Most of us learn quickly that poor weight management is associated with long-term health issues. It is an unfortunate fact of society that heavier set people tend to be shamed for their size when people come in all shapes and sizes. There is a healthy range for each person and stepping outside of it by being either too heavy or too thin can have notable health consequences. People tend to fixate on people with what they view as “too much” weight though. It is easier and more convenient when people are taught to idolize a thinner shape as superior. We can’t take away these associations even though the obsessive idolization of thinness can drive people to drastic measures to achieve it. There is a need to remind everyone that large-scale weight loss and gain at a rapid pace can both have huge health risks. Ignoring that rapid fluctuations on their own can harm people has gone on for too long.

The Strain of Changes
As a complex amalgamation of interlinking organs, your body has to strike a constant balance of want and need around your body. Some areas will end up suffering to ensure that others function. This is typically the most evident with your skin. That organ, in particular, tends to get a little less attention as it isn’t necessarily as important as your heart or liver. Your body is balancing priorities like this constantly and most things you can be doing to cause rapid weight loss or gain are likely going to be causing a certain level of stress on the body. Stress is one of those responses that has a mixed benefit when it comes to your health. It puts you in a state to deal with many scenarios, yes, but you end up having to deal with the fact that your body is doing that by keeping itself on high alert and various things suffer. Your body wears itself out rapidly this way and has issues keeping track of all that it needs to keep you healthy. That’s where problems come in.

Slow and Steady
Stress is something we all recognize as a risk factor at this point. It is frequently heavily associated with heart disease and stroke. It isn’t a coincidence that large weight fluctuations cause exactly the same sort of issues. Most studies show that rapid weight gain and loss exact a heavy toll on your body that ends up hampering its functioning. It is worth stressing that the effects are not directly connected, but rather the increase in heart disease and stroke incidence is an indirect effect. The general belief is the physical and mental stress causes the release of the stress hormones that end up hurting the body and sustained exposure to them, as we highlighted earlier, causes things to wear down. This results in the expected issues as well as a general sense of wearing out. Lethargy and disturbed mood and sleep become more common. Weight loss, like weight gain, needs to be relatively slow and steady. It is better to hold at an unhealthy weight than to do all you can to lose weight rapidly and regain it. All that stress could, quite literally, kill you.

Losing With Loss
Reality television has popularized shows where people do their best to work towards a particular end. Weight loss is a frequent subject to the point that there is at least one show entirely about losing as much weight as possible. It seems like a good and sensible goal as contestants are frequently shown to seem in an unhealthy weight range. What the shows don’t show you is that the drastic attempts to lose weight through diet and lots of exercises destroy the body. Many competitors in such shows end the show with devastating health issues that are harder to see than overall weight. Rapid weight loss can lead to malnutrition and electrolyte imbalances from poor dietary choices. Various issues with internal organs are also common. The body is meant to have a rhythm to it and breaking that rhythm will punish every organ to the point that you could end up with permanent health problems. One must remember to be kind to one’s body.

Rapid weight loss and gain are both bad for the body. They’re harder even on the lower end of ten pounds or so. Losing it and gaining it back within the space of a few months will put a strain on your body. It is even more straining to push for massive weight loss. The sheer potential danger that rapid, massive weight loss can put you in cannot be overstated. Weight loss is best achieved and managed over time through dedication to a good diet and exercise. This will help keep you healthier at every weight and ensure you lose weight at a reliable yet safe rate.