Can you set a long-term weight loss goal that is more reasonable and still eat your favorite foods, feeling satiated and healthy? Yes, it is possible. Even if you won’t expect to see a dramatic difference so quickly, still this will improve your chances of reaching and maintaining an ideal body weight while staying healthy and strong.
If you’ve decided to diet, the chances are that you’d like to reach your ideal weight as quickly as possible. However, putting your energy into losing weight fast can have some serious disadvantages. Find out why fast weight loss might not be the best way to go to achieve a healthier body weight.
You Run the Risk of Poor Nutrition
Many dieters make the mistake of cutting back so quickly on their food intake that they ignore the minimum nutrition requirements that they need to stay healthy. Trying to lose weight too fast is one of the top reasons for this; after all, if cutting back to 1500 calories is good, cutting down to 1000 or less must be better, right?
If you are not receiving the nutrients you need, you will feel lethargic, get sick easily, and be wracked by hunger. Even worse, your fast weight loss plan might backfire; if your body thinks it is starving, it will stubbornly hold on to fat while burning your muscle tone.
Easy to Get Discouraged
By insisting on a goal of fast weight loss, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Because you are expecting the weight to flow off, you will be easily discouraged by any minor setback, especially since your weight loss program will probably be a major hardship for you. You’ll be so hungry and uncomfortable that without an immediate and significant payoff, you’ll give up and relapse into poor eating habits.
Hard to Maintain
Let’s say that you do manage to reach your ideal weight with a cutthroat fast weight loss plan; what next? Is it realistic that you’ll be able to keep up your new eating habits? Probably not. It’s much more likely that you’ll return to eating like you did when you were overweight, returning to your original weight (or higher) and making all of your sacrifices for nothing.
