Rapid weight loss: Health concerns?
 

I am on the Fat Smash diet. I have used it before to shed weight quickly but have also read elsewhere the optimum max is to lose 2 lbs a week. I have lost 13 lbs in 3 weeks, granted the first 10 lbs lost were fudge and cookies from the holidays. The diet basically replaces all things bad, beer, snacks and lots of carbs and proteins with a healthy diet in which I am not starving myself but eating a low carb, limited protein diet.

Are there any health concerns from rapid weight loss?

I am not a dietician or a doctor, so take this with a grain of salt and call me in the morning. I am not a fan of fad diets. The fact that you have used this diet before and apparently regained weight is common with this yoyo approach to weight control. Yes, I think it unwise to lose so much weight in a short time (see earlier disclaimer). Perhaps there are no immediate"health concerns," but it is likely you will regain the weight once you revert to a "normal" diet. I recommend you consult with a dietician or a doctor who knows something about nutrition (they are rare so choose wisely). You need an eating plan that you can adhere to long term, not a miracle cure that leads you to drop three pounds a week.

Yes, talk to a Medical Doctor, many of them receive a full two hours of nutrition education in medical school.

There are health concerns with both rapid weight loss and weight gain. I don't know however if either may be more dangerous than fudge and cookies. For optimal health a diet doesn't need to be something you do to drop weight. Your diet needs to be the nutrition you need to maintain energy levels and overall health. Think in terms of what you should be eating to get the physical results you want.

All of the above responses being true, still there have been long term studies done which have established that rapid weight loss is not good simply because it isn't healthy. Restricted diets aren't healthy unless what you are restricting is junk food, like cookies, McDonalds, soft drinks, anything with a lot of fat or sugar in it. What has worked best long term in these studies is eating a varied, healthy diet, just less of it. "Eat food, mostly plants, not too much." This is commonly called lifestyle change. You're cutting down on carbs and protein, both of which are necessary to get benefit from exercise, and exercise is the key to health.

Your dinner plate should be 1/2 vegetables, 1/4 carbs, 1/4 protein - approximately. In our house, we simply use smaller portions of the same thing if we want to lose weight. We had homemade pizza last night - one piece each, salad after. That was fine.

It's true that most doctors didn't learn squat about nutrition in med school, but that's why they say that doctors practice medicine It take a heckuva lot of practice to get good at it. Good doctors read journals in bed. I have an engineer friend who reads building and electrical codes in bed. "So much to know, so little time!"

I can lose that 10 pounds in a week by simply changing from my Standard American Diet to a diet with a healthy variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, and protein.

Unhealthy? I don't think so. As you said, the first 10 pounds is fudge, cookies, ice cream and cake. After the first 10, the rest comes off at a more modest rate.

My challenge is sticking with the new normal of eating like I should.

Since there are only 3 macronutrients, and this plan seems to limit 2 of them, then are you eating more fat?

I find the best thing for this is to continually program my mind by studying what good nutrition means. The more you put good info in the more it will inspire you to eat better. You need to keep it on your mind all the time. It's the same principal advertisers use to get your attention. Just watch a few YouTube videos and it will start you down the rabbit hole.

I don't believe this "first 10 lbs is fudge" thing. The weight you are losing is the same stuff - fat at 3500 calories/pound, no matter if you gained it recently eating fudge or 10 ears ago eating a slight excess of healthy things relative to your total respiration.

The only weight you lose really easily and fast (in a matter of a day) is water weight, which is transient anyway. And for sure, dieting by dehydration is neither sustainable nor advised.

I doubt it. 10 lbs = 35,000 calories. A 35000 calorie deficit in a week is 5,000 calories/day. Unless your "Standard American Diet" was featured in "Super Size Me", it is extremely unlikely that the difference between your two diets is 5000 cal/day.

Exactly. My guess is that is exaggerated, and that the weight loss is almost all water, some from eating less salt and some from glycogen breakdown. By weight, stored glycogen is about 3/4 water. Maybe 1-2 lbs. is fat.

So long as you're getting the macro- and micro-nutrients your body needs, there shouldn't be. Complete protein, sufficient minerals and whatnot for proper bone/blood/eye/etc repair and growth, and so forth. Man of the "fad" diets skimp on the nutrient content part, though they can certainly zap pounds.

Going "clean" is a pretty good way to begin, for most folks. Eliminate as much packaged (labeled) products as possible. Eliminate as much refined additives as you can (which includes products with good amounts of sugar, sugar alternatives, sugar "alcohols" and the like). Get plenty of water. Consider a balanced intake, in which each intake has some portions of fats, proteins, carbs. Have plenty of vegetables and moderate amounts of fruits. Of course, not everybody's body is tolerant of all things. Many have allergic (inflammatory) reactions to surprising numbers of foods. Many don't react well to, say, spices. But, generally, a balanced diet of modest amounts of fats, proteins, carbs with suitable vitamins minerals from a wide range of foods can be a vast improvement over the typical intake many rely on these days.

