Are You Going To Extremes On Phentermine?

While adopting healthy habits like drinking more water and exercising really help you to lose weight with phentermine, there is a danger of going to extremes – even if you think you’re making healthy choices.

Some people throw themselves into strict diets and exhausting exercise routines, thinking that they will lose weight faster, but you can have too much of a good thing.

Here we explain how going to extremes while taking phentermine isn’t the way to lose weight and how moderation and balance should be at the heart of any healthy lifestyle changes.

Are You Going To Extremes On Phentermine?

Just as overeating and sedentary lifestyles are bad for your health, suddenly working out for hours a day or drastically cutting calories aren’t good for you either.

Often people taking phentermine are very aware that they have a set length of time taking the medication and can throw themselves into new healthy habits.

While it’s great to eat better and be more active, there is a danger of overdoing it.

Here we explain some of the ways you might be going to extremes on phentermine and explain how to apply more moderation in your lifestyle changes.

1. Too Few Calories

We can’t stress this point enough: you need to eat to lose weight!

If food is our fuel, too few calories mean that your body is running on fumes, so it doesn’t have the energy to do everything it needs to, which means that losing weight is NOT a priority.

To lose weight, your body needs to burn fat and build muscle, but each pound of lean muscle in your body requires 50 to 100 calories to keep going. In comparison, each pound of fat only requires about three calories daily.

If your body doesn’t have enough calories coming in, then it prioritizes feeding the fat to sustain itself for the future rather than feeding the hungry muscle cells.

The scale may still say that you’re losing weight, but it’s the wrong way to go about it; eating too little and losing precious muscle often leads to a yo-yo dieting cycle of losing and gaining weight.

This is because losing muscle and forcing your body to conserve fat slows down metabolism and means that when you inevitably start to eat more calories, your body will be ill-equipped to burn them off, and the scale will start to move up again.

Many people have a little appetite when they first start taking phentermine, so there is a danger of going to extremes without even realizing it.

Even if you have no appetite, be sure to stick to a reasonable calorie minimum of at least 1200 calories per day, ensuring that these calories are obtained from nutritious foods to boost health, fat burn, and weight loss.

2. Over-Exercising

Starting to exercise while taking phentermine helps you to make the most of the energy boost it gives you and helps you to develop a healthy habit of daily physical activity.

However, going to extremes and throwing yourself into an intense exercise regime is problematic for several reasons. Firstly, you run the risk of injury – especially if you haven’t exercised regularly for a long time.

Secondly, your workouts will become overly demanding, and you are more likely to give up when faced with the impossible challenge of exercising for hours each day.

Thirdly, over-exercising is also unlikely to give you the weight loss results you want as pushing your body to extremes will start to have the opposite effect.

In the same way that under-eating causes your body to slow down as a way of conserving energy, over-exercising causes your body to slow your metabolism to burn fewer calories.

Protein stores and lean muscle are then used to fuel your exercise routine as your body stops burning fat in a bid to conserve energy for the future.

So, while exercising every day is a great habit to start, pushing your body to its physical limits will not increase your chance of phentermine weight loss and may even stall weight loss.

3. Overeating ‘Healthy Foods’

People tend to divide foods into good and bad, or healthy and unhealthy, but really the distinction is not so clear cut. Studies show that when we think of food as being healthy, portion control is forgotten, and we tend to overeat.

Many foods are healthy in moderation, but once you start going to extremes and piling up your plate thinking that it’s all ‘good’ food, you’re more likely to go over your calorie allowance and then struggle to lose weight as a result. 

Foods like nuts and avocado are good examples; both are nutritious and contain healthy fats, fiber and protein, but they are also very calorific.

Snacking on a whole bag of nuts or chopping up a whole avocado into your salad can put you over your calorie limit before you know it.

Stick to a handful of nuts for a snack and no more than around half an avocado a day while you’re trying to lose weight with phentermine.

Then there are other dangers when it comes to over-consuming a certain food. You may think that juicing a bag of carrots a day will give you a big vitamin boost.

Still, each glass contains about 9 grams of sugar, while overdoing the canned tuna can result in consuming too much mercury, so remember to get a variety of nutritious foods rather than reaching for the same ones every day.

4. Drinking Too Much Water

It’s calorie-free, speeds up metabolism, helps you shift water weight, suppresses appetite, and helps to give you more energy, so there’s every reason that you should drink water to help boost weight loss.

Because of its weight-loss-boosting properties, some people believe that the more water you drink, the better, but drinking too much water can be dangerous.

Drinking more water than the kidneys can get rid of in your urine causes the excess water to collect in your body, causing an imbalance in the amount of water and sodium in your body, known as over-hydration.

Over-hydration can lead to headaches and nausea, confusion, and disorientation. If it is untreated, it can lead to more serious effects such as muscle weakness, seizures, unconsciousness, and coma.

To avoid over-hydration, you should not drink more than one liter of water in an hour, and stick to the recommended daily amount of two liters (around eight 8oz glasses) of water each day, and up to 2.5 liters if you engage in exercise for up to an hour or so.

Generally, if you rarely feel thirsty and your urine is colorless or light yellow, then it’s likely that you’re drinking enough water.

5. Ruling Out ‘Bad’ Foods

Whether it’s carbs, dairy, gluten, or the occasional treat, going to extremes and banning ‘forbidden’ foods or drastically cutting out entire food groups also leads to problems.

Losing weight requires a healthy diet comprising all the main food groups, so ruling anything out based on the idea that it leads to weight gain is not a good idea.

Healthy sources of carbohydrates such as legumes, whole grain pasta, quinoa, brown rice, and fruit are all essential for a balanced diet.

These healthy carbs fuel our bodies and our brains and help to boost mood, so without them, people are more likely to experience memory problems, low mood, and lethargy.

Carbs also help to reduce fat and keep you feeling full with fiber, so they’re important for people losing weight with phentermine.

Dairy has also been shown to promote fat burn with its combination of calcium, vitamin D, and protein, so unless you have been diagnosed with an intolerance or allergy, there is no need to rule out dairy from your diet.

The same goes with gluten, which is now the number one enemy of many dieting ‘experts’; however, there is no evidence linking gluten to weight gain.

Gluten should only be avoided if you have a medically diagnosed intolerance or allergy, as gluten-free versions of foods like bread and pasta are actually much more processed and worse for you than their whole-grain counterparts.  

As for those treats, many of us deny ourselves when we start trying to lose weight, whether it’s pizza or cookies, banning them completely can often cause us to place added emotional value on these foods.

This then leads to heightened cravings and resentment, so try not to go to extremes when it comes to excluding anything from your diet, as developing a healthy relationship with food also means making room for the occasional treat.

Are you guilty of going to extremes in an attempt to lose weight on phentermine? Let us know by commenting below.