The Dangers Of Crash Dieting

It’s a new year and you so want to undo what you did during the silly season. In the event that you’re tempted to type ‘lose 5kg in 10 days’ into Google, first, you should once and for all learn about crash dieting.

- Roisín Dervish-O’Kane and Amy Abraham

It’s 3pm on a Tuesday and you should have your eyes and attention trained on the Excel doc in front of you. Instead, they’ve been diverted to your weather app and the forecast for your summer-holiday destination 14 days from now. Thoughts turn to the inevitable bikini pics and the lengths you’re willing to go to in order to forge a flat stomach.

While you know that so-called summer bodies are built in winter and good nutrition is for life, the pre- (and let’s be honest, post-) holiday body panic can be pretty unsettling. And it isn’t just the impending sunshine break that has the power to make you part with salary and sense in the name of slimming down stat – there’s also the matter of baring one or both sets of limbs at the coming onslaught of parties and weddings.

So what is it about these date-in-the-diary events that make even the most sensible among us want to shrink? “These occasions tend to be understood as particularly important because you feel like you’re on display,” says psychologist Jess Baker. "Underpinning this is the fear that you’re going to be judged. You seek other people’s approval and believe that changing your body and looking your ‘best’ is the way to win this,” she says.