A crash diet is a diet that restricts calories while not compromising nutrients.
It achieves results by reducing energy so your body needs to dig into your
existing fat stores and thus you lose weight.
Fifty years ago, crash diets were
all the rage. It is a fallacy to believe that women were more voluptuous and
curvaceous, and diet obsession is a new fad: indeed, the fuller figures of the
1950’s were a result of the gradual return to normality after wartime rations.
With the restoration of food supplies, the propaganda machine went into
action. It was a brave new world. A world of plenty. People were encouraged
to enjoy food they could have only dreamed of during the six years of war.
Milk, butter, cheese and cream were promoted for their ‘natural’ qualities and
the same went for meat, bacon and eggs. Bananas, unseen for many years
suddenly came on the scene again.Women’s figures blossomed and the
famous curves we all associate with the era were, in fact, an aberration.
Women began to gain weight and they certainly did not celebrate the fact.
Suddenly young women were cinching themselves into full-body girdles and
long-line bras. Magazines of the era were jam-packed with special slimming
breads, artificial sweeteners and biscuits and weird diets like the Gelatine
diet.
Crash diets are brilliant for anyone with poor willpower. For these people,
a slow and steady approach is useless. It might be desirable to lose weight
gradually, but who wants to do that? It is like digging a hole with a spoon.
But a couple of pounds weight loss is barely discernable when you have fifty
pounds to lose.
Dieting feels like torture. It is important to embrace the fact
that slimming means you miss out on some things but you gain in other
ways. Crash dieting gives good psychological weight loss and requires
enough discipline to make the slimmer feel she is doing something positive
– and this makes her keen to continue and not lose the benefits she has just
worked for.