Good clean wide-ranging intake in modest amounts, plenty of exercise and sleep ... and you should find the changes come on pretty quickly (within a week or two).

When you start eating low carbs you lose a lot of water weight initially. My rate of weight loss for 170 lbs was 8-12 lbs a month steady. That's on a low carb whole foods diet, basically meat and lots of vegetables.

Let me explain my diet better. Even though it has a nice fancy name Fat Smash Diet. It is simply a fancy name/plan for quitting overeating cold turkey.

I traded 2+ IPAs a night for water all day, potato chips for carrots, and a 20oz Rib eye for a 4 oz sirloin. The menu started out as almost a fast for 4 days with very little protein, dairy and carbs, then every 4 days the 'module' changes giving more items back and showing how to balance a healthy diet. I have lost 13 lbs in 19 days and can get into pants that were tight a few weeks ago. It might be water weight for now but eventually the fat will catch up and the beer belly will go away also.

I have never heard that quitting anything cold turkey is a permanent solution- even if it means changing to a healthy diet, cravings creep in.

I recently had COVID and after eating the food that appealed to me that I had in the house, I went out for something I craved a few times from drive-through (to avoid directly exposing anyone else), then eventually felt good enough to mask up and go into a grocery store for a few minutes, one time. The rest of the time, I didn't feel energetic enough to make anything or even go to the door for delivery, so I hung out/slept a lot and ate very little. I think I ate ten meals in 14 days. Since I had that COVID crap, I'm generally eating inside of a 4 hour window and while my appetite is good, I don't really feel hungry most of the time. Eating less carbs, although I haven't eliminated them completely- brown rice instead of white and if I have anything with potato, the skin stays on/in. Almost no pasta or if I do have noodles, it's usually Soba, which is made from buckwheat and that's not a grain so the carb content is low and it has no gluten.

Wearing jeans that I could only look at for at least five years.

Well, that is a sucky but effective way to lose weight, I've been there just not with Covid. I hope you get better soon and can take advantage of your new size.



The cold turkey quitting is only for the first few days then more food option is given to you on this diet. By day 9 we had 3 courses of protein per day, it felt luxurious after a day of yogurt, fruit, salad and beans and rice for a daily allotment. On this go around I had my wife join me on this diet, she had tried before and quit, has struggled at first this time but has continued on with it. Getting her onboard is key because we both enjoy good food too much to give it up completely. After we get down to a better weight we are trying to learn how to balance things.

So true. I spent 4 years at Uni studying for a Masters in Engineering and learnt maybe 10% of what I know 30 years later working in the industry.

Rather than focusing on rate of weight loss, it's better to focus on a long term sustainable diet and lifestyle. Most (if not all) rapid loss diets are unsustainable and therefore fairly pointless. Diets that lose weight slowly are likely to be much more sustainable. Basically you need to be able to live with your diet forever, not just for a couple of months. In the first 2020 lockdown our neighbours went on a crash diet and both lost a ton of weight very quickly. Now in 2022 they are both as over-weight as they ever were.

I totally agree. It took me a while during my eating change,but I noticed that I started to think differently about food. The old me would think "Now, what sounds good to eat." The new me was thinking "what foods do I need to fuel this workout", or "what foods will help me recover from this workout." It wasn't just a decision one day to eat healthier though. It was a result of trying to learn as much as I could about nutrition. You might or might not be able to resist that occasional burger and fries, but resisting is a lot easier when you have been spending lots of time researching just exactly what that burger and fries consists of.

That's right. I know people with various eating disorders, all solved by changing their attitude toward food, regarding it as fuel. That gets rid of the emotional context.

Speaking from the medical side I have personally experienced and also had many of my patients with low Potassium and high incidences of Billiary Cholic.

So... Over weight by more than 60+ lbs / 30 Kilos and then loosing more than half that weight over 4 months look out...

I didn't know the term, so I looked it up. For everybody's further information

https://www.health.harvard.edu/a_to_...0digest%20fats.

https://www.everydayhealth.com/gallb...y-weight-loss/

Like lots of folks I have fought weight issues (successfully and unsuccessfully) over my long lifetime. I always viewed it as two different problems.

1) I need to do what it takes to lose weight
2) Once #1 is achieved I need to do what it takes to maintain weight

I always viewed them as very different problems and (for some) might take very different forms.

dave

I follow eat less move more. I go by how my clothes fit rather than scale weight. If I weigh in when I want to drop some middle age gut it drives me crazy. Then watching a football game with all the pizza commercials and beer advertisements :eek: easy to over indulge.

I love how people seek medical advice on a bike forum.