Rapid and fast weight loss seems to be becoming an increasingly common practice amongst Americans. Dieticians, psychologists, celebrities and talk show hosts appear to be coming up with new fad diets that force you to drop your excess weight the fastest. Unfortunately, fastest doesn't necessarily mean healthiest and fast weight loss can be detrimental to health and a predisposition to weight gain in the future. Because fast weight loss shocks the body into dropping pounds quickly, you will notice that once a person resumes normal eating patterns, or even treating themselves periodically, they will gain back weight, and often times put on excess weight in the process. While fast weight loss certainly has its benefits, especially when obesity causes acute health problems, it can also cause a number of problems that can lead to further illness in the future.

The following information will give you a heads up on some of the fad diets and dieting tricks that will help you drop weight quickly, as well as some of the side effects and health risks you may experience, so that you can make an educated decision about whether fast weight loss is for you.

Cosmetics or Health: What's Your Motivation for Fast Weight Loss?

Fad diets seem to be the best way to lose weight quickly, but they should not be used as a long term solution to weight management. Fad diets are meant to cause the dieter to quickly drop weight for various reasons. They usually work by cutting out a significant portion of the regular diet, forcing the body to burn calories on the food that is provided. This is most often recognized by fad diets like Atkins, Fit for Life and Slim Fast all cut out a major portion of the average meal. On the Atkins diet, people stock up on protein and eliminate carbohydrate from their diet. This allows the dieter to eat a significant amount of fat, because the carbohydrate is not present to stick to the fat.

This diet causes obvious problems with things such as heart disease and cholesterol, as the body cannot safely consume a great deal of fat. The Fit for Life diet maintains a higher metabolism by forcing the dieter to eat or drink only fruit and water until noon, at which time they may sensibly eat as they wish for the rest of the day. This works on the principal of boosting the metabolism in the morning, but this can cause a person to go into hyperglycemia, suffering from symptoms similar to diabetes. Slim Fast twice daily can actually end up giving the person more calories than they would eat in an average meal, only not supplying them with the nutrients necessary to maintain a healthy diet.

Often times, people don't actually need to lose weight; they just want to because it would make them feel better for a special occasion. In this case, people should use techniques such as drinking extra water, cutting out salt, and eating foods that are easy to digest for the day or two prior to the event. Crash dieting is not suggested, but brief periods of cutting out food groups are unlikely to cause a great deal of damage, as long as a normal diet is resumed.

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