Hmm reading about the crash diets here, perhaps I should rephrase what I did-I guess it can be defined more as "strict dieting" cycling with more relaxed dieting. The guide I used called it a crash diet, but it wasn't exactly a cayenne pepper and lemonade diet.
Either way OP, it depends on how strict this dieting period is and how that will affect you mentally. For instance, I know that cheat days drive me crazy so I can't do them. Calorie cycling weekly is also hard for me. But for others, this is a great method, so if you decide to go back and forth on how strict your diet is, as long as its done in a safe way and won't drive you off the wall, it might be something to consider, but if it is something that is very unhealthy and/or leaves you feeling horrible, then perhaps its not the best method.

IA with the others. Crash dieting may make you lose faster, and you'll even like what you see for a short while, but then you will gain it all back and MORE. The body doesn't like starvation, you see. Most people who crash diet, diet themselves fatter than their original starting weight in the long-term. I've heard of people dieting themselves up to 400lbs over multiple attempts with this method. Many years later they are usually willing to give their right arm for the weight that they were originally dissatisfied with!

There's also a very sad reality that you will develop binge eating disorder/bulimia and/or anorexia, and getting rid of that is no walk in the park.

Not worth it. Be patient, be healthy.

btw, juice fasts, water fasts, all fad diets under the guise of "healthy ways to detox." All b.s. and dangerous. Our body already has a detoxifier: it's called the liver.

in my experience, the crash diet is always followed by the "fail" period where my will runs out and i eat more, gain back all the weight and maybe and then some.

i had the crash/fail cycle happy at least 10 or so times over the course of 3 years with fad diets before i realized that if i had done "slow and steady" with a diet that i could keep up with, i would've been at my goal five times over already.

starving your body cannot be maintained in the long term. that's why starvation is a form a torture. the body needs fuel and needs to eat.

i understand the temptation to starve oneself, and i've been there. but i echo with others that i was listless, didn't even lose very quickly, was lightheaded and weak and kept on bumping into things.

it's hard to think "oh i will get there" when it's moving so slowly, but you WILL.

p.s. as hard as losing is, maintenance is just as difficult (sorry!), so take your time and learn good eating habits now. the only thing that will make you feel bad about carrying around extra weight is to lose it quickly and gain it back just as quickly.

I think crash diets have their place. The key thing is understanding what they're good for and what they're not good for. Someone mentioned Lyle McDonald's Rapid Fat Loss. His first chapter discusses exactly the context in which a crash diet can make sense.

As you mentioned they do not create sustainable weight loss. Could not agree more with you there.

I've pretty much got to where I am by crash dieting. I've fallen off plenty of times like most do and I never gain more than 5lbs back, so to people who say you are certain to gain all the weight back and more, no, that doesn't apply to everyone. Sure a lot of people will, but not everyone does.
I guess I am addicted to crash diets because I keep coming back to them. I know it's unhealthy and I'm trying to be better, but it's just the only thing that has worked for me. I've tried eating 1200-1500 calories and exercising daily, but the weight loss is just too slow for me and I give up.
I'm not saying crash diets are a good idea, just telling my experiences with them.

It really depends on the diet - some diets might be considered 'crash' by some and yet are only meant to be used in short cycles or under specific circumstances/conditions (like doctor supervision or to repair specific metabolic problems) and function differently than just a grapefruit/VLCD/fatz-are-teh-EBILS! quick dieting cycle we so often think of when fad or crash diets are mentioned.

The two I can recommend if speedy weight loss is needed both have to be done strictly to the letter of their protocols or else you're getting into trouble - ketogenic/Atkins induction and hCG. Do either of these by their original book and you can get incredible results and healing of what is arguably the cause of obesity - metabolