In weight loss circles, dieting is one of the most radical ways to lose weight. Many people sacrifice their health and use fasting to achieve weight loss in the shortest possible time. I have to say that you have to be resilient enough to torture your body in this way.
Unfortunately, the results of dieting to lose weight are mostly short-lived. After the short-lived joy, you may face more serious problems than being overweight or obese. Today we’ll talk about why dieting for weight loss can fail and how much damage it can do to your body.
What’s the Difference Between Dieting and Intermittent Fasting
Many people have the misconception that dieting is equivalent to fasting and therefore produces similar results, but the truth is that intermittent fasting is fundamentally different from dieting.
First, dieting is a simple and brutal way to lose weight, and it has a failure rate of over 99%. Dieting means you have to eat less, which means limiting your calorie intake, which prevents your body from getting the calories it needs each day and makes it harder for you to stick with it. People who try to lose weight by dieting essentially end up gaining it back, even heavier than they were before they lost it. This is why many people get stuck in a cycle of dieting → overeating → dieting that they can never get out of.
This method of fasting does not restrict calorie intake; it simply limits meal times. You can easily lose weight or keep it off by eating well during the period you set for yourself. Fasting affects your body’s hormone production and keeps your metabolism at a high level, which is the secret to long-term fat-burning and weight loss.
- Dieting: Increases appetite and lowers metabolism
- Fasting: Decreases appetite and increases metabolism
In addition, fasting initiates cellular autophagy and cell renewal, which is good for your health.
Why Dieting Can Fail and Affect Your Health
To lose weight, you need to burn more calories through exercise or consume fewer calories from your diet (dieting). Both of these paths can leave your body in a calorie deficit.
Taking a diet may allow you to lose a lot of weight at first, but you will find it hard to stick with it and the weight will easily rebound. More problematic is that if you keep starving your body, this will not only interfere with your weight loss program but will likely affect your health.
Your Metabolism Has Slowed Down
Your body needs a certain number of calories from food each day to meet its most basic metabolic needs. When this need is not met, your body begins to use its stored fat as its primary source of energy and uses muscle and bone tissue as a secondary source of energy.
Over time, your body responds to the caloric deficit by lowering its resting metabolic rate (RMR) to retain as much energy as possible, but in doing so, it burns calories less efficiently.
There is a very popular reality television show in the United States called “Super Diet King”. In this show, contestants compete to lose weight through several different stages, and the person who loses the most weight in the shortest amount of time wins.
A 2016 study of 14 contestants found that while these individuals lost an average of 129 pounds, their RMR dropped from an average of 2,607 calories per day to 1,996 calories per day. And, although their weight rebounded by an average of 90 pounds between the following months and years, their RMR not only did not return to normal levels, it even became slower.
These results suggest that they needed to consume fewer calories or consume more calories to maintain their weight. In other words, when the metabolism slows down, it becomes more difficult to lose weight again.
Your Body’s Function May Be Affected
Depending on how severely your body is starved and how long you restrict calories, your bodily functions will be affected to varying degrees. To survive, your body will prioritize the most basic physiological functions, such as breathing and heart rate, and slow down non-essential bodily functions.
The most common problems that result include:
- Hair and nails become brittle and break easily
- Decreased immunity and increased susceptibility to disease
- Menstrual cycles become disrupted or even stop
- May experience recurrent bloating and stomach upset
- Wounds do not heal easily
- Bones and joints become more fragile and prone to fractures
- Muscles become flabby and weak
- May damage your mental health
Long-term dieting is not only harmful to your physical health, but it can even affect your mental health. In severe cases, when your body is starving for a long time, you can easily develop eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or binge eating disorder; there are even other psychological problems caused by dieting, including depression, anxiety, or insomnia.
The Secret to Healthy Weight Loss
Even if your motives for dieting are good, it can have consequences that you certainly don’t want. If you ruin your body to lose weight, it will be more than worth it.
The following methods can help you succeed in achieving your weight loss goals:
- Eat less refined carbohydrates and processed foods: Eat more of those natural foods that are rich in healthy lipids, protein, and dietary fiber, such as vegetables, fruits, lean meats, eggs, and dairy products. These foods promote a feeling of fullness and reduce appetite.
- Eat more protein: Eating a high-protein diet during weight loss can help you maintain muscle mass, reduce muscle loss, and increase satiety.
- Drink more water: Drink little or no sugary drinks of any kind, as they are high in sugar and calories. Water and green tea are the healthiest beverages.
- Strength training + Aerobic exercise: Do regular weekly cardio and proper strength training. Both types of exercise will help you maintain and build muscle tissue during weight loss, while also increasing your metabolic rate.
- Intermittent fasting: There are many ways to do light fasting, the easiest to adhere to is the 16/8 fast, which means eating nothing but water for 16 hours of the day and eating for the remaining 8 hours. There is no need to restrict calories at meals, but it is best to avoid refined carbohydrates.
- Take your time, and don’t rush: losing weight too quickly is not good, and losing weight quickly can do more harm than good. Most studies prove that a weight loss rate of 1-2 pounds (0.45-0.9 kg) per week contributes to steady and healthy weight loss.
Conclusion
There are many ways to lose weight; choose a method that is safe and easy to stick to, and adopt good, healthy eating and living habits. This will not only enable you to lose weight successfully, but it will also enable you to keep the weight off in the long run. The best way to lose weight is first and foremost to be able to ensure that you are physically and mentally healthy, which will help you lose weight easily and happily and stick to it until the end.
