What Could Happen If You Lose Weight Too Fast

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Are you tired of waiting for those extra pounds to melt away? Seeking a quick fix for your weight loss goals? While the allure of rapid weight loss may be tempting, it’s crucial to understand the potential risks lurking behind the quest for instant results.

In this blog, we delve into the dark side of speedy slimming, unmasking the hidden dangers that accompany rapid weight loss. Let’s find out what could happen if you lose weight too fast.

Weight cutting

As a side note about rapid weight loss, it’s worth mentioning weight cutting. Weight cutting is a practice commonly employed in sports, particularly combat sports and weight-class based competitions, where athletes intentionally reduce their body weight in a short period of time leading up to a competition weigh-in.

The goal of weight cutting is to compete in a lower weight class than an athlete’s natural weight, potentially providing them with a size and strength advantage over opponents.

Weight cutting typically involves a combination of strategies, including reducing calorie intake, increasing exercise intensity, and manipulating fluid levels. Athletes may adopt strict diets, often low in carbohydrates and high in protein, to shed water weight and deplete glycogen stores.

They may also engage in practices such as sauna sessions, hot baths, or using diuretics to further reduce water retention. In extreme cases, individuals may resort to more drastic measures that can pose health risks, such as severe dehydration.

It is important to note that weight cutting can have significant implications for an athlete’s health and performance if not done properly and under professional guidance. Improper weight cutting practices can lead to dehydration, electrolyte imbalances, decreased muscle mass, reduced strength and endurance, impaired cognitive function, and increased injury risk.

Weight cutting should be approached with caution and undertaken in a responsible and supervised manner to prioritize the well-being and long-term health of the athlete.

What could happen?

But let’s say you’re a regular person, not an athlete with a medical team, interested in losing weight, and against the recommendation of your doctor, you want to lose weight as quickly as possible.

So you begin a very low calorie diet, maybe 1000 kcal per day, or even less. And, being the most disciplined person on Earth, you are able to somehow keep that up for months on end. Here’s what you might experience.

Dehydration and Nutritional deficiencies

For the first 2 weeks, your weight would drop very quickly, maybe 8-12 pounds. Whenever you pop onto the scale you’d feel great about your progress, then maybe not so great since you’ve been exhausted for the past few days or so.

You’ve had a dizzying headache that’s been plaguing you for the past week. And you also find that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate at work.

Dehydration headaches are common in low calorie diets, as people who suppress their hunger signals may also ignore thirst signals.

Dark urine, dizzyness, and confusion are often early signs of dehydration, as thirst may not be a reliable indicator.

As dehydration gets worse, kidney damage and electrolyte imbalances are possible. Although these problems are more likely during extreme weight cutting, it is still possible in people doing very low calorie diets.

Nutritional deficiencies will worsen fatigue, due to the fact the body simply does not have enough food to function properly.

Using a multivitamin may help mitigate some micronutrient deficiencies, but the lack of macronutrients, like protein, will continue to be an issue.

Decreased muscle mass and metabolism

You now start to become exhausted by just walking up and down stairs.

Your muscles and joints seem to ache all the time and you’re noticing your weight loss is not so fast anymore. You’re only losing around 2 pounds per week. You feel much weaker than normal.

The body requires a certain amount of energy to function properly, although this value does slowly decrease when the body loses weight.

If the weight loss is too sudden, the burning of fat may not be sufficient, it needs to find other sources of energy. And it begins to burn another available fuel in your body, protein.

The muscles in your arms and legs are the main sources of this breakdown, leading to muscle aches and weakness.

Metabolism is also decreased significantly during a very low calorie diet, since the body needs to retain as much energy as possible for essential functions by slowing down non-essential metabolism.

A decrease in metabolism results in a decrease in the amount of energy normally burned per day.

You’ll find it much more difficult to lose weight, due to the body aggressively conserving energy, and trying to burn less fat and muscle as a result.

Constipation and Irregular menstrual cycles

Despite the challenges you decide to push through. Speaking of pushing through, you realize it’s been a while since youve pushed through a stool. And every time you do go poop, the stools are hard to push out, small and come out like little rocks.

