Losing weight is a worthy goal. But given all the fad diets and crazy exercise routines out there, the process of getting to that slimmer and trimmer you can be messy and confusing. Over-promising results with little work, some diets can put your health at risk. Unfortunately, with the best intentions to lose weight, many people go about it the wrong way without realizing it. You don’t have to be one of them.
Weight loss isn’t just about eating less and exercising more. It’s about making sure you’re going about your journey safely. Being too obsessed with quick results can lead to weight gain when you start to eat normally again because you haven’t learned healthy habits. Whatever methods you were using were simply unsustainable.
If you want to lose weight, it’s vital that you do so in a healthy way. Rapid weight loss is rarely sustainable and can lead to muscle mass loss and nutritional deficiencies if done incorrectly. So instead of focusing on losing pounds fast, focus on making a plan for how you will lose them at a safe rate over time. Make the process into an education where you learn about everything from how to cook healthy to digestive enzyme benefits.
This article will discuss the factors that make rapid weight loss unhealthy. It will also show you how to lose weight safely when dieting or exercising.
Table of Contents
The Basics of Losing Weight
The only natural way to lose weight is to put yourself into a caloric deficit. What does this mean? Your body needs fuel to work and maintain its current weight and muscle mass. That fuel comes in calories, so if you use more calories than you take in, your body will start burning fat. However, when you consume more than you need, your body stores that extra energy as fat.
So how can you create a caloric deficit? There are several ways, but the easiest is to simply burn more calories than you take in through exercise, diet or a combination of the two. The most important thing for a healthy lifestyle and sustainable weight loss is creating healthy habits that you can live with long-term. These will ensure you have a proper ratio of calories consumed to the amount you expend each day and that they come from nutritious sources. Hopefully, you’ll also have some exercise in there to ensure your muscles stay fit.
If you want to estimate the number of calories you need to consume each day, try using an online calorie counter calculator.
Also Read: The Ten Best Foods To Lose Weight
Why Losing Weight Too Quickly Is Unhealthy
Rapid weight loss, as mentioned before, is not sustainable and can actually lead to future weight gain. It’s also unhealthy. When you lose weight quickly, you’re losing water and muscle mass instead of fat. This means that your body isn’t getting rid of fat cells, which means you’ll have to continue depriving yourself of the foods you love to maintain your new weight. You’ll also become weaker and chronically dehydrated, leading to severe health issues.
Another danger of rapid weight loss comes when people put themselves into too big of a calorie deficit, thus depriving themselves of essential vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients in the process. This means cutting 500 or more calories than your needed amount per day. The negative side effects of this include a slower metabolism and nutritional deficiencies. You will soon find yourself feeling low on energy, developing brittle hair and nails, possibly losing your hair altogether, and with a compromised immune system. The importance of a nutritionally complete diet is essential for healthy weight loss. Without essential vitamins and minerals, your body cannot stay healthy.
Lastly, your mental health and emotional well-being will also suffer. Many people turn to diet pills or other stimulants to suppress their appetite and stay motivated to continue trying to lose weight quickly. But once the body becomes accustomed to these supplements, it will develop a tolerance for them and rely on them to function normally. This can lead to an addiction that’s difficult, if not impossible, to break, which will further damage your mental health while wreaking havoc on your system. There’s nothing sustainable about this method.
A better way is the slow and steady route. This allows you to lose fat while building muscle mass, too. When you eat enough calories each day that includes quality protein, and it equals out to what you’re burning through exercise or other activities, you give your body time to adjust and slowly lose weight. This is healthy and sustainable, meaning you can keep the weight off as it comes off and be healthier overall than if you had gone about it the other way.
The recommended amount of weight to lose is about one to two pounds per week. If you’re losing more than this at a time, your body might be going into starvation mode and will hold on to fat cells for dear life. This means that it’ll take even longer for you to get rid of that extra weight and may lead to additional health issues in the process.
Invest Time in Making a Plan
When we talk about making a plan for how you’re going to lose weight, it’s not just about making a general idea of what you’re going to do. It’s about getting into the nitty-gritty details, too.
If you want any plan of action to work, it has to be realistic and sustainable for you. Decide on your specific weight loss goals and how much you want or need to lose. Then, create a plan that you can follow in the long-term and not feel like it’s restricting your life or something you can’t live with.
Losing weight is about creating healthy habits and learning to live with them, so make sure what you’re doing won’t add more stress than it relieves when living a healthy lifestyle.
Also Read: Diets With The Yo-Yo Effect Harm Our Sleep
The Importance of Proper Diet and Digestion
When it comes to losing weight healthily, diet plays an essential role because everything you eat every day affects your body. So losing weight isn’t about eating less food. Instead, it’s about eating better foods that make you feel your best and are suitable for your body.
By cutting out processed foods, added sugars, refined carbs, and other unhealthy things from your diet, you’ll end up making healthier food choices overall and will slowly adjust your appetite and cravings away from those unhealthy things into a preference for more nutritious foods.
If your diet isn’t healthy or balanced because you aren’t eating enough vegetables, fruit or healthy protein each day, then take steps to change it. These foods help balance out the nutrition you’re getting and give you a greater chance of maintaining a healthy weight overall.
To see your best results with your weight loss journey, make sure that your digestive system is also working as it should be. This means having a properly functioning gastrointestinal system and regular bowel movements.
You may come to realize that certain foods are more challenging for you to digest or that you have some food sensitivities. This can be especially true in the beginning as you’re training your body to eat healthier and your digestive system repairs itself. In these cases, you may see benefits from natural digestive enzyme supplements. You can also get more specific with something like an HCL supplement that will aid with multiple issues like bloating, gas, and belching as well as acid reflux and heartburn.
In the end, if you focus on finding healthy ways to lose weight that work for you, you’ll see results in the long term and be able to adjust your diet plan to fit with your changing lifestyle. However, don’t rush your weight loss or you might end up with more significant problems than you started with.
