Radical diets are an effective way to lose weight, but can be dangerous.
A radical diet is a method of drastically changing your eating habits. It may be temporary and intended to jumpstart a weight-loss plan or to clean your body of toxins. Radical diets might also be permanent, altering your way of eating for the rest of your life. Whether or not a radical diet is healthy depends on the individual following the diet. If you are severely overweight, restoring health might require a radical reduction of calories. However, balance and variety are the keys to healthy eating, so radical change might lead to a nutrition deficiency if not carefully monitored.
Cleansing Diets
Cleansing or detoxifying your system with radical changes to your diet can result in weight loss, improved health and reduced risk of disease. Detoxification diets are usually temporary and eliminate foods such as meat, dairy and products with unnatural ingredients. Eating only fruits and vegetables is a healthy way to clean out your system because you are still consuming vitamins and nutrients. Cleanses and fasts might not be as healthy. Eating only one or two foods, even only temporarily, deprives your body of essential nutrients. Following diets such as the Master Cleanse and using products to flush your digestive system are radical and possibly unhealthy ways to lose weight.
Liquid Diets
There are two kinds of liquid diets: full liquid and clear liquid. A clear liquid diet includes only water, apple and grape juice, clear broth and clear soda. It is used when the body is unable to digest soft foods or thick, heavy liquids. The diet usually lasts only a day or two because it is difficult to get the proper nutrients. A full liquid diet includes all liquids, but no solid foods. This diet enables you to eat when you are unable to chew or swallow food and includes food blended into liquid, in addition to milk, broth and water.
Vegetarian, Vegan and Raw Diets
Vegetarian, vegan and raw diets all focus on consumption of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Vegan diets might be considered more radical than vegetarian diets, with a raw diet the most radical of the three. In addition to fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, vegetarian diets include legumes, tubers, grains and dairy products such as milk, cheese and yogurt, as well as eggs. Vegan diets eliminate all animal products. Raw diets include only uncooked or slightly heated food, so you might need to soak legumes or grains to make them palatable.
Weight-Loss Surgery
Though weight-loss surgery is not a diet itself, it results in a drastically different diet. For the first few weeks following the surgery, you will be able to eat only small amounts of liquid food. As your body heals from the operation, your stomach will remain smaller than it was before. Bariatric surgery re-routes food through the digestive system and Lap-Band surgery cinches the stomach with an adjustable band. Patients are physically required to reduce their food intake, often by thousands of calories each day. Weight-loss surgery is recommended by doctors for patients who are obese.
