Rapid Network

Rapid weight loss is the Holy Grail of dieting, right? Well, it depends on what you have in mind. Because while the right kind of rapid weight loss can give you wondrous good looks, the wrong kind can actually rob you of your good health.

Many fad diets will flaunt the virtues of rapid weight loss, but you're not hearing the whole story. Even if these diets work, it's likely that you'll find yourself losing mostly water and muscle instead of fat. Losing water is not going to result in sustainable weight loss. And losing muscle is surely not what you had in mind when you started your diet.

It's fine to say that rapid weight loss is your goal, but always remember that rapid fat loss is what you're really after. Therefore, when considering any kind of diet plan, you have to evaluate up front whether it will have you losing fat, or losing weight that you really don't want to lose.

While many people have a problem with overeating, eating itself is not the problem. Your body, after all, does require fuel and materials for rebuilding cells. Protein, carbs, and fat are all needed to maintain proper bodily functions. Of course, you want to stay healthy at all times, so you need to consume all three building blocks even under a rapid weight loss plan.

It's always interesting to see what different diets have you do. Many of them will proclaim to be healthy, even though they suggest eliminating one of the three basic types of nutrients: protein, carbs, and fat. Eating an unbalanced diet runs the risk of doing more harm than good. You could inadvertently end up waging war against your own metabolism, making it virtually impossible to succeed on any diet.

Fortunately, the world seems to have grown weary of the low carb diets that were all the rage in the last decade. Yes, you can lose a significant amount of weight very quickly on a low carb diet. But where does that weight loss come from?

You're actually not losing much fat, but mostly water and muscle. Not only is this not going to result in the good looks you were hoping for, but having less muscle mass will leave you weak and more susceptible to injury. Your base metabolism will also drop, making you likely to eventually gain the weight back, with interest.

Unfortunately, while most people recognize the dangers of low carb diets, low fat diets are still popular. It seems logical that if you want to lose fat, you should eat less fat. However, this is a fallacy.

Consuming the fat your body needs to function well doesn't mean you'll store excess fat under your skin. The fat on your body is simply a storage place for the extra calories you've consumed. It doesn't matter if those extra calories originally came from fat, or if they were converted from something else.

At any rate, eating a low fat diet can make you crave carbs more, spiking your insulin and crashing your blood sugar. It can also wreck your hormone balance and cause major problems with losing fat while staying healthy.

It's a paradox, but the fastest way to lose fat is to eat the fat, carbs, and protein that your body needs. Of course, there's an art to doing it right, and it can't be done haphazardly. But realizing that all types of nutrients are essential is one of the first steps to building a lean and healthy body through rapid weight loss.