Sandhya Raghavan
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Written By: Sandhya Raghavan | Published : November 6, 2017 3:41 PM IST
Come December and it's party season. It's also the time of the year when millions of out-of-shape hopefuls snap out of their junk food-fuelled spells and pray to fit into the outfit of their choice on New Year's night. With a good part of the year squandered, people consider quick and drastic methods to lose weight, which may work in the short run but end up doing great damage in the long run. Here are the most dangerous ways you could lose weight this party season.
1. Vomiting: Eat and puke! That way, you can taste the food you like minus all the calories that come with it. If you do it on a regular basis, you could end up malnourished with damaged teeth and a hoarse voice.1
2. Smoking cigarettes: The nicotine in the cigarette works like an appetite suppressant, quelling your hunger every time you feel like having a bite. You don't need us to tell you why this is such a bad idea. Putting on weight after quitting is quite common among smokers who go off cigarettes. That's because, one of the biggest symptoms of nicotine withdrawal is increased hunger.2
3. Using laxatives: The idea is to move the food quickly through the digestive system. That way, the food doesn't hang around for too long in the digestive system for the calories to be absorbed. Laxative abuse causes major electrolyte imbalance, colon damage and allergic reactions.3
4. Eating just grapefruit: In the 1930s, grapefruit gained popularity as a weight loss fruit. Fad dieticians recommended eating a grapefruit-centric diet and restricting your intake to just 800 calories in a day. Although grapefruit is a nutritious fruit full of micronutrients, it can't fulfil your macronutrient requirements for the day.
5. Eating cotton balls soaked in juice: Believe it or not, people were dipping cotton balls in orange juice and swallowing them whole at one point. The purpose of the diet was to create a feeling of false satiety and to suppress appetite. It doesn't take rocket science to know this can have devastating consequences on your stomach health. Since human body cannot break down cotton, the balls will end up causing intestinal congestion.
6. Skipping breakfast: The go-to trick in most crash dieters' books is not eating breakfast. While it does create a caloric deficit and subsequent weight loss, it can cause dangerous cardiovascular problems such as hardening of arteries. Scientific evidence suggests that missing breakfast could lead to weight gain, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and elevated cholesterol levels.4
7. Sucking on ice: Some brainiac thought it would be great to fool your stomach by sucking on ice every time you are hungry. That's right. Since ice is solid in shape, your stomach would think you are feeding it when in reality it's just plain water. It's a great way to put out cravings but having ice in place of your meals would be a very bad idea. Reason? Water has no nutrients and your hunger will eventually catch up with you.
References:
1. Rushing, J. M., Jones, L. E., & Carney, C. P. (2003). Bulimia Nervosa: A Primary Care Review. Primary Care Companion to The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 5(5), 217 224.
2.Hughes, J. R., & Hatsukami, D. (1986). Signs and symptoms of tobacco withdrawal. Archives of general psychiatry, 43(3), 289-294.
3.Roerig, J. L., Steffen, K. J., Mitchell, J. E., & Zunker, C. (2010). Laxative abuse. Drugs, 70(12), 1487-1503.
3.Jackson, L. W. (2013). The most important meal of the day: why children skip breakfast and what can be done about it. Pediatric annals, 42(9), e194-e197.
4.Uzhova, I., Fuster, V., Fern ndez-Ortiz, A., Ordov s, J. M., Sanz, J., Fern ndez-Friera, L., ... & Pe alvo, J. L. (2017). The Importance of Breakfast in Atherosclerosis Disease: Insights From the PESA Study. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 70(15), 1833-1842.
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