You’ve started developing hemorrhoids from pushing so hard all the time, even though youre only going like once a week now.

Youve also missed your last menstrual cycle by several days, even though youve always been regular in the past.

When your period finally does come, it seems to be lighter and more spotty than usual.

Constipation is common for many types of dieting, and is usually dealt with by increasing the amount of soluble fiber in the diet, or taking a soluble fiber supplement.

In rapid weight loss, not only does the lack of food intake contribute to smaller and harder stools, but a decrease in metabolism also slows peristalsis, which is the movement of your bowels. Less bowel movements equal less poops.

Menstrual cycle problems stem from the lack of nutrition during rapid weight loss.

Things like iron deficiency, can cause irregular menses, which is sometimes seen in patients losing weight too quickly.

Gallstone formation

Suddenly, you feel a sharp pain to the right of your chest, under the ribcage. It extends to the back and you vomit out your last meal. Not good.

You call your doctor who tells you to visit the ER. At the ER, they run some bloodwork, then immediately send you for imaging of your abdomen, where they find a gallstone.

Because the body is being forced to burn fat during a very low calorie diet, extra cholesterol is being produced, which is secreted into the bile.

Cholesterol is normally broken down by enzymes and flushed out of the gallbladder as bile, but too much cholesterol can overwhelm the enzymes, and cause the extra cholesterol to crystalize into gallstones, especially since rapid weight loss can also slow the emptying of bile from the gallbladder.

Gallstones from rapid weight loss sometimes occurs in obese patients who undergo weight loss surgeries, such as lap bands or bypasses, since the rate of weight loss can be so quick.

Eating more healthy dietary fats and oils during the weight loss period can help reduce the risk of gallstones forming.

How fast is too fast?

Most issues with rapid weight loss occur if the loss is sustained over weeks. So while most experts recommend aiming for 1-2 pounds per week, this is more of a running average.

There’s no need to panic if you end up losing 7 pounds in your first week, as long as the drop is not that fast over the next several weeks.

Keep in mind that your current weight should also factor into if you’re losing weight too fast.

If you’re a few hundred pounds to begin with, an 8 pound drop per week is not uncommon, and most people will feel perfectly fine losing weight that fast. However, if you’re only 180 pounds, 8 pounds a week might be a little too fast.

More importantly than the speed of your weight loss, is the type of weight loss diet you are implementing.

If you have a gastric sleeve and your diet is well balanced and has a good portion of protein, fat, and fiber, like a portion controlled mediterranean diet, you shouldn’t be too concerned if you are losing 5-7 pounds per week.

But if you are doing the master cleanse, and consuming only lemon juice and maple syrup, and dropping 5-7 pounds per week, the concern would be your extreme diet causing nutritional deficiencies and other problems down the road, rather than the speed of weight loss.

Rapid weight loss is often associated with overly strict dietary regimens, and you might experience rapid weight gains once you stop your diet.

Consider focusing your efforts to improve the variety and quality of your food, and create a diet that you can follow long-term, so that any weight you do lose is much more sustainable.

Learn more about

• Weight Cutting – How It’s Done

See also

• 
  How to Choose a Diet for Weight Loss
  CICO, low carb, keto, high protein, and intermittent fasting are all good beginner diets. However you should modify them to fit your needs.
• 
  Medical Devices for Weight Loss
  Medical devices like lap-bands, gastric balloons, or AspireAssist often face issues that make them less ideal for weight loss than they seem.
• 
  Finding Good Weight Loss Supplements
  Properly researching weight loss supplements is more than just reading reviews. Look for proper ingredients, standardization, and dosing.
• 
  10 Common Habits of Thin People
  Based on the analysis of over 1,400 patient files, thin people don’t necessarily have higher metabolisms. Rather, good habits keep them thin.
• 
  7 Things To Know Before Buying Weight Loss Supplements
  Taking weight loss supplements will not be able to replace a proper weight loss diet and lifestyle, no matter how effective the supplement.