5 Reasons Why Detox Diets Are Terrible For Weight Loss

Weight loss is no overnight accomplishment.

Sure, we've all heard that the number one way to lose weight is to achieve a healthy and balanced diet.

But what does that even mean?

When it comes to weight loss, discipline is certainly important, but to lose weight effectively you'll also need the right mindset.

That's what detox diets fail to offer.

In reality, losing weight is all about changing up your daily routine.

Until you've decided that it's really a healthier and more active lifestyle that you crave, not just a number on the scale, you'll be on and off the dieting rollercoaster.

Read on to find out why detoxing is a poor choice for permanent weight loss.

1. Disruption Of Fluid Balance

Many quick-fix fad diets seem to work at first, but the results are often short-lived.

As we pointed out earlier in this article, anytime you restric calories to consume less than you burn, you will lose weight.

But the problem is that it’s not fat that you’ve lost – it’s water.

And that’s the last thing you want to happen.

This is one reason detox diets are so incredibly dangerous.

They can negatively affect your body’s fluids and salts (a.k.a. electrolytes balance), which means you can lose a lot of water and important minerals very quickly.

Disrupting fluid and electrolyte balance can result in dehydration, which will make you look, feel and perform far worse than normal.

That's one of the primary reasons why you feel so crappy during the first few days when you start your detox plan.

Take things too far and these dangers become much more serious because your body depends on fluid and electrolyte balance for maintaining the rhythm of your heart, as well as many other important functions.

So if you’re ever tempted to try one of those so-called detox or cleanse diets, remember that you might see a lower number on the bathroom scale after a few days but what you’ve lost is not that body fat you really want to shift – rather it’s something your body needs to hold on to.

Losing that water weight is likely to make you feel tired, dehydrated and miserable – and that’s about as far from living a healthier and happier life as you can be.

2. Starving Your Body Of Essential Nutrients

Almost all lose weight fast diets are based on severely restricting your daily calorie intake by cutting out specific types of foods or eliminating food groups entirely.

This means that these diets are not providing some, or even many, of the essential nutrients your body needs to function at its best – whether that’s fats, protein or vitamins and minerals.

Restricing these vital nutrients will dramatically affect how “healthy” you look and feel.

You may suffer physical signs, such as dry, pale or dull skin, aching joints and muscles, feelings of lethargy and weakness, or trouble falling and staying asleep.

Nutrient deficiencies can also trigger a wide range of mental symptoms, not limited to constant hunger, low energy and fatigue, bad moods, and dire levels of focus, motivation and concentration.

There’s a good chance that all you will think about is food and your next meal, not to mention that pit-of-your-stomach disappointment about what that next meal is going to be!

This will make you feel absolutely awful in the short term and cause you to question whether all these negative side effects are worth it (they're not).

What may be easily passed off as temporary sacrifices to get you closer to your weight loss goal in a hurry, they can often lead to even more serious impact on your long-term health, fitness and general well-being.

3. Your Metabolism Slows Down

Your body’s job, evolutionarily speaking, is to stop you starving to death – a very real risk for all humans until relatively recently.

So your body pays very close attention to how much you’re eating.

When you suddenly start eating less, your body makes adjustments to prevent starvation.

Your metabolism slows down to conserve energy; your digestive tract moves food through more slowly to extract as much energy and as many nutrients as possible (which can cause digestive issues, such as bloating or constipation); your repair and recovery processes slow down so you don’t heal as fast; and there’s a reduced production of important hormones, including the primary sex hormones testosterone, estrogen and progesterone.

But it’s the slowing of the metabolism that causes the biggest problem.

When your metabolism slows, your body decides you need even less energy to survive, which means you must further reduce your calorie intake from food to get into that calorie deficit to lose weight!

This creates a cycle in which, over time, your body requires fewer and fewer calories to function, making it harder to lose weight even when you’re eating far less than before.

As you can see, this is really problematic for your weight loss ambition.

4. Your Appetite Comes Roaring Back

Have you ever wondered what makes you feel hungry? Or full?

Appetite is controlled by a series of feedback loops in the digestive system and the brain.

There are also sensors in our fat cells that tell our brain how full our fat stores are.

If there’s a lack of food being consumed, these feedback loops and sensors compensate by making you really hungry.

The “if you’re standing between me and the fridge I can’t be held responsible for my actions” kind of hungry.

No matter how strong your willpower and motivation, your brain’s “don’t starve” system is always stronger.

Eventually you quit the diet (because it’s unsustainable and you’re miserable) and resume eating normally.

But you now need fewer calories than before because of your slower metabolism, so you gain back the weight you lost and more, because your brain is sending all the excess energy to fill up your fat stores in an effort to make sure you don’t “starve” again.

You’ll think about food more often – and hence eat more too.

This is a major reason so many people end up yo-yo dieting and gain body fat rather than losing it.

5. You Get Stuck In A Vicious Cycle

There are many physiological problems caused by quick-fix diets, but one of the biggest is the damaging habits that they cause people to adopt.

Here are some of the worst habits that are forged by quick-fix diets.

- You learn to either be “on” a diet or “off” it – there is nothing in between.

- You only ever experience a very short period of weight loss “success”, if any.

- You experience long periods of “failure”, and feelings of guilt or frustration that add to your unhappiness.

- You start to develop a damaging relationship with food and think obsessively about eating.

-You forget how to trust your body to know how it’s really feeling, and don’t trust yourself to make smart food choices.

- You end up in one of two equally bad scenarios: either living a life adhering to a very strict set of eating rules, or suffering from a complete loss of control over your diet and your life.