Why Crash Dieting Is Bad

Dieting slows down the metabolic rate and reduces the amount of oxygen you take in, study shows.

Dr. Ancel keys, the great American bariatrics (science of weight loss) expert, was one of the first to discover that dieting reduced the oxygen intake and slowed down the metabolism at rest. He took volunteer students and put them on a restricted diet of 1570 calories a day for twenty-four weeks. Keys and his colleagues found that the volunteers’ resting metabolic rate had declined by thirty-nine per cent, and they had become apathetic and tired. Two of the young men had nervous breakdown. Keys theorised then that the body used the drop in oxygen as a mechanism to slow the metabolic rate with all it’s attendant ills.

What happens is that the moment that food intake is reduced the metabolic rate and the oxygen intake begin to fall drastically. The more oxygen you take the more likely you are to be calm, confident and brimming with vitality. A slowed down, sluggish metabolism and a diminished use for oxygen is the very opposite of vibrant health, wellbeing or successful performance. Yet, that is the damage so many of us inflict upon our system by constant dieting.

Aside from Keys, many noteable researchers have observed that all dieters become obsessed with food. Here’s one good reason one of them said : ‘It is important to know that short-term rapid weight losses with rigorous diets depend on losses of body water with glycogen and protein rather than losses of body fat.’ Scores of studies have shown that, on strict diets, we lose water and glycogen first and that falling glycogen levels trigger intense feelings of hunger.

Above all, a dieter craves carbohydrates, the very foods which release glycogen back into the system. That’s why a crash dieter will devour a whole loaf of bread or box of chocolates and just not be able to stoip.