Fast Weight Loss Diets

Generality

What are fast diets and what are they for?

Fast weight loss diets means all diets aimed at rapidly reducing fat and body weight.

The target of any weight loss diet is the triglycerides contained in the cells of the subcutaneous adipose tissue.

Is body fat all the same?

Body fat, in addition to not being all the same, is distributed in various districts and differs in many types.

In addition to under the skin, other deposits are placed inside the muscles, around them and in the abdominal cavity.

What is defined as "essential" (3-4 times greater in women than in men) is of vital importance and should not be affected by weight loss.

Essential or primary fat: it must not be affected by fast weight loss diets

Some types of “primary: fat: they are: brown adipose tissue (thermogenic), central nervous and nerve structures, bone marrow, organ structures, women's mammary glands etc.

The significant reduction of essential fat (<3% in men and <9-12% in women), often evident due to the appearance of severe symptoms and clinical signs, is an indicator of protracted malnutrition.

Body fat percentages: let's be clear

In the evaluation of nutritional status it is necessary that the reading of the results related to plicometry or BIA (bioimpedance analysis) clearly distinguishes the values of total fat and adipose deposits.

To be clear, a male result of GREASE 6% can have two meanings:

Deposits of fat 6%, to which must be added the primary fat of 3% for a total of 9%
Total fat 6%, 3% of the essential fat must be subtracted to obtain the value of deposits equal to 3%.

WARNING! Both plicometry and BIA are methods of indirect evaluation and to guarantee their accuracy it is necessary that specific calculation algorithms are used for a specific group of population (man, woman, sportsmen, clinicians, normal etc.).

Features

Essential Features of Slimming Diets

The slimming diets, to be defined as BALANCED, must first of all have some requirements:

Be well balanced and provide all the essential nutrients, with a calorie reduction of no more than 30% (not more than 500-800 kcal compared to the necessary).
Under no circumstances should the weight loss diet fall below the basal metabolism or the 1, 200 kcal for an adult, physically active, in good health
During a weight loss diet you should not lose more than 0.5 - 1.0 kg per week
Include foods:

Appreciated
Acceptable from a socio-cultural point of view (see religious impositions, philosophical currents, etc.)
Easy to manage
Simple to work and cook
Economically sustainable
Ecologically sustainable.

What distinguishes fast weight loss diets from normal ones?

Fast weight-loss diets are fundamentally characterized by the "greater speed with which they lower the balance needle".

We could have simply said "the superior slimming speed", but it would have been a partial inaccuracy.

In fact, fast weight loss diets have the questionable property of lowering, in addition to fat mass (FM), even the fat-free one (FFM).

The fat-free mass compartment is made up of all the tissues and liquids that do not contain significant percentages of triglycerides.

The portion of FFM that undergoes the action of fast weight loss diets consists of:

Hepatic glycogen and, in sportsmen, also muscle (with consequent decrease in the water bound to it), due to the imbalance between the intake of carbohydrates in the diet and consumption with any motor activity
Blood plasma and interstitial fluid, due to dehydration
Skeletal striated muscle fibers, with regard to catabolism triggered by insufficient nutritional intake and possibly aggravated by motor activity.

This happens especially in the very early stages of fast weight loss diets, when it is possible to witness the loss of 2-3 kg in just one week.

However, it is almost always evident a decrease in body volumes NOT synchronized to the reduction of the most relevant fat deposits (measurable with the detection of circumferences in centimeters of waist, hips and thighs etc.).

In the most extreme cases, it is even detectable an excessive decrease of the muscular volumes (in general, measured with the circumference of the arms) in comparison to the reduction of the adipose pannicoli.

On the contrary, the progress of a balanced weight loss diet, although less obvious, refers to the depletion of adipose tissue.

Why is it wrong to choose fast weight loss diets?

As we have specified in the previous paragraph, balanced weight-loss diets must ensure a maximum weight loss of 4 kg per month.

This is because exceeding this threshold increases the risk of

Malnutrition: due to lack of one or more nutrients, essential or otherwise necessary for general health
Early abandonment: due to excessive psycho-physical commitment (frequent in athletes).

Obviously, for the slimming of healthy people, the slower the weight loss is and the fewer risks we talked about.

