What is a Crash Diet and Why is it Bad?

Crash diets are famous for promising unbelievable results with minimum effort in a short period of time, but what do they entail exactly? Most crash diets have a poor diet and questionable supplements in common. They usually involve drastically cutting back on the number of calories you consume during the day, and sometimes have complementary supplements which are nothing but diuretics. While practitioners may notice rapid weight loss at the beginning of such a diet, often the weight lost is nothing but water weight and, if continued, will result in muscle loss as well.

When you follow an extremely low calorie diet, the first thing that happens is that your body uses up its stores of carbohydrate, also known as glycogen, as well as the water that is stored with it, in the liver and muscles. This is what prompts the weight loss in the beginning. Once these carbohydrates are used up, the body starts using proteins in the muscles for energy, which can leave you feeling tired and irritable.

Soon, the metabolism slows down, putting your body into a kind of starvation mode, because it doesn’t know when it will start receiving healthy nutrients again. Then, when you go back to your previous eating habits, you’re likely to not only put back on the weight you’ve lost, but add more pounds as well, because the metabolism is still too slow to keep up with the new intake of food.

Worst Case Scenarios

Those that put themselves of a constant cycle of crash dieting and eating poorly are doing a lot of damage to their bodies which could result in potentially life threatening illnesses. Due to their restrictive natures, crash diets could prevent you from eating healthy foods with nutrients that your body needs to function properly, such as iron, B12, potassium or sodium. These could lead to deficiencies that can cause other problems, like nerve and muscle functions and heart attacks. They also cause a great deal of problems for organs like the liver and kidneys, because without the proper nutrients, the organs can’t function properly. Finally, not getting enough calcium in the diet can lead to the development of osteoporosis, which makes bones brittle and more prone to fractures.

Eat a Balanced Diet for Better Results

If you’re trying for weight loss in Brisbane, resist the temptation to follow a crash diet and look for healthier alternatives instead. Gradually change your eating habits and your proportion sizes so your metabolism won’t drop too quickly, and pair your new eating habits with a fitness routine, and you’ll be losing weight in no time. Think of your new good habits as a lifestyle change instead of a temporary diet.

You may not lose weight as quickly as a crash diet can promise, but you’ll be doing it in a much safer way and the weight is more likely to stay off.  For safe and effective weight loss in Brisbane consider hiring a personal trainer.  Personal trainers ensure that you will achieve your long term goals by changing up your routines and keeping you motivated!

Stop Blaming Fast Food!

The interesting fact about weight gain, as any personal trainer will confirm, is that fast food itself is not necessarily to blame for being overweight or obese.  Since you are reading about weight gain, you are probably ready to hear the truth.  The truth is that poor dietary choices are top of the list of major causes of weight gain in developed societies. Brisbane weight loss involves more than the mere existence of fast food.

In other words, you are not forced to choose a 1,600 calorie fast food meal of french fries and a half pound hamburger.  There is no giant fast food hand that grabs you by the collar and forces a milkshake down your throat.  You are not held captive by renegade fast food workers who like to watch people’s bodies grow heavier before their very eyes.

The truth is that you have no one but yourself to point a finger at when it comes to laying blame for food choices leading to obesity.  Odds are that if you choose the wrong food items on the restaurant menu, fast or not, you are also choosing the wrong grocery items and cooking the wrong kind of meals for maintaining a normal weight.

Learning to make better dietary choices can be difficult at first, but it is necessary for Brisbane weight loss.  That is why many people choose to get assistance from a personal trainer.  A personal trainer can help you interpret your diet and show you how to substitute healthy foods for the ones that are causing significant weight gain.

Slowing Down the Fast Choices

Did you know you can eat at a fast food restaurant and still eat healthy?  If you look closely at the menu, you will notice that next to the brutus hamburger is a normal sized hamburger.  And next to the french fries menu item are the salad choices. And, for Brisbane weight loss to happen it is possible for people to eat fast food occasionally while also making good choices for other meals and exercising regularly.

People can eat a low calorie and low fat meal at a fast food restaurant if they choose wisely.   A personal trainer can show you how to read fast food and other restaurant menus so you know how to pick the foods that will not hurt your health and will help you achieve Brisbane weight loss.

In fact, a personal trainer can help you develop a good understanding of a healthy diet and how to maintain it as part of your normal lifestyle.  You can learn how to choose the foods at the grocery store which will supply good nutrition and a balance of essential daily nutrients.  You will also learn which cooking methods keep foods low in fats and calories and how to prepare interesting meals so you don’t get bored.

Fast food restaurants are not to be blamed if you are overweight or obese.   Each person desiring Brisbane weight loss must take responsibility for their own health which means you have to make healthy dietary choices and get regular exercise.  A personal trainer cannot make the decisions for you as you go through each day, but he or she can certainly give you the tools you need to follow an interesting diet that will not cause you harm.