In order to survive, the health and wellness industry has to constantly come up with new gimmicks. One category of gimmicks are fad diets. And fasting has proven to be a somewhat popular fad.

Unfortunately, fasting has some major drawbacks for your body and for fat loss. Thus, here are 6 reasons why fasting will thwart your fat loss efforts:

1. Liver drainage. What drains out of your liver? Glycogen. And this can happen in less than a days time. Without glycogen your body doesn’t have a mechanism to control blood sugar. Thus, you’ll end up with extremely low levels of energy.

2. Lean tissue cannibalism. Your body doesn’t want to die. So in an attempt to survive it will break down your muscle and convert it to blood sugar. Why does it need blood sugar? Because without it, your brain would shut down.

3. The cannibalism of other tissues. Muscle tissue isn’t the only victim here. Other vital tissues like organs will also be cannibalized and transformed into sugar. This is definitely not a healthy state to be in.

4. Ketosis. If you fast for an extended period of time, your body will produce ketone bodies to prevent death. Ketone bodies are modified fat fragments that your nervous system can survive on, although not optimal. Thus, you begin to function on inefficient energy sources.

5. No proof of cleansing. Many people fast because they believe it cleanses their body. Yet no conclusive scientific studies have proven this. In fact, a recent documentary by the BBC showed that fasting provided NO benefit whatsoever in terms of increased health.

6. Metabolic acidosis. Acidosis is not fun. An immediate drawback will be the inability to exercise with intensity. In fact, exercise will become astronomically painful. You’ll also lose an abundance of minerals through urine.

Unfortunately, most fasts are also accompanied by a weight gain rebound. This happens because as you fast your metabolism slows down significantly. Then once you stop fasting, you eat an excess to compensate, but you have a slower metabolism!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 5:17 am and is filed under fat loss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.