Diets that make you fatter
What's more dangerous than bariatric surgery for extreme weight loss is undertaking a diet or exercise regimen on your own that involves rapid, unmonitored weight loss. These can have several damaging effects in the long run. For instance, if you're suddenly told about an office party that's happening at the end of the current week, you might decide to go on a crash diet for extreme weight loss.
There are enough programs on the Internet that advertise extreme weight loss in between two and seven days, and if you want to go out on a limb and attempt one of them, you might find yourself fasting to lose weight. This deprives your body of valuable nutrients and your metabolism will eventually slow down, making it harder to stop losing any more weight. When your party is finally over (and you might have looked great at it) you may go back to your regular diet but since your metabolism has now slowed down, the excess calories you take in will now be stored as fat. So you decide to go on another diet to lose this weight, but your metabolism slows down even more and you're now stuck in the classic yo-yo dieting situation.
Pushing harder to burn calories
Extreme weight loss diets make you lose lean muscle which is what helps you burn calories in the first place. Losing lean muscle also reduces your enthusiasm to hit the treadmill or get active. If it's not well spaced out and combined with the right kind of diet, extreme weight loss could actually make you less healthy, more prone to put on weight and less likely to lose what you've put on.
Signs that you're headed downward
There are also more immediate effects that should send danger signals screaming out to you during an extreme weight loss program. For instance you might feel strong shooting pains, and ‘pins and needles sensations’, when lying down. Your fingernails could turn blue. You become less productive at work. Some people who have gone on extreme weight loss programs describe feeling withdrawn and less invested in their personal relationships as well. When you do eat, you could find yourself bingeing; with each binge followed by a rush to the restroom to throw up what you've eaten. These are possible signs of the beginning of eating disorders such as bulimia. If your spirits go down with your dress sizes, you know it’s time for a change.
Loving and hating food
In fact people who undergo extreme weight loss programs are five times as likely to develop eating disorders. Not just the two best-known ones, anorexia and bulimia, but a whole host of smaller ones as well, including binge-eating disorder in which the brain releases chemicals which increase your desire to eat food. Signs that you're headed down this path include rapid weight loss, brittle nails, lack of nutrition, cancer, tooth decay, raised cholesterol levels, heart disease, ruptured stomach, anemia, low sex drive, dry, yellow-tinted skin, diabetes, menstrual dysfunction, dehydration, susceptibility to cold, low blood pressure and disease of the gallbladder. So watch out, and take care.