However, the psychological aspect must also be taken into consideration. A too slow weight loss is certainly not very motivating but, ultimately, it is a subjective variable.

risks

What are the risks of following fast weight loss diets?

The risks of fast weight loss diets are many and sometimes slightly different based on the strategy adopted.

Among the most frequent we remember:

Weakness, fatigue, fatigue, reduction of psycho-physical functions
Worsening of sports performances (all, especially long-term)
Hunger
Ketogenesis and tendency to metabolic ketoacidosis: due to the lack of carbohydrates which leads to an unbalanced energy metabolism
Tendency to dehydration
Tendency to constipation
Alteration of the composition of intestinal bacterial flora
Reduction of urination, with dark urine and sometimes intense odor
In predisposed subjects, increased chances of renal lithiasis; this happens for: dehydration and for changing urinary pH.
In susceptible individuals, increased chances of biliary lithiasis; this can happen due to: the lack of dietary fats that do not allow the regular emptying of the gallbladder, for the dehydration and / or for the imbalance of the bile.
Tendency to:

Low blood pressure (hypotension)
Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia)
Anemia (reduction of related factors, such as corpuscular volume, serum iron, ferritinemia, transferrin, vitamin B12 and plasma folic acid, etc.)

Muscle catabolism.
Muscle cramps.
General depletion, also visible from many clinical signs affecting the skin, mucous membranes, hair, nails, etc.
For more restrictive diets, in the very long term, the reduction of basal metabolism may occur.

Most common types of fast weight loss diets

Mediterranean-like diets with insufficient energy intake

It is defined as such if a sedentary subject offers fewer calories than basal metabolism or if he assigns less than 70-90% of normal energy to a sportsman (varies depending on the case).

It maintains a distribution similar to that of the balanced diet but, due to the inadequate overall nutritional intake, the organism deteriorates more or less rapidly.

Ketogenic diets

Emphasize the reduction of carbohydrates to the advantage of proteins and fats, generally without taking into account the total caloric content of the diet.

Such a dietary approach has undoubted slimming effects, as it promotes the mobilization of fats for energy purposes and reduces appetite. See: Metabolic Diet and Atkins Diet.

Harmful effects : increase plasma levels of uric acid (gout), alter electrolyte balance and promote dehydration of the body, increase urinary calcium loss (could increase the risk of osteoporosis), increase plasma lipids (hypercholesterolemia and increased risk for cardiovascular diseases); they exhaust the body's glycogen stores and significantly reduce the ability to train and compete.

High-protein diets

The dietary approach is similar to the previous one, but less extreme; many reduce both the concentration of carbohydrates and lipids.

They are proposed as diets of the last "chance" to get ready quickly for the swimsuit test. Positive and negative effects are similar to those of ketogenic diets.

Diets based on fasting, total and intermittent or only partial

Strongly low-calorie (from 0 to less than 500 kcal every 12 hours), most (but not all) are based on the administration of meals based on vegetables, smoothies and slimming teas.

They ensure rapid weight loss, but significantly slow down the basal metabolic rate (especially with fasts that exceed 48 hours) and, in the medium-long term, can have only one effect: to increase the tendency to gain weight in the person who has undertaken them (good part of the weight lost is at the expense of muscle mass, while the percentage of fat remains substantially unchanged).

Monothematic diets

Their low calorie content promotes weight loss, negating the energy intake. They take on people with little knowledge of food because, being easy to follow, they have a good psychological approach to those who follow them.

This particular type of slimming diets, due to the extreme restrictivity, ends up generating deficiencies in nutritional principles. After a few weeks the diet becomes boring and it is the same organism, depleted of some nutrients, that asks for the suspension of the diet (weakness, mental fatigue, gastrointestinal problems).

Ideal diet

Is there an ideal fast weight loss diet for everyone?

No, as the very definition of "fast weight loss diet" suggests that it is an inadequate system.

On the contrary, referring to less extreme weight loss strategies, we could say yes; the ideal weight loss diet exists and is all in all easy to adopt.

It consists in making various but small changes to one's lifestyle, combining a little physical activity with the gradual elimination of those habits that contribute to incorrect nutrition.

A fundamental information to achieve this goal is correct information.

This site is pleased to offer you numerous articles to help you lose weight without resorting to the slimming diets just described and of questionable healthiness.

Among the more than 2, 000 articles we recommend, first of all, to read the following: