Nowadays, society is all about appearing fit and striving for the perfect body. Hence, that is precisely why diet culture is so omnipresent. And while it isn’t bad to lose weight to fulfill a healthy lifestyle, there are still some things to look out for in this regard. That is to say, losing weight too quickly can pose serious implications for your health and should thus be avoided at all costs. If you’re not yet convinced though, here’s a brief overview of the different ways in which sudden weight loss can impact your health!
1. Not Having Access to the Required Nutritients
First and foremost, if you lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time, this fundamentally entails that you have a very low-calorie diet. Indeed, you can only lose weight if you are in a calorie deficit. And while there is nothing wrong with a calorie deficit per se, it becomes problematic if you consume an insufficient amount of calories and this is the case if you are losing too much weight too soon.
Less abstractly, if you lose weight too fast, the chances are high that you do not have access to the nutrients that you need to get throughout the day. This includes vitamins, minerals, fibers, and other nutritional sources. In turn, this causes you to become tired more easily, to have less energy in general, to become sick more quickly, etc. In other words, it negatively impacts your immune system.
2. Losing Muscle Mass
Secondly, if you are losing a lot of weight very quickly, burning fat is not the only result. It is quite the contrary. In fact, if you lose too much weight too fast, you also increase your chance of losing a big part of your muscle mass. And you might be surprised by the effect that this can have on your overall health. Namely, losing muscle mass doesn’t only make you less strong in a strict sense, but it also affects your metabolism. That is, muscle mass causes your metabolism to be stimulated and thus, muscle mass stimulates fat burning. As a consequence, if you lose muscle mass, this will slow down your metabolism. The impact of this process on your health entails that your energy levels will be significantly lower.
3. Deteriorated Exercise Performance
On a related note, because sudden weight loss negatively impacts your energy levels, this automatically also can cause you to perform poorer when you’re exercising. The fact that you don’t have access to sufficient nutrients also plays a big part in this entire story. At any rate, sudden weight loss doesn’t only cause you to perform poorer, but it also can cause you to recover slower after exercising. Indeed, due to the lower energy levels and nutrient intake, your body will be equally low on building materials. Yet, your body needs these building materials to make sure that your muscles can recover after a tough workout.
4. Hormone Imbalance
Moreover, rapid weight loss can also cause a serious hormone imbalance within your body. The reason that underlies this is that losing too much weight too quickly can mess with your metabolism. Especially for women, such a hormone imbalance can have very detrimental consequences on their reproductive health. Even more so, it can lead to infertility in severe cases.
5. Negative Effect on Your Mental Health
Finally, sudden weight loss can also impact your mental health besides your physical health. This might sound contradictory because many people associate weight loss with positive mental health changes such as increased confidence and feelings of self-worth. Yet, losing too much weight too fast will result in a counterproductive effect. To be more concrete, abrupt weight loss is a specific form of problematic eating and exercise behavior. Your entire image of what’s healthy and what’s not changed for the worse and eventually, you will start to look at yourself and others more critically. Especially the first scenario is harmful. Namely, if you experience sudden weight loss and at a certain moment in time, you gain some weight again, you are at risk of feeling a lot of negative emotions. The most pertinent ones include shame, guilt, and anxiety.
Thus, the moral of the story is that losing weight in itself is fine, but doing it in such a way that is too fast and too sudden is problematic. Instead, it is recommended to lose weight in a moderate, reasonable fashion to ensure that your overall health doesn’t suffer from it too much!
