But these lengths to which we go often include fast weight loss efforts. And these fast weight loss attempts are done in spite of the even greater risks to our health.

As medical and health professionals at the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases have identified, overweight and obese people experience weight-related health problems that range from diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure to high cholesterol levels, high blood sugar levels, and high heart rate levels. So with the urging that tells us how even a "small weight loss of 10 to 20 pounds" can improve our general health, it's understandable that many of us would be tempted to go for an even better way: dropping those 10 to 20 pounds by way of a fast weight loss plan (that is anything but "planned").

The attempt at a fast weight loss-weight loss not done properly, with mental preparedness, nutritionally balanced food plans, and decent exercise-has some even more frightening health problems attached to it:

• Deprivation leads to Double Binging. If you deprive your body too long, too often, and too fastly, it craves longer, more often, and comes on craving more fastly, taking you off guard and talking you into scarfing twice as many calories as you just slammed dunked.
• Depleting Muscles Instead of Fat. With the wrong fast weight loss effort you might be telling your body you are fasting, or striking, and the body will not only store more fat (as a biological imperative for survival) but will start munching on the good stuff: your muscles.
  
• Destroying Protein…in your Beautiful Hair. If you lose too fast, your hair goes into what is known as TE (Telogen Effluvium) mode, and drops out in clumps. This is because your body is reacting to the stress of too rapid a weight loss.

And these are just a few dangers of fast weight loss, weight loss that is too fast. More will be revealed, of course, as vitamin and mineral depletion, water level alteration, enzyme production halting, hormone shutdown rebellions go into effect. So, from what I can recall of the hundred or so weight reduction schemes I participated in to lose weight, it is better to intentionally lose fat slowly, as it will stay off longer and will allow you to keep your hair, your teeth, your health, your sanity…