The Ugly Yo-Yo Effect Of Crash Diets

Most people go on crash diets because they have to get ready for a big event or are fed up with not being able to fit into their clothes from the previous year. Unfortunately, most crash diets backfire because they involve too few calories.

If you go on a crash diet, your body will feel deprived and go into starvation mode, holding onto fat and learning to survive on fewer calories. When you go back to eating like a normal person (and you will eventually) you will pack on pounds of fat.

How to spot a crash diet

What are the tell-tale signs of a crash diet? One of the most common strategies of crash diets is to encourage the dieter to drink some or most of his or her calories for the day. Going on a liquid fast is a bad idea for permanent weight loss because you won't feel the same level of satisfaction by drinking calories. Researchers have found people tend to chew or eat as many calories regardless of how many liquid calories they consume.

Extreme deprivation

Crash diets also tend to restrict the number of calories a person eats regardless of their weight, size, frame or metabolism. Even if the crash diet gives you the choice of eating 1,000, 1,200, 1,500 or 1,800 calories a day, the diet is not taking into consideration your individual metabolic rate or caloric needs. Most crash diets won't suggest you eat more than 1,200 calories if you are a woman or 1,500 if you are a man.

It goes without saying most people need to reduce the number of calories they eat. Americans, for example, eat 300 more calories a day now than they did 30 years ago, and they don't burn as many calories through exercise. But you won't have success if you deprive your body of 1,000 calories a day. Your body will just metabolize your muscle to survive. Instead, reduce your caloric intake just slightly and increase your exercise.

Rapid weight loss might seem like a good idea, but what are you really losing by going on crash diets? First, you are losing water weight and second, you are losing lean body mass or muscle, the metabolically active tissue that burns fat.

Crash diet gimmicks

When you think about the different crash diets out there, it's comical. Some crash diets tell you that you must only eat certain foods at certain times of the day. Don't eat fruit unless it's on an empty stomach. Don't combine your starches with your proteins. But most of the rules of a crash diet are a lot of hocus-pocus made to sound scientific.

Don't believe every weight-loss gimmick you hear. Ask yourself, "Does the diet make logical sense?"

For example, the cabbage soup diet lets you eat as much fruit as you want on the first day, but no bananas. On the second day, you can eat vegetables and one potato jacket with a little butter. On day three, you can eat fruits and vegetables except potatoes and bananas. Day four lets you eat up to eight bananas and as much skimmed milk as you want. If that kind of diet makes any logical sense to you; then go for it.

Just be honest with yourself. Instead of weighing yourself on a standard scale, use a scale that also measures your body fat percentage. If your body fat goes up instead of down, you will know you've been duped by your latest crash diet!

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