Holy weight loss, Batman!
Spend enough time scrolling through keto-diet or weight loss Reddit threads and you’re bound to come across “whoosh” – an effect that many dieters describe as a sudden but significant drop in pounds.
Doctors and nutritionists have debated the concept before, though the whoosh effect isn’t all flim-flam. Still, dieting with the goal of rapid weight loss is rarely healthy, and the protocol supporting it should be taken with more than a grain of salt.
The ketogenic diet, known by the shorthand keto, has been used in health care settings for over a century. But it reached peak fad status in the age of the internet, as bloggers lured people with the siren-call of diets that demanded all-you-can-eat bacon.
Keto – a high-fat, low-carb regimen – originally prescribed to patients with epilepsy, because how it can help stabilize neurons in the brain over time and prevent seizures.
With strict adherence, the diet induces a biological process known as ketosis, training your body to run on fat instead of normal fuel and carbohydrates like glucose and other sugars.
Cutting out carbs (bread and pastas but also certain fruits and vegetables) and replacing them with high-fat foods like meat, fish, milk and oil gives the body no choice but to burn fat for energy instead.
The mystical status of the diet rose even higher when people online started talking about the supposed “whoosh effect” and the speed of the diet’s results in the mirror.
“The point of talking about whoosh is so people don’t get discouraged when they see the scale stuck for weeks,” one Redditor wrote in a weight loss thread. “Then you can see a big drop overnight, because your body is releasing the weight of the water it’s holding, and now your real weight is showing.”
Another commenter wrote: “I described a ‘woosh’ as my body feels safe enough to drop some weight. It holds, making sure that the deficit is a new behavior pattern and not a fluke and then it seems like ‘cool, we are not in danger. Feel free to let this go.’ “
But experts see it differently.
Registered dietitian Gregory Lafortune, MS, RDN, LD, told The Post that the whoosh effect is “a real experience, but it’s often misunderstood.”
“People see it as sudden fat loss from the keto diet,” he explains. “Instead, the whoosh effect is attributed to a shift in water weight due to the keto diet. This is not sudden fat loss. This is sudden water weight loss. Gradual fat loss.”
Losing water weight can be more pronounced on the keto diet because of how the body stores carbohydrates.
It is in the name: Carbo-Hydra– test. It is stored in the body as glycogen, a constellation of glucose molecules. For every gram of glycogen stored, there are at least three grams of water stored away with it.
“This is why someone on a low-carb keto diet loses water weight,” says Lafortune. “This is different from other diets because you can’t restrict carbohydrates as strictly as keto.”
Rapid weight loss can indeed occur from a very low carbohydrate diet, often within the first few days. But it’s water weight, not fat, as some champions of the whoosh effect claim.
Chasing the whoosh effect isn’t just a lost cause, it can also lead to serious problems like dehydration.
Some keto dieters talk about diarrhea — which can dehydrate the body and strip it of essential nutrients — as a sign that they’ve reached the whoosh effect.
Some say they cause whoosh in other harmful ways like yo-yoing between fasting and binging or drinking alcohol for its diuretic effects.
According to Healthline, “each of these approaches is aimed at slimming your body. While it may make you thin temporarily, it’s not a lasting effect.”
In general, Lafortune recommends setting goals that prioritize long-term health, not just immediate changes in the mirror.
If the GLP-1 fever has taught us anything, it’s that rapid weight loss can take a toll on the body.
Whether it’s from diets like keto, medications like GLP-1 or other sources, Lafortune counts muscle loss, a higher risk of regaining weight, a slower metabolism, loss of strength and energy and sometimes severe nutritional deficiencies as potential side effects of rapid weight loss.
Suffice it to say, the whoosh effect is not the overnight miracle some people make it out to be. Crash, bam, kaboom.
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