The secret to being slim and trim - at any age

We all dream of being slim. About feeling confident enough to parade around the beach in just a bikini. But as we get older shedding a few kg's isn't easy and we often turn to 'quick fixes', like harmful drugs (that often don't live up to the hype) and crash diets.

Why is gradual weight loss better than a crash diet

If you want long-term weight-loss, a crash diet isn’t the answer and most aren’t healthy either. 

Crash or “fad” diets radically restrict your daily calorie intake or even completely eliminate entire food groups. Diets like these may help you lose weight quickly, but you’ll generally gain it all back in a matter of days!

Depending on the type of crash diet you stick to, you could land up slowing down your metabolism, preventing you from getting important nutrients and vitamins that your body needs to work properly, reducing your intake of carbohydrates (which are an essential source of energy), increasing your intake of protein and fat - too much saturated fat can raise your cholesterol and increase your risk of heart disease and stroke.

When you crash diet, your body uses up its carbohydrate stores (known as glycogen) in the liver and muscles. Because water is stored with glycogen in the body, you’ll lose weight quickly. However, most of this weight loss will be water and muscle. Muscle burns more calories than fat, even when you aren’t doing anything, so losing muscle means your metabolism could slow down.

Your body's response to crash dieting is therefore to reduce the speed at which it burns off calories. This means you're actually slowing down your ability to lose weight.

People who crash diet tend to put weight back on quicker than those who follow a long-term healthy eating plan. This is because once you've stopped your crash diet, your slow metabolism can’t deal with the increase in calories. These calories will be stored as fat, so you’ll end up putting on more weight than when you started.

Most crash diets are not healthy. And crash dieting for a long time can be harmful to your body. Also, some are so restrictive that you may not have the willpower to stick to them.

The truth is that there is no easy, quick fix to losing weight. But with the right diet craving sugary foods laden in fat and unwanted calories can easily be managed.

For more tips and nutritional diets for keeping thin browse the FSP Health portal to find a weight loss solution that's right for you.