Nimra Khan recently opened up about her drastic weight loss journey, revealing how she lost a whopping eight kilos in just a week through an extreme crash diet. According to the 34-year-old popular actor, she followed an extreme crash diet, "setting clear goals.".

“To lose weight you need to set clear goals first," she said.

Nimra disclosed that her diet consisted of only egg whites, apples, green tea, and vegetable juices, completely avoiding carbohydrates. “I had an apple every three hours and green tea every two hours. This routine was repeated in the morning, afternoon, and evening for seven days,” she explained.

Nimra said she began her day with lukewarm water along with honey, lemon, and chia seeds.

However, she said it was fairly difficult to maintain the diet. "It was a 7-day diet plan, and no one has ever completed it for more than 4 days. Most people remain consistent for the first 3 days but give up by the 4th day,” she added.

While Nimra's method may have delivered quick results, health experts warn against following such extreme ways for weight management. Despite giving you the results you desire, extreme weight loss diets come with a whole host of downsides, which should make you think twice about putting your body through one.

According to nutritionists, a crash diet would expect you to slash your calories right from the start, often to below your basal metabolic rate or BMR. And by cutting your calories low and making drastic changes to the type of food you eat, your body will shed weight. However, it comes with a lot of problems and side effects too. A few of these include:

To lose weight you need a high metabolism, meaning you will burn more calories at rest.

Caloric restriction produces a short-term reduction in metabolic rate – and so, if you eat less, your body slows down your metabolic rate in order to preserve energy.

According to studies, extremely low-calorie diets cause an initial rise in the amount of fat present in the heart, triggering complications in those with existing heart conditions like breathlessness, heart palpitations, and arrhythmia.

Losing weight through calorie restriction causes loss of lean muscle mass. In a healthy, gradual weight-loss plan that includes exercise, the effect of losing mass slows as workouts offer protection against muscle loss.

However, crash diets slash calories, lowering muscle mass along with reduced strength throughout life.

Severely restricting calories can leave you cranky, feeling low, and lacking in concentration. According to studies, the effect is comparable to drug withdrawal when a dieter suddenly stops eating their usual foods and embarks on a low-fat diet.

Your hair relies on you to feed it from within with a good diet including plenty of protein, healthy fats, and vitamins and minerals such as vitamins C and E, biotin, selenium, and zinc. A crash diet is likely to leave you lacking in these hair-nourishing nutrients and cause extreme hair loss.

Get Latest News Live on Times Now along with Breaking News and Top Headlines from Weight Loss, Health and around the world.