Unhealthy Weight Loss

There is no substitute to a good diet and a healthy amount of exercise to lose weight, yet year on year there are more advertisements on television, newspapers and magazines touting quick, easy and even magical cures for weight loss. As weight becomes an epidemic across the world, knowing what constitutes unhealthy weight loss is important.

Cleansing

Cleansing methods such as herbal tea consumption and colonics to rid the body of fat-inducing toxins are dangerous because many herbal supplements have not been tested in a laboratory setting, and could be harmful to the body. Colonics, the flushing of the body's intestinal tract to rid your system of bloating toxin s may give you an initial weight loss on the scales, but in the end it is likely your body has become dehydrated, and the weight will come back once the body has had time to take on fluids.

Low Carbohydrate Diets

A particularly popular method of quick, unhealthy weight loss is the cutting out of carbs in the diet. Although cutting down on carbohydrates can give you a small amount of weight loss, the complete absence of carbohydrates in your diet can make you weak. Carbohydrates give the body simple sugars, which it uses to make energy. If there is an excess amount of these simple sugars in the body, they become fats. The body does need a small amount of carbs to stay healthy, and the low carb diets out there promise extreme weight loss which will only come back once carbohydrates have been introduced back into the diet.

Drugs and Laxatives

Always popular in the quick-weight-loss culture is the use of pharmaceutical drugs and laxatives to help promote weight loss. Drugs may indeed produce weight loss, but the addiction and withdrawal symptoms, as well as instantaneous weight gain once users stop taking them, make drugs an unhealthy weight loss solution. Laxatives, pills which move the bowels, are believed to promote weight loss by moving foods through the body so quick that they will not be absorbed into the body. In reality, laxatives cause weight loss through dehydration, and if used excessively, can cause bleeding and ulcers.

Purging

Throwing up food after eating is another dangerous weight loss method. Like laxatives, it is believed that throwing up recently eaten foods does not give the body time to absorb fat and nutrients. This does hold true, but the problems outweigh the benefits. Purging can cause a stretching of the esophagus, as well as holes and bleeding in the throat. Also, purging causes malnutrition.

Slow Weight Loss

The key to losing weight in a healthy way is to set weekly weight loss goals that are realistic. General medical consensus suggests that healthy weight loss is 1 to 2 pounds a week, as this is a weight that will likely come off the body, and stay off when the diet is quit.

Energy

Losing weights through diets that require you to cut out food, significantly lower calorie intake, or put you on a diet of liquids only, are going to cause extreme fatigue in the body. Without the correct balance of calories and food in your diet, you will likely suffer a loss of energy.

Weight Gain

The most important thing to remember about unhealthy weight loss is that it is never a permanent solution. Losing weight through unhealthy means such as fad diets makes your body succeptible to weight gain. If the diet required you to cut out a certain food, as soon as that food is introduced again, the weight will likely reappear. Healthy eating habits are key to losing weight and keeping it off.