10 Signs that your diet is going to make you sick

There's a ton of reasons you might want to lose weight.

Maybe you've got a big event (like a wedding) to think about. Perhaps, in going to put on your favourite jeans, you notice they're a little bit tight around the butt area. Maybe you want to improve your supposedly unhealthy lifestyle. Whatever it is, I'm not judging: going on a diet in order to lose weight has its merits, that's for sure.

That is, until your diet leaves you feeling sick, dizzy, or otherwise much worse off than before you started. Turns out, there's a few ways to know ahead of time if your diet's going to make you sick.

At its most fundamental, the key to weight loss is to ensure that you are expending more energy than you're taking into your body. The bigger the deficit, the more weight you lose. Simple, right? But if you find yourself with too big of a difference between calories in and calories out, the only thing you'll be losing is your consciousness as you try to climb a flight of stairs. Try to stick to the recommended daily limits - that's between 1,600 and 2,400 calories for women, and 2,000 to 3,000 for men.

At first glance, this might not seem like much of an issue: so what if your diet's boring? If it has the right number of calories, then it doesn't matter, right? Wrong: if you're eating the same things day in, day out, you're probably not getting the nutrients you need for a healthy, balanced diet, and this will make you pretty sick in the long run. The best way to diet is to introduce a whole host of healthy foods into your mouth.

Come on, guys. I didn't really need to explain this to you, did I? In the 2006 film the Devil Wears Prada, Emily (Emily Blunt's character) goes on an extreme diet in order to get ready for Fashion Week: she virtually starves herself, before eating a cheese cube when she felt herself about to pass out. Do not do this. You will die. Pretty much any diet which requires you to literally eat one food when you start to lose consciousness is obviously insane.

In your quest to find the ultimate weight-loss plan, you might spend hours in the internet, scouring forums and blogs alike. You find one that seems perfect for you, but if it comes from deep inside Reddit or from a random caption from an Instagram post, then maybe it's not the one for you. If there's no medical research behind it or it hasn't been signed off by a medical professional, then there's a pretty good chance it'll make you very, very sick.

When it comes to healthy eating, fibre is usually the nutrient holding it together. The average American eats about 15 grams of fibre every day (10 fewer than the recommended daily amount), but without enough of it, you're going to have a bad time. Fibre is vital for good digestive function - it helps to keep you full for longer, and without enough of it, you're going to end up quite constipated. So if your diet doesn't have enough whole grains, beans, fruits or vegetables, the likelihood is that it's not going to help you lose weight, and you won't have a lot of fun in the process.

Similar to getting your dieting advice from a quack who's forced to post his work on Tumblr, any diet that requires you to take a bunch of supplements to make it work is not a diet worth pursuing - unless you really want to end up in the hospital. The supplement market is incredibly under-regulated, so not only could you be putting things into your body that have had little to no research carried out on them, but they could also be laced with fillers, flavourings or binders that could have a negative effect on your health.

Yes, you're right: eating the right foods is the best way to ensure your health conditions aren't being exacerbated, but there's no set diet that's guaranteed to cure diabetes, coeliac disease or anything like that. If you find a diet that promises to be the panacea to all of your problems, there's a 100-percent chance your diet is too good to be true. Don't risk it.

Now, if your diet consists exclusively of pizzas, burgers and ice cream, then going completely the other way isn't actually that bad of an idea. But let's say you're an avid meat eater; no matter how hard you try, attempting to try a vegan diet right away is only going to make you sick.  “If you want to change things up a bit, the safest bet would be to do so slowly so your system doesn’t get a total shock,” says David Zinczenko, author of the Zero Belly Diet, and if you do so too fast, you may end up constipated, bloated, or worse.

In order to burn the calories in your body, regular exercise is just as important as dieting when it comes to losing weight. But if your diet lists two hours in the gym daily as a requirement rather than a suggestion, there's a good chance that your new eating plan will leave your immune system compromised, according to an article in the journal Sports Medicine. A compromised immune system will leave you vulnerable to nasty upper respiratory tract infections, and goodness knows what else.

Friends: getting to lunch or dinnertime is meant to be a joyous occasion. But when you're on a new diet and your first thought at lunch is a deep feeling of dread, then maybe your diet is too restrictive to have any fun with. Restrictive dieting may help your physical health, but it might do a number on your mental health, causing you to experience anxiety, depression, and much, much, more.

Well, there you have it folks. Although it might mean cutting out some of your favourite foods, dieting doesn't need to be a restrictive, miserable process, no matter how much weight you want to lose. If you're not enjoying yourself at every meal, then there's a good chance you're not doing things right. Don't send yourself to the hospital over a few extra pounds.