It’s a scenario most people are familiar with. One minute you have six months to prepare for an upcoming vacation, wedding or another type of special event. That seems like plenty of time to get rid of excess weight and prepare to stun your friends and family members with your svelte new physique.
But seemingly overnight, those six months shrink into just six weeks and you haven’t made any progress yet. In a panic, you decide to take drastic measures so you can fit into your new bathing suit or bridesmaid dress. The problem is, most quick weight-loss schemes are just that—schemes. They’re shams that don’t usually work well, and if they do work, it’s usually at the expense of your health.
Before you make a split-second decision that you’ll likely regret later on, take a minute to learn about the worst ways to lose weight fast. These methods might help you drop a few quick pounds, but they will likely do so at the expense of your physical and emotional health.
The Sleeping Beauty Diet
Though it sounds lovely, the Sleeping Beauty Diet is far from a fairy tale. This weight-loss method isn’t even technically a diet, since it doesn’t involve changing the way you eat. Instead, it’s a method that involves taking sedatives during the day to make you sleep more. Sounds crazy, right?
The premise behind this strange and harmful weight-loss approach is that you can’t eat if you’re sleeping. The more hours you sleep during the day, the less you’ll eat (in theory). However, taking sleeping pills throughout the day can have negative health effects. This extreme way of losing weight sounds like something a true villain would conjure up.
The Laxative Tea Diet
It seems unlikely that anyone would try to give themselves diarrhea on purpose, but there are some people who are so desperate to lose weight that they intentionally drink laxative teas. It makes sense that getting rid of stored water will help you lose extra pounds, but at what cost?
Every cell in your body needs water to function. In fact, your body is comprised of as much as 60% water. If you’re trying to lose weight, getting rid of the most important component of your body’s tissues probably isn’t the best way to reach your goal! If anything, you should increase your water intake when you’re trying to lose weight. Depriving your body of water is hard on all your organs and can potentially make your metabolism slow down (which is the last thing you want when your goal is to lose weight).
The ”One Food Type” Diet
Eating just one type of food isn’t a good way to lose weight because it deprives your body of the various nutrients it needs to thrive. Whether it’s grapefruit, cabbage, apples, or spinach, restricting your dietary intake to just one food will also make you feel deprived. Research shows that when people feel deprived, they are more likely to mess up on their diets and binge eat.
Over-Exercising
Though it’s not a diet, over-exercising is a common mistake many people make when trying to lose weight. When you understand that 3,500 calories equal one pound, it can be tempting to exercise for hours every day.
But exercising too long or too vigorously increases your chance of injuring yourself. If you do that, you won’t be able to work out at all. Additionally, excessive exercise will also ramp up your appetite so you want to eat even more calories.
Generally, the best approach to losing weight is to eat healthier foods, exercise every day (but not to excess), and get quality sleep each night. It may take longer to get to your goal weight, but this method tends to result in steady, long-lasting weight loss results.
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