Diet Shortcuts That You Should Avoid

Everyone wants to lose weight and lose it fast. There are healthy ways to lose weight quickly and unhealthy ways to shed the pounds. The truth is this: just because you see a weight loss product being peddled at your local pharmacy or read a review about a quick weight loss method online that doesn't mean that the product is worth investing in. Here are some of the diet shortcuts that are dangerous and shouldn't be used.

1. Fad Diets

Every day there is a new fad diet being sold to dieters. These fad diets include such popular programs like Atkins and the Scarsdale diet. Even though it has been proven that these diets aren't healthy (largely because of their emphasis on protein and carbs), people still follow them.

These diets are, however, better for you than some of the other extreme diets out there: the cabbage soup diet, the grapefruit diet, etc. These diets are bad because they focus primarily on changing your diets in unhealthy ways and eating only a single food, which strips your body of the nutrients it needs to survive.

2. Prepackaged Diet Foods

While prepackaged diet foods are certainly convenient, most of these meals are incredibly high in fat and sodium. These ingredients increase your blood pressure, which is dangerous if you are already overweight as overweight people are already facing the risks of high blood pressure. According to the American Heart Association, you shouldn't consume more than 2000mgs of sodium in a day and most prepackaged diet foods contain much more than that.

3. Health Food Fads

One of the most popular health food fads was ephedra. Just because something is labeled as "natural" or "herbal" doesn't necessarily mean that it is completely safe. There are plenty of "all natural" things in nature that are harmful as well as helpful. You wouldn't, for example, inject yourself with rattlesnake venom simply because it was "all natural." Ephedra has been linked to deaths and the US government has banned its sale within US borders.

4. Fasting

When you fast, you force your body to go into preservation from starvation. Your metabolic rate gets slower. When you begin ingesting food again, the pounds come back very quickly. The fact is that it takes far longer to speed your metabolism back up to its normal rate than it does to slow it down and force it into survival mode. When you fast, your body burns muscles to get energy and, when you are trying to lose weight you want to build your muscles up, not take them down.

5. Diet Pills

Diet pills only provide you with a short term solution. As soon as you stop taking diet pills, you'll feel hungry and satisfying that hunger is what will cause you to gain back all of the weight you lost. Diet pills aren't regulated strictly by the FDA and the diuretic contained in the pills can cause your body to dramatically dehydrate, especially in the warmer months. You could also experience nausea, dizziness, headaches and even heart palpitations when you take them.