This article will tell you the fastest way to lose weight in a week, but the main intent is not to teach you how to lose weight in a week, but rather to explain why you should not have this as your goal! As someone that did the yo-yo diets for well over a decade with one failure after another, I learned that short-term weight loss goals are not good, they’re worse than not dieting at all. To illustrate, let us begin with the fastest way to lose weight, see what is really going on, and then see why it is not a good idea.

The quickest way to lose weight in a week, and also dangerous if taken to extremes, is to not eat and to exercise as much as possible. The old adage, “eat less, exercise more” taken to the extreme becomes “fast and be as active as possible.” Do not fast unless you have consulted with your physician and know how to transition off of a fast or you could get quite ill. Also, if you exercise too much, you will easily become faint and perhaps pass out.

However, if your body is up for the task, you can fast for a week without any food fairly safely, just be sure to drink water and do not overexert yourself. Your body will eat both your muscles and fat, so if you do this frequently, you will basically look like a smaller version of yourself. This is how I lost seventy five pounds in six months, coupled with a raw foods diet when not fasting.

If your goal is to look better, fasting will not help unless you are extremely obese, and then transition to something that will keep the weight off and be more sustainable than your current exercise and nutrition habits. The body returns to its natural state unless a new set-point is established and maintained for a period of several months. And a new set-point is not established by accident; it requires a change in habits, and will only last as long as the change in habits is maintained.

Losing weight in a week helps almost nobody, and after extreme dieting, people lose their metabolically expensive muscle and down regulate their metabolism (their bodies think, “I am starving, so I should convert all new food into fat”), which leads to the yo-yo effect I am sure you are all too familiar with. Lose weight, and rebound with more than you started with. Think long term; adopt a more active exercise regime, and improve your general eating habits. Improve consistently, little by little, and you will no longer have to consider fast and futile weight loss fads.

The author is a power-lifter and “former fat boy” that writes about health on everything from acne scar treatment to weight loss and sleep tips.