If you are searching for a fast diet, it is likely that you are looking for one of two things: either a fast weight loss diet, or a diet in which you lose weight by fasting. These topics are actually very different for reasons we will fully explicate in this article, because we believe it is important for dieters to understand the mechanics of weight loss. When you understand what is happening behind the scene in terms of gaining and losing body fat, it will become clear to you that the most efficient way to lose weight is not to simply stop eating, but rather to eat more effective fat-burning foods.
Fast Weight Loss Diets
There are a lot of different types of diets that purport to help you lose weight quickly, which range from newer and more scientific to more basic and antiquated. Dieters try everything from the Slim Fast diet, to diet delivery services, to extreme physical exercise in their quest for leaner and healthier-looking bodies, but we believe that the healthiest way to lose weight is by taking a sustainable approach and eating foods that make sense over the long term.
When we talk about foods making sense, we are really talking about evolutionary biology and the underlying mechanisms for food utilization. Your body puts different types of foods to use in different ways. For example, much of the protein you eat is not used for fuel, but is rather used to produce muscle tissue, enzymes, and hormones. This is why you cannot simply look at the caloric content of food to know how beneficial it will be for a fast diet. You have to consider how your meals will be used from a micro- and macronutrient perspective.
We go into more detail about the specific ways to put your diet foods to work for you in our answer to the question what is the fastest way to lose weight.
Fasting Diet
This is precisely why fasting weight loss is not a sustainable form of weight loss. Even though you will lose weight during a fast diet, you will find that your body begins to reallocate nutrients in order to compensate for the lack of food. This is the same thing that will happen on any extreme diet that restricts your calories to a very low level. It is only through careful balancing of macronutrient content that you can achieve a very low caloric intake with sustained weight loss and a potential for weight management.
When you fast, you put your body into a situation where the resources necessary to sustain business as usual are restricted. The results of these types of fast diets are interesting and actually have many positive health benefits, but sustained weight loss is probably not one of them. The reason for this is that when you fast, your body adjusts to the lack of food and decreases the metabolic rate at which you are using nutrients so as to conserve the resources that it has available. So when you start eating again, you will find that you put on more weight more quickly after a fasting diet that you would have before it.
