Every day, someone new decides they are going to cut out on food and use fasting to lose weight. There are many different fasting programs out there or you can just go online and look up chat forums filled with tips on how to survive on juice, water, tea, and other liquids alone. If you're considering this road for yourself, please proceed with extreme caution.
It's true that you can lose substantial amounts of weight in a very short period of time by fasting. A brief fast that provides the body with some nutrients can also be used for breaking an addiction or compulsive focus on food for some people. For other people, fasting intensifies the focus on food and can lead to an all-out binge that undoes whatever progress was made during the fast. The deprivation is just too much psychologically.
Before you start fasting to lose weight and find out how it will affect you mentally, consider how it will affect you physically. If you go on a fast that provides a lot of liquid nutrients and vitamins that your body needs and only stay on it for a very short period of time you will probably be okay, but you should not count on the weight staying off forever.
It is when you fast for longer periods of time or don't provide enough sustaining nutrients during the fast that you run into problems. For starters, the weight you lose doesn't make you look your best. Rather than shedding real stored fat much of what you lose is water and muscle.
Losing water dehydrates the body and robs you of energy that you need to sustain an active life. As soon as you stop the fast you will gain the water weight back immediately.
Losing muscle gives your body a very weak, frail appearance and drops your metabolism so you burn fewer calories all day long. You actually lose weight slower when this happens!
So, you are depriving yourself of food and you are losing weight at a slower rate. The longer you go on fasting to lose weight, the fewer calories you actually burn.
Many people report finding it difficult to exercise while fasting because they aren't very energetic, they have problems focusing, or get dizzy with physical exertion. These are all signs that the body is not getting the nutrients it needs to function properly. It is fighting to sustain basic demands so anything extra like exercise is too much.
With extreme fasting, your metabolism can completely shut down and your body can assume a famine has hit. At this time you start storing as much fat as possible. Everything is turned into fat and stored because your body is protecting itself from a life-threatening famine that could lead to starvation.
You don't think about starvation when you first start fasting, but that is where it can lead if you take it too far. Many people won't get to this point because the mental deprivation will get to them first and they will cave to that big binge that delivers nutrients into the system again. Others can become addicted to fasting which leads into a lifestyle much like anorexia.
You may believe you can sustain some minor fasting from time to time without falling into extremes, but it is important to use caution when fasting to lose weight. There are other ways to lose weight quickly without putting your health and life on the line.
Author Resource:-
Want to learn more about fasting to lose weight? Then check out this fasting to lose weight-page on http://www.the-fastest-way-to-lose-weight.net.
The Fastest Way to Lose Weight is a no-nonsense website about how to lose weight the right way. No fad diets, powders or pills. Stuff that works. Stuff that works well.
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