A crash diet is essentially a diet designed to make a person lose three to five pounds or more per week. Standard diets agree that safe weight loss falls under the category of two to four pounds per month. Crash diets can be a beneficial psychological jumpstart for a sustainable diet but have several severe drawbacks. That being said, there are some tips to make a crash diet safer. Depending on the amount of weight loss desired, a slower and steadier diet might be the better option.
One of the most effective ways to crash diet is to monitor food intake. Crash diets can be notoriously poor from a nutritional standpoint, eliminating key nutrients and causing worse overall health. Monitoring food intake and portion control reduces this risk. Essentially a safe crash diet looks to cut calories without cutting nutrition.
A good first step is to eliminate liquid calories. The brain is not wired to interpret liquid calories as food. Fruit juice, soda, and alcohol are the top three contributors to liquid calories. A 12-oz can of Coke has 140 calories. To lose a pound of weight per week you need to produce a calorie deficit of 3000 calories. Eliminating one can of soda per day for a week takes you to a third of that goal.
The next logical step is portion control. Eating an open-faced sandwich reduces the carbohydrate count but still holds the appeal of eating a sandwich. Measure out the serving sizes of things like oils, salad dressings, coffee creamer, or peanut butter or snack foods such as chips or peanuts to have a better idea of how many calories you are getting. Reduce yourself to smaller portions at more frequent intervals. Try to focus on eating three meals per day with two snacks in between and no more than four hours between meals. A regular eating schedule will reduce food cravings and normalize the metabolism.
The third trick is to exercise more. Taking the stairs at work, walking at the end of a lunch break, or working around the home are all ways to burn off a few extra calories without setting foot in a gym. Even playing with kids can count as exercise, such as pushing a child on a swing set.
Don’t get caught up in yo-yo dieting. If you only need to lose a few pounds, then lose those pounds and maintain. If you need to lose more weight, take the mental boost of losing a quick few pounds and move into a steadier pattern of weight loss. What a crash diet is depends entirely on whether or not it is used responsibly.