diet. There are many pills, books and techniques that are promoted for the idea of weight loss and how fast and easy it’ll be to get to your target weight goal. However the weight that you lose from the first week or 2 is just water loss. Your body loses the water quickly when your body begins to break up the glycogen stores, so the water molecules attached to the glycogen is lost. Glycogen is a substance stored in your body tissues from carbohydrates. While the glycogen is being broken down, ketones are released in the body because you’re body goes into something called ‘starvation mode’, so from then on whatever you eat, it will be stored in your body, because your body doesn’t know when it’ll next get food. Ketones act has an appetite suppressant; your body acts like this because our ancestors would sometimes go without food, so their body would be in starvation mode and would save the fats and the energy from the food they’d have available.

One thing to understand about crash diets is that they promise a quick weight loss, in a short period of time and the diet gives you a list of what you can and can’t eat. Crash diets are done over short periods of time that fixes peoples weight temporarily. There can be many dangers and side effects to the diets and can be a never ending cycle of weight loss and weight gain.
The never ending cycle is started by the person following the diet, deciding to go back to how they used to eat food before, so resuming their normal diet and because of this the body gains weight back quicker; our bodies become use to receiving minimal food and so our metabolic rate slows down and breaks food down slower and stores more fats. 

This fluctuation of weight can also put pressure on the heart, sometimes leading to hypertension (high blood pressure) and can actually become the cause of developing heart disease.
Some crash diets cut of most of the bodies’ carbohydrates intake, which in turn can affect your energy levels in your body, making you more prone to fatigue and you lose water and electrolytes from your body which can actually cause low blood pressure, causing you to faint or blackout.

The idea of dieting is great and isn't really meant to scare you. However, with diets, you have to understand that it’s never a quick fix, but a life style change, and that’s the only way you can lose or maintain weight healthily! Minus all the scariness and side effects of crash diets!

[2] Perrin Braun (2012) [online]

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