09 Jul Extreme Diets. The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
Hi guys.
It’s been a little while since I’ve added to my blog, so I hope you’ve missed me lol.
So in this blog I am going to be reviewing extreme diets, or crash diets that are known to some. An extreme or crash diet is a diet for losing weight by limiting calories in a very short period of time. We all are inclined towards faster result and crash diet is an example of it. It helps in quick weight reduction but is bad for health in a long run. It is generally used for short term diet. There are some popular crash diets like- The cabbage soup diet, the protein diet, three-day diet, Grapefruit diet, Detox diet, Chicken soup diet, Water fast diet and Fresh juice crash diet. There are many advantages and disadvantages of the crash diet.
But before I tell you what the advantages and disadvantages are to this, I actually took the time to try this “extreme diet” by resorting myself to going down to one meal a day and consuming 5-6 litres of water a day to try and suppress my hunger.
Unfortunately this lasted 2 & half days.
Why you ask?
As you can see from my Instagram posts. I do train at high intensity, and on average I lose 1000-1200 calories each training session. So my calorie intake became the same as my calorie output. This was never going to be sustainable. It didn’t make me feel good, my training was affected and it left me really tired and hungry for the whole day.
At the end of the 3rd day I gave up and literally plateaued and started eating a whole load of junk food. That unfortunately are some affects of doing an extreme diet.
But here are some more pros and cons to doing this:
PROS:
- Helps in weight reduction in a very short period. It gives an amazing result to sheds pounds of weight in a week.
- Extreme diets are generally affordable as it needs very little food.
- These diets instantly reduce calorie consumption and help the body to burn its own fat for calories instead of depending on outside food source. So it provides better shape to obese or overweight easily.
- These diets are meant for a short period of time i.e. for one or two weeks. So there is no need to follow for a prolonged period of time like other modified diets.
- It is good for some medical complications which need calorie restricted diets.
CONS:
- An extreme diet is a diet with very limited food and with few calories which may arise to starvation or hungry feeling.
- Extreme diet though not provides sufficient energy with a feeling of weakness, tiredness and sleepiness are always there.
- Extreme diets may lead to anorexia, malnutrition and metabolic disorders.
- It is very difficult to adapt and follow as many lovable and pleasant foods are omitted from the diet and it is very difficult to maintain its accuracy.
- After following a crash diet there is an increased tendency of weight gain as it causes starvation which forces you to take junk foods that ultimately leads to weight gain instead of weight loss.
- Extreme diets are deprived of all sufficient nutrients i.e. it is not a balanced diet and results in malnutrition or deficiency of nutrients into the body.
- Some health complications like ketosis, serum uric acid and gallstone may occur and there is a direct relation to the size of gallstones to the amount and duration of weight loss.
- It is a short term effective solution of weight loss but losing weight by following crash diet regains weight within few years and even more weight than the previous weight.
- Extreme diet loses lean body mass instead of fat from the body.
Really take these points into consideration when trying these extreme diets, and ask yourself: Do I need to put my body through this?
If my body was a car would I let it run on no petrol for a long time?
Is a balanced diet a more realistic approach?
Guys I hope you enjoy this read and leave you comments on what diets you’ve done in the comments section below.
I look for to reading your responses.
Darren Placid
Ash Perham
Posted at 20:18h, 09 JulyThe bottom line with all eating habits is moderation.
Having lost just over 28kg and gone from 32% to 19% body fat in just over 5 months the key is cutting out the food products that taste great but clearly are not good for a healthy lifestyle
Maybe the way I have gone about it is extreme but along with regular exercise it has worked for me
Everyone is different so finding an eating programme that works for them is sometimes the hardest challenge, but the sense of extra energy and feeling good is definitely worth the hard work
Jessica kidd
Posted at 08:18h, 10 JulyGreat blog! Totally agree crash diets just lead to a greater weight gain in The long run and an unhealthy relationship with food