Laxative Diet
The Laxative Diet Is Not A Good Thing
Should you see an advertisement for a laxative diet guaranteed to help you shed unwanted pounds, the best advice is to run the other way. It would seem that most of the diet plans on the market today are, if not out and out scams, at the very least misleading.
The only really good diet is a healthy one, and most weight loss diets being touted are anything but. Either they will result in weight loss, followed by weight gain, which is not good for you, or they cause you to lose weight as promised, but take a toll on your health in the process. As far as a laxative diet is concerned, it's downright dangerous.
If you've been thinking along the lines of a laxative diet, ask yourself two questions. First, what do you want the laxative diet to accomplish, and second, what will the laxative diet actually accomplish? The two answers are not at all the same.
We take laxatives to treat digestive disorders, primarily constipation. A laxative, doing what it should, assists the digestive system in moving food through the intestines and into and through the colon. Normally, as food passes through the intestines, nutrients are extracted and enter the blood stream, the nutrients we need not only to stay healthy, but to stay alive.
What Can Happen - If you are taking laxatives systematically with losing weight in mind, two things are happening, and both are bad. First, food will be rushed through your intestinal tract too fast for sufficient nutrients to be released into the blood stream. True, you won't be getting as many calories into your system, but you won't be getting the proper amounts of the nutrients you must have either. Fewer calories will result in weight loss, as you'll be storing less fat and burning more. Fewer nutrients will result in vital tissue in your body to start wasting away, which also is experienced as weight loss. In this case though, you aren't just losing weight, you're wasting away, and if that process goes far enough, you simply may not recover.
The second thing is this. Laxatives not only speed things through your intestinal tract, they also cause you to lose fluid. Lose some fluid and of course you lose weight. That fluid however must be replaced or you'll become dehydrated. Being chronically dehydrated is not only very unhealthy, but potentially lethal.
Not Laxative Diet, Laxative Abuse - When you're using laxatives to shed weight, what is happening is you're basically throwing the baby out with the bath water. Overindulging in laxatives abuses your body. In fact, the term laxative abuse is often connected to the term laxative diet. You will lose weight, but at great risk, with the chance you will hit a "tipping point" after which you many not be able to regain your health, a terrible price to pay for losing pounds.
Bloating, An Unpleasant Side Effect - One of the side effects of abusing laxatives is that in an attempt to recover from fluid loss, and hopefully you will continue to drink fluids, the body will tend to retain more fluid and you'll experience bloating, which looks just the same as being fat. It's not fat however, but liquid, and excess liquid results in excess pounds. Excess pounds mean more laxatives, and you find yourself in a truly vicious cycle. To top it off, if you do go off your laxative diet, there's an excellent chance of having withdrawal symptoms, so you're getting it from all sides.
Summarizing it all, a laxative diet just isn't worth it, considering the substantial risks involved.