When you are setting out on a fitness journey, you are probably looking to drop as much excess weight as you can in as little time as possible. We all want out weight loss goals to be reached in record time, but you need to understand that there are definite downsides and negatives associated with dropping so much weight so quickly. If you are still in the mindset of thinking that losing lots of body weight in a short space of time is the right way to go, then have a look at this before you continue down that path. Here are some major risks of losing too much weight too quickly.
Your body can only burn so many fat calories in a single day, so if you are going overboard on fasting and starving yourself, for example, your body will start to turn to your muscle and eat away at that instead. It will all result in weight loss, but it will not serve to make your body healthier because it is depleting the parts of your body that are going to keep you strong.
Crash dieting will lead to a significant decrease of things like iron, folate, vitamin B12 and vitamin D in your body, and as a result, you could start to become malnourished. Without these important nutrients, your body will not be able to function properly.
A portion of the weight that we carry is water weight, so when you don’t drink as much as you used to, you will appear to weigh less on the scale. This is a false reading, though, and all it can indicate is that you are dehydrated. Make sure that you consume enough fluids to let your body deal with the other diet and exercise.
All of the nutritional deficiencies mentioned above mixed with dehydration and muscle loss can cause extreme exhaustion. This will mean that you feel tired in the morning even if you have had eight hours of sleep, simply because your body isn’t healthy enough to help you feel awake and alert.
If you are losing weight too rapidly, you can expect to experience stomach problems including nausea, constipation, cramping and diarrhoea. Any combination of these issues can be prevalent when your body is going through these rapid changes.
When you go on a crash diet, your body can actually mistake this for real starvation, and as a result, it will go into survival mode. This includes slowing down your metabolism to a significantly slower pace. Obviously, this is the opposite thing that you want to happen when you are losing weight, so in a sense starving yourself can actually be worse for your weight loss goals than if you were following a nutritious but more plentiful eating schedule.