Unhealthy Diets You Should Better Avoid
The word ‘diet’ we used to associate with healthy eating, weight loss and keeping fit. People who fight with the excess weight try different diets with the hope “This time it will be an effective diet”. Not all people consult with the dietician and in most cases they follow the diet of celebrities or what they heard from acquaintances. Unhealthy diets may also be effective but for the short-term.
This article contains info about the worst diets that you should avoid no matter what. Some of them are very popular diets that you have already known and some are odd or even disgusting. So, let’s analyze them one by one.
Grapefruit diet
Don’t think that grapefruit is an unhealthy product. No, it is among fruits with the lowest calorie. What is unhealthy about this diet that it’s being focused only on one product. This diet is built around grapefruit and grapefruit juice. You’ll see the effect immediately as your body stops gaining weight and starts spending fats as an energy expenditure. The effect is fast, but it’s dangerous too. Due to sacrificing other products very soon your body will suffer from malnutrition. Your body needs the daily intake of carbohydrates and protein.
Atkins
This diet was developed by cardiologist Robert Atkins. Atkins is a low-carb diet and you can eat only products that contain low carbohydrates, like red meat, eggs and cheese. Moreover, you should exclude from your diet fruits, vegetables, bread, sugar and milk as these products are rich in carbs.
With this diet you may lose weight, but it will negatively affect your overall health. Other diets reduce calories while Atkins diet is focused on reducing carbohydrates instead. Since it’s a high-protein diet you’ll intake unsaturated trans fats in excess amount. You can’t follow the Atkins for a long time, because it leads to heart disease, high level of cholesterol and problems with kidney.
Cabbage soup diet
If you think that the ‘Cabbage soup diet’ includes only cabbage soup you’re mistaken. The diet includes mainly cabbage soup, many vegetables and fruits and minimum protein. Cabbage soup diet is the absolutely opposite to Atkins diet. It is extremely low in fats and calorie and rich in carbs.
Cabbage soup diet is not for a long-term weight loss. It is considered as a one-week diet and can be effective to lose weight before some special occasion, like wedding, party or ceremony. First of all, you can’t get important fats and nutrients that support your health. Secondly, only after 3 days you’ll fed up with cabbage, despite adding different spices and variety of veggies. Finally, after a week of diet with cabbage you’ll get a lost weight very quickly.
Paleo
Paleo is a short for Paleolithic diet or cavemen diet. It is a modern diet that intends to eat meat, fruits, vegetables and nuts like what ate ancestors. With this diet you have to forget about dairy products, legume or whole grains.
Paleo is one of the controversial diets with the opposing research results. One study shows that Paleo is good for protecting against the heart attack. However, recent researches have found that, actually, it increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases and contributes to unhealthy gain weight. So, any diet that brings harm to your body is considered to be unhealthy.
Fasting
Maybe for some people fasting is the most effective type of diet, however, any kind of fasting diets are among unhealthy ones. You ask why? Yes, you get fewer calories, but that does not mean that you burn your fat. Instead you’ll lose mainly muscle mass and water. As a result, your body dehydrates and experiences nutrient deficiency.
People who follow fasting diet for longer period of time usually experience stress, dizziness, anemia and fatigue. With the extremely low-calorie diet your body feels like it’s being starved and metabolism slows down. When you end the diet and start eating in normal amount you’ll gain weight back very quickly, as your metabolism is not fully recovered. And probably you’ll get back fats, not muscle mass. As you can see side effects of fasting diet considerably more than its positive effects.
Tapeworm diet
Have you ever heard about tapeworm diet before? Actually, that’s not something new, this diet exists for more than 100 years. The reason why this diet is not popular is because it’s at the top of the most unhealthy and dangerous diets list.
With tapeworm diet you’ll really never get an excess weight, all you need is just to intake a pill with tapeworm egg inside. When the egg hatches, tapeworm will grow and eat whatever you eat. At that period your appetite will boom and you’ll eat more and more without any restrictions to calorie, carbs, sugar or fat. Tapeworm attaches to your intestine and feeds of your body’s nutrients.
The only idea of having a parasite inside you is disgusting, besides you can’t control in which organ it will attach itself. This dangerous diet brings a lot of damage to your organism. Diarrhea, nausea, weakness, pain in abdomen, bacterial infections are among them.
Ketogenic diet
Ketogenic diet or Keto is one of the widespread diets that have become even more popular in recent years. In social media also, you can find how some celebrities recommend it showing how it helped them. Then, why Keto is in our list?
Keto is very strict diet and not sustainable, therefore, doctors are not the fans of this diet. The concept of the diet is to consume fat-rich low-carb food (just like the Atkins) with the aim of losing weight. It puts your body into a state of ketosis, so your body burns fat of energy instead of carbs and this way your body starts to store less fat.
Ketosis is a metabolic adaptation state that explains your body will break down ketone bodies as a fuel instead of sugar or glucose. Eating only fat-rich food may lead to problems with liver, heart, thyroid, pancreas and cause kidney stones, constipation and malnutrition. Ketogenic diet is not good to lose weight unless you suffer from epilepsy or high blood pressure.
The HCG diet
HCG stands for human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone produced during pregnancy. The diet recommends strictly control the calorie amount, about 500-800 calories a day, and supplement it with HCG hormone pills or injection. This is an extremely low-calorie diet so you may easily lose weight, but the cost doesn’t worth it.
Katherine Zeratsky, RD, LD points out that HCG is neither effective nor safe way of losing weight. She admits that companies that sell over-the-counter HCG weight-loss products are breaking the law. The HCG diet might encourage heart problems, fatigue, depression, petulance and increase the risk of cancer.
In addition, one of the side effects of HCG in males it can cause swelling of breasts (gynecomastia) as primarily this hormone is necessary for pregnant women. It isn’t supposed to be a weight loss diet, however, if you still want to try it be ready muscle loss, nutrient deficiency and gallstone formation.
If your goal is to lose weight then find safer ways of doing it and avoid unhealthy diets. Talk with your doctor, take an advice from dietician, follow the balanced diet and exercise regularly. Don’t bring harm to your precious health by going to extremality!
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