3 crazy weight-loss shortcuts that you must avoid

It’s almost impossible to read through a magazine or enter a store these days without being surrounded by the latest and greatest ways to lose weight.

However, most weight-loss shortcuts are usually impermanent, can potentially cause injury and might even cause you to gain more weight than what you started with.

Here are three reasons to avoid these crazy weight-loss shortcuts of all time.


Wearing corsets

Over past few years, waist training has been highly publicized over social media and practically with the Kardashian ladies. This corset-like device is worn for hours at a time to help compress the entire torso and decrease the size of your waist permanently over time.

However for the sake of having a tiny waist you will be getting more than what they're bargaining for! As the waist-trainer provides a false support for the core, while it’s worn constantly, it can decrease core strength due to lack of muscular stimulation.

The core is known as your deep abdominal wall and it is ideally suited to perform girdle-like supportive function (around your lower abs - like a belt). When the core muscles are engaged naturally, they support the lower back and flatten your belly.

But as woman are encouraged to wear the waist-training corset for long periods of time, this neurologically tells the body it no longer needs to switch on the core muscles and longer-term usage can actually diminish core strength and this can to back injury.

Starving yourself

Unfortunately, rather than helping you lose weight more quickly, severely restricting calories from your diet actually prevents your body from burning unwanted fat stores effectively.

One reason for this is because when you stop eating, your body goes into starvation mode – a mechanism your body adopts as a defense against famine.

It does so by clinging on to fat stores, and using lean tissue and muscle instead, to provide it with the calories it usually gets from food and drink to function normally.

This could result in a loss of muscle, which in turn lowers your metabolic rate (so that your body uses fewer calories to keep working). Weight loss usually slows down when this occurs.

Over exercising

It is not uncommon for people to perform hours and hours of exercise to try to lose weight fast. However, it can actually be counter-productive to your weight-loss goals.

Many symptoms that can arise from too much exercise (whether in frequency, intensity or both) include fatigue despite getting enough rest, decreased fitness performance, problems sleeping, moodiness and weight gain.

One explanation is that too much exercise can cause an increase of cortisol in our bodies. Cortisol is a hormone that is released when our bodies are under stress, and encourages weight gain, especially around the abdominal area.

The bottom line is, there are no shortcuts when it comes to losing weight and keeping it off. Any fad diet or quick fix can slow down your metabolic rate, cause exhaustion and cause you to become disheartened by the lack of progress.

By staying on track and avoiding the shortcuts, will keep you on the right course towards a happy and healthy life.