Crash diets, including many fad diets and cleanses, require major changes in your diet that make them hard to follow for the long term, and usually don't require you to exercise. Many people turn to crash diets because they want to lose a lot of weight quickly, but these diets are not healthy and do not lead to permanent weight loss.
Crash Diet Nutrition
Crash diets usually are very low in calories and severely limit the number of foods that you can eat. If you follow these diets for long, you might develop deficiencies of certain vitamins and minerals, including calcium, copper, iron, potassium, sodium, vitamin D and magnesium.
Crash Diet Health Effects
Crash diets consisting of less than 1,200 calories per day can cause stomach pains, gas, dehydration, blood vessel damage, heart problems, stress, irritability and depression. They can slow your metabolism and weaken your immune system. The risks are higher the more often you resort to these types of diets. You are unlikely to experience serious side effects the first time you try a crash diet, but these diets often lead to a cycle of yo-yo dieting, where you diet and then gain the weight back, so you diet again.
Healthy Weight Loss
Following a healthy diet in which you eat foods from all of the food groups and lose one to two pounds per week will give you better long-term results. Limit foods high in saturated fat and sugar, as well as processed food, and focus on whole grains, vegetables and fruits. Adding exercise to your dietary changes will help you to lose weight and keep it off while not making extreme changes to your diet. Exercise also improves your health in other ways besides weight loss, including lowering your risk for heart disease and osteoporosis.
Considerations
Most people who go on crash diets gain the weight back once they return to eating normally, and often gain even more than they lost due to changes in their metabolism and body composition. Much of what you lose on these diets is water weight and muscle mass, rather than fat, so you can end up with more body fat than before, even if you only gain back what you lost.
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