Losing Weight at a Healthy Pace

by Phillip Presley Student

Dieting, although recommended for anyone looking to get into better shape, can sometimes have negative consequences. If you’ve recently started a diet and feel like you’re losing weight almost too rapidly, you may need to reconsider your diet. Losing weight that quickly may mean that the pounds that just seem to be melting off as easily as a snake sheds its skin may not be entirely healthy. Your body is healthiest at an average weight, but adjusting takes time; jumping right into an extreme diet may have a negative impact on your health.

One thing to be worried about when extreme dieting is the shock that your body could experience in the wake of rapid weight lost. Your body is a finely tuned instrument—anything that disrupts it could mean total chaos and a loss of equilibrium. For one, any drastic change, positive or negative, could put your body in a position where it can’t catch up with the quick transition. Be careful not to lose more than 1 or 2 lbs a week, that’s a safe number for a person to lose because it allows ample time for the body to adjust.

Another way to lose weight at a healthy pace is to slowly change your behavior—not quickly. Juice cleanses and other “miracle diets” encourage replacing your every day meals with smaller portions and other things that your body may not be used to. If you slowly change your diet and replace things one by one, again, that will give your body a lot of time to adjust and to get ready for the new you! A lot of these diets call for a total omission of high protein foods—this just does not work for your body. All your cells depend on protein for energy, and if you take that away, your body could suffer.

One unseen side affect of extreme dieting is the loss of bone mass. Although osteoporosis can only be diagnosed by a doctor, the rapid weight you may be losing could be because of bone loss. The symptoms of osteoporosis may not even be present, so you have to get checked out by a doctor if you want to know for sure what caused your rapid weight loss.

To help you sustain a healthy weight, there are a number of steps you can take. First, make sure that your diet follows the guidelines set by the FDA, such as Dash diet. DASH diet can help you to start a healthy exercise program and live a healthier lifestyle. You should be eating foods from a number of food groups and getting daily exercise. Exercise may even include a simple walk after dinner to help digest what you’ve just eaten. Just make sure you get active and start including healthier choices in your meals.