Many people desperate to drop pounds turn to laxatives. However, laxatives do not speed up your metabolism and can be quite dangerous. Instead, to lose weight safely, focus on changing your eating habits and activity levels. Relying on laxatives to move the scale will not result in healthy or permanent weight loss.
How Metabolism Works
Your metabolism is your body's system of converting the food you eat into energy. In weight loss terms, when people talk about having a fast or slow metabolism, they are really talking about how much energy their bodies burn. This energy is measured in calories, and the higher your metabolism, the more calories you can eat to maintain your weight and the easier you will find it to lose weight. Your caloric expenditure is the total amount of calories your body burns each day. Several factors influence this number including height, weight, age, gender and body composition.
Laxatives and Weight Loss
Laxatives will almost certainly cause weight loss, but the weight you lose will be waste material and will not be permanent. Laxatives work by stimulating contractions in the bowel muscles, which causes you to have a bowel movement. This can add up to enough waste to make a difference on the scale, especially if you are constipated. However, there is a difference between weight loss and fat loss. Laxatives may cause a temporary shift in your weight, as do other things like the amount of water our bodies hold, but they will not affect the rate of your fat loss. While it is true that laxatives can prevent the absorption of some food nutrients, they will not affect your metabolism.
Health Risks
Relying on laxatives to lose weight can result in a number of unhealthy short-term and permanent health problems. According to MayoClinic.com, laxatives can cause gastrointestinal complications, stomach pain and, with prolonged use, electrolyte imbalance that can lead to an irregular heartbeat, fatigue, confusion and seizures. The damage is not just physical, however. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information's PubMed Health website, using laxatives for weight loss is a symptom of the eating disorder bulimia nervosa. Those with this condition attempt to purge weight from their bodies by using diuretics, laxatives and vomiting.
Healthy Alternatives
To lose fat, you must burn more calories than you consume so that your body turns to fat for fuel, which is a form of stored energy. To do this, first find out the number of calories your body burns in a day using an online basal metabolic rate calculator. To maintain your weight, eat this number of calories. To lose weight at the safe rate of 1 to 2 lbs. per week, cut your calories by 500 to 1,000 calories per day. For example, if your body uses 2,500 calories per day, eat 2,000 calories to lose 1 lb. of fat per week and 1,500 calories to lose 2 lbs. per week.
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