Crash diets may work against you – and could have permanent consequences

• Crash diets have been around for years, but have stayed popular more recently thanks to influencers and social media.
• Typically, these diets involve drastically reducing calorie intake to 800-1,200 calories a day for a few weeks at a time.
• Proponents of these diets claim it can lead to rapid weight loss, which may explain why they have such a significant appeal.
• But while these diets may lead to short-term weight loss success in some people, they can have the long-term consequence of damaging your metabolism.

Crash diets and metabolism

• Your metabolism is affected by many things – including diet, exercise and your hormones.
• Crash diets affect all these components.
• In the short-term, crash diets can lead to feelings of tiredness, which makes doing any activity (let alone a workout) challenging.

• In the long term, crash diets can change the hormone makeup of our bodies.
• And over an extended period of time, typically months, high cortisol levels can cause our body to store more fat.
• Crash diets can also reduce levels of the hormone T3, which is produced by the thyroid gland.

Gradual dieting

• If you’re trying to lose weight, the best strategy to use is following a long-term, gradual weight loss diet.
• Gradual diets have been shown to be more sustainable and have a less negative impact on your metabolic rate compared with crash diets.
• Gradual diets can also help maintain energy levels enough to exercise, which can help you lose weight.
• This creates a greater capacity for burning calories even after we finish dieting.

Christopher Gaffney receives research funding from Omega EFA Limited.