Fast And Easy Weight Loss - Diet Shortcuts To Avoid

Although we all want to lose weight and lose it quickly, there are healthy ways to do it and unhealthy ways.

Just because you can buy a product from a pharmacy shelf or one being sold on the internet does not mean it is healthy and safe to use. Here are some diet shortcuts that are decidedly dangerous and should be avoided if you value your health.

1. Fasting. What can happen with fasting is that it sends your body into starvation mode. This means that your metabolism slows right down so that when you start eating again he pounds pile back on at an astonishing rate. It may then take some time for your metabloism to get back to normal again. Fasting also causes your body to start burning muscle for fuel; you don't want less muscle, you want more! Long term fasting can cause serious health damage. Your heart is a muscle, and your body does not differentiate between what types of muscle tissue it raids for fuel.

2. Diet Pills. Most diet pills are a short term fix only. Once you stop taking them, you will be hungry again and will go back to your normal eating patterns. This means you will put all those lost pounds back on again. They are not well regulated by the FDA and their diuretic effects can cause you to become dangerously dehydrated, especially in the summer. Their side effects can also include headaches, dizziness, nausea, and heart palpitations.

3. Fad Diets.Trendy diets come and go. The Scarsdale Diet and the Atkins diet are a couple of examples. Although those diets aren't good for you, because of their heavy reliance on protein, they are not as bad as diets like the grapefruit diet, or the cabbage soup diet. The problem with all of these diets is that they often rely heavily on changing your diet in an unnatural way and consuming mostly one kind of food, which does not give you the variety of nutrients that you need and which are impossible to follow long term.

4. Eating prepackaged diet foods. Although these meals and food are convenient, they are surprisingly high in sodium and fat. Sodium contributes to high blood pressure, and people who are overweight are already at risk for high blood pressure. The American Heart Association recommends not exceeding 2000 mgs of sodium a day, but many prepackaged diet foods contain that much in a single meal. You also need to check the amount of sugar added to them.

5. Health food fads like ephedra. "Herbal" and "all-natural" does not mean safe.  Deadly Nightshade is all natural. So is rattlesnake venom.  Ephedra has been tied to a number of deaths, and is now banned for sale in the United States. Don't assume that because a diet supplement is being sold at the grocery store, it is healthy.

Fad diets can be used as a quick fix when you want to lose weight in a short space of time. However, experts recommend a healthier system of weight loss that can be endured without fad dieting and without the need to spend lots of money. The choice is yours!