Avoid Rapid Weight Loss
It is actually quite common to want everything as fast as we can have it, no matter what that thing may be. When it comes to health, if we are feeling down in any area, we want to make it right as soon as it can be made to happen, which is why there is such a thriving medical drugs industry. The same can be said of losing weight.
When we discover that we have become overweight, all of a sudden it can be a mad scramble to lose that weight in the fastest, surest, easiest and most effective way that is humanly possible. All sense of moderation and sensibility goes out of the window as we reason that the fastest way to shed those unwanted pounds is to literally starve ourselves for a few days and then everything will be all right!
Unfortunately, while that is a common reaction, it is rarely the best course of action to take. Here is why.
Losing Weight Fast Will Fail
When you have been eating a certain diet, no matter how unhealthy it is for a long period of time, often coupled with leading a predominantly sedentary lifestyle, you will have gained weight but it will have happened over a lengthy period of time. This is usually measured in several months or even years. To try and reverse that progressive increase in body weight in the space of a few days or even a few weeks by following those rapid weight loss tips designed to shed a lot of weight very quickly, you are going head to head with the natural rhythm of your body and you will not win!
Your body is programmed to require a certain amount of nourishment every day and when it gets it, coupled with sufficient activity to ensure it burns off all the energy that nourishment provides, then the status quo is maintained and your body weight remains static. When you increase the amount of nourishment while decreasing the amount of activity, the body doesn't complain. It merely assumes that you are in a period of plenty and abundance, so it stores the excess as fat for later use. This is part of its normal and ancestrally instinctive programming.
The Natural Instinct
When you suddenly stop eating, or drastically reduce the amount of nourishment the body is getting, again it doesn't complain. It merely resets its programming to cope with a period of limited nourishment, or even starvation by reducing all non-essential internal activity to the minimum to conserve energy and sets about using its store of fat to keep itself alive. One of those programs that are slowed down is the metabolism. When you are not giving your body plenty of food, it doesn't need to burn energy so fast, so there is no need for it to be metabolizing the food it does get in any hurry.
You will naturally lose weight during this period of starvation, but the rate of weight lost slows down dramatically after the first few days as your body adjusts to the new regime. It can stay that way for a long time, until its entire store of fat runs out. This can last for several weeks depending on how much fat you have stored up.
The chances of you maintaining a starvation diet for more than a week or two are minimal, because you'll go crazy first and before you know it, you'll be eating everything in sight. Again, this is actually normal, programmed behaviour. When faced with a sudden abundance of food after a period of starvation, your natural mental response is to want to eat the food and your physical response is to gorge yourself. No matter how strong willed you are, eventually you will cave in to your ancestral physical programming because the survival instinct is the stronger of the two!
Your body will store as much of the food you now eat as it can as fat, in preparation for the next period of starvation. While that may not happen, your physical processes do not know that, and will work on instinct to prepare you anyway. This means that a greater proportion of the food you now eat will be stored as fat and that means you will gain all the weight back that you just lost plus some for good measure!
It will happen relatively quickly too, which is something that dismays many people who choose this method of rapid weight loss over the more sensible and measured slower and methodical methods of losing weight. In other words, this is really the worst way to lose weight and if your aim is to regain a slim body and keep it in the long term, it will not happen by trying to lose that weight too fast.
The Better Alternative
The best way to do this is to work on a structured, measured diet plan that incorporates some form of physical activity to boost your metabolism and keep it high by strengthening your muscles so that they use more energy throughout the day, burning all the excess that you take in through your diet to maintain the balance. While you are going through the process of losing weight, you will be working on burning off the bulk of your body's fat stores as well. Make sure you are only setting goals that you know you can achieve and you will surprise yourself how easily you do achieve them.
This is best done by making sure that you are burning more calories than you are consuming and the best way to do this is by spending half an hour or more each day doing aerobic exercises as well as eating a healthy, sensible, low calorie diet. Follow this regime and you will lose weight slowly and surely over time and give your self the best chance of not gaining any back again in the long term.
