Losing body weight is essentially a simple principle. By consuming less than you burn or burning more than you consume, you can achieve great results. One of the most drastic measures to reduce the amount you consume daily is through a crash diet.
A crash diet often involves a short period in which you eat very few calories, causing you to lose weight quickly in a short time. By creating this short and extreme calorie deficit, you force your body to find fuel elsewhere. Many followers of a crash diet assume that this fuel is taken from fat reserves, but is that really the case? We take a closer look at the workings of a crash diet and its consequences for your body. In addition, we map out the advantages and disadvantages of a crash diet and give our view on this form of weight loss.
Table of Contents
What is a crash diet
Essentially, a crash diet is a short period in which you consume incredibly few calories, causing you to lose a lot of weight quickly. You are essentially starving your body, because you are consuming less energy from your food. The assumption that your body gets its energy from your fat reserves when following a crash diet is only partly true. It may be true that a person with a large amount of fat reserves gets a large part of their energy during a crash diet from these fat reserves. However, the body also breaks down muscles to use as fuel during a crash diet, and you primarily lose fluids.
Many followers of a crash diet also do not maintain this extreme way of eating for long and fall back into old patterns. However, the body does not forget the impact of the crash diet and will create more reserves than before the next time enough energy is consumed, to prevent a next starvation. This leads to the yo-yo effect.
Examples of a crash diet include: the soup diet, yogurt diet, hospital diet, and fruit diet.
Advantages of a crash diet
The biggest advantage of following a crash diet is that you can lose weight in the short term, often temporarily. The weight you lose can obviously not only consist of fat but is often fluid that you lose. If you want to lose weight quickly in a short period, a crash diet might be a solution. According to us, it is not the healthiest outcome because it starves your body and can lead to more weight when you stop crashing. What goes down must come up?
Disadvantages of a crash diet
In our view, a crash diet has no advantages and only disadvantages. You are starving your body, and this leads to losing more than just fat mass and fluids. You think you are losing only fat mass, but measuring the decrease in your fat mass is not done by the number that the scale displays. You measure your fat mass by your body fat percentage. You measure your body fat percentage through a skinfold measurement. There are body fat percentage meters that work in the same way as the skinfold measurement, but do the calculation for you, like the FatTrack GOLD Digital Body Fat Caliper.
In addition to your fat mass, your muscles are also broken down, and these are so important for determining the lines of your figure. Moreover, you break down muscles that actually contribute to a higher resting metabolism. More muscles mean burning more calories at rest. If you have fewer muscles, you will also burn fewer calories at rest. Finally, a crash diet can also lead to other complaints: dehydration, dizziness, abdominal pain, lethargy, nausea, and fainting can be side effects associated with a crash diet. All this has nothing to do with your health and, in our view, is certainly not worth doing to your body. Especially when you consider that the weight loss is only temporary and you quickly fall prey to the yo-yo effect when you stop crashing.
Alternative to a crash diet
What can you do if you want to lose weight quickly but don’t want to follow a crash diet? First, choose a diet that can be maintained for a long time. After all, no one wants to be at their ideal weight temporarily. So, choose a lifestyle that fits you and can be sustained for a long time. Calculate how many calories you need daily and be aware of how many calories you consume daily. Realize that a healthy pace for weight loss is between 0.5 – 1.5 kg per week, depending on your body composition. People with a lot of excess weight lose more than those with less excess weight.
Once you know how many calories you need and how many calories you eat, you can determine where you get your calories from. This can be from carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Carbohydrates and proteins both provide 4 calories per gram, and fats provide 9 calories per gram. This means you should eat more of the first two than the last. Proteins are broken down slower by the body and force the body to use more energy in this process. Therefore, you use more energy when you eat proteins, as opposed to carbohydrates. This is called the thermic effect. In addition, proteins give you a longer feeling of fullness, so you get hungry less quickly and eat again. Finally, proteins are beneficial for your muscles. This way, you retain muscle mass, which has a favorable effect on the calories you burn at rest.
Finally: move. It’s a cliché, but to burn more energy than you need daily, doing fitness or cardio training is essential. We prefer fitness and strength training because you burn just as much energy during training, but also use energy after training, due to the afterburn effect. Additionally, strength training builds muscles, which help increase your resting metabolism. And it’s much more fun and healthier to do strength training than to follow a crash diet because you feel much stronger, more energetic, and happier, instead of suffering, lethargic, and tired.
