When you're carrying around extra pounds, the desire to lose weight quickly may be natural. But it's usually not healthy or effective in the long term. Doctors may prescribe low-calorie diets designed to help extremely obese people shed pounds rapidly to save their lives, but such extreme measures require professional supervision. If you're undertaking diet and exercise on your own, the cons of losing weight fast far outnumber the pros.
Ineffectiveness
Effective weight loss means a lifestyle change. Drastically altering your diet or your physical activity will likely cause you to feel deprived, and the more deprived you feel, the less inclined you'll be to continue doing things that lead to weight loss. Crash dieting could alter your metabolism, which is your body's way of regulating how many calories it burns for its day-to-day needs. With a slower metabolism, fat will be more difficult to burn off when you gain it back after rapid weight loss.
Negative Health Effects
Supplements and diet plans often make extraordinary claims about how they'll help you lose weight fast, but bear in mind that these products aren't regulated by the Food and Drug Administration or any other agency. Crash diets and diuretics may cause dehydration, dizziness, fatigue and even cardiac arrest. If you're badly out of shape, your body may not be ready for the kind of intense cardiovascular exercise that would lead to rapid weight loss.
False Hope
Jump into an exercise program that makes you sweat and you may lose weight fast -- but it's likely to be water weight, expelled through your sweat. You'll quickly regain that weight when you drink fluids and end up back where you started. Your discouragement when this happens could negatively influence your future weight loss efforts.
Sensible Weight Loss
The National Weight Control Registry keeps annual statistics on volunteers who successfully lose weight. Participants in this ongoing study who kept weight off in the long term generally lost about 400 calories a day, which is 2,800 calories in a seven-day week, the Harvard School of Public Health website notes. Since a pound of fat is roughly the equivalent of 3,500 calories, these participants actually lost less than a pound a week -- but they were consistent in the changes they made to their diet and exercise routines.
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