WHEN DIETING IS UNHEALTHY

Women and men who suffer from overweight know that weighing more than necessary can be really serious for their health and that dieting is probably the only way they can prevent serious diseases such as high blood pressure, high bad cholesterol levels, heart diseases and so on.

However, there are many occasions in which dieting is not an advisable strategy, especially when are so desperate to lose weight fast that we end up following highly restrictive diet menus that deprive us of all the minerals, vitamins and nutrients that our organism needs.

Why is restrictive dieting unhealthy?

To begin with, when we eat only a few calories per day our body cannot get the daily advisable requirements of proteins and other nutrients, thus making us weak and prone to falling ill.

When we diet so restrictively our brain interprets that we are undergoing a famine period and starts to store our body food reserves as fat so that they can be used later. And, thus, we have just the opposite effect we want to achieve: lose fat.

These limited diet menus usually make us slim down significantly over a short period of time. Although these results do not usually last long, they may make us  alter our body image and, as a result, we may end up suffering from anorexia nervosa or bulimia. When we are anorexic, we fail to appreciate how thin we really are and the image we see at the mirror is of a fat boy or girl who still needs to lose weight. When we suffer from bulimia we eat huge amounts of food over a short period of time (bulge eating) and then we take diuretics or laxatives or even provoke us vomiting to avoid gaining extra weight.

In addition, following restrictive diet plans regularly makes us to lose muscle, not only from your legs or arms but also even from your heart. And losing heart muscle can be, as you can imagine extremely dangerous for your health.

What is more, strict dieting may have a negative effect on your body chemistry and, as a result, you may start suffering from bad breath. And you may even take on smoking or smoke more than before to compensate for the lack of calories you are eating. And, as you are well aware of, smoking can be deadly.