Looking for fast ways to lose weight? Perhaps you're preparing for a big date, or maybe you want to look your best for the high school reunion scheduled for next month.  Regardless of your reason for wanting to lose weight, wouldn't it be great if you could drop those extra pounds quickly?

This is the first of a three part series on losing weight quickly.  In this article, we will be discussing the feasibility of losing weight within a short period of time. Firstly, do methods to lose weight fast really exist? And if so, are the methods effective in keeping your weight down over the long term?

Do Methods To Lose Weight Fast Really Exist?

The short answer is yes they do. One such example is fasting.  People have fasted for centuries.  Some people fast for religious purposes.  Some people fast as a manner of conveying a stand on a particular social or political issue.  And yes, some people fast to lose weight quickly.

How quick is quick?

Scholars from the Rowett Research Institute conducted a study in 2002, and it was revealed that, on average, a person can actually lose 1% to 2% of their total body weight in a span of 36 hours of food deprivation.   What does this mean?  In terms of concrete numbers, a person weighing 200 lbs. can actually lose 2 to 4 lbs in 36 hours of fasting. The same thing can probably be said for other quick methods of losing weight like diet pills.

A tempting approach, isn't it? But before you commit yourself to fasting, diet pills, or other fast ways to lose weight, we must answer another question.

Are These Methods Effective Over The Long Term?

To answer this let's take a look at what drives most proven weight loss techniques - the speeding up of a person's metabolism.

Indeed, a major factor in losing weight is the speed of one's metabolism.  A fast metabolism will mean that the body will be able to burn calories more efficiently into usable energy, leaving fewer calories that can be converted into fats.  On the other hand, a slow metabolism will mean that the body burns fewer calories, and consequently, there will be excess calories that can be converted into fats.  Every weight loss method that wants to guarantee long term results should be focused on speeding up a person's metabolism.

Now, most of the fast ways to lose weight only yield short term results because they don't train the metabolism to speed up. In most instances, they actually cause your metabolism to slow down because the body isn't getting the food it needs, so it goes into starvation mode.  They may cause significant weight loss initially, but these effects will only last for a short while because eventually the subject's slow metabolism will cause the body to gain weight again.  Even worse, some these methods can actually mess up your metabolism and cause undesirable complications that will make matters worse.

So be careful when choosing how you want to lose those extra pounds because even though there are fast ways to lose weight most of them are not effective over the long term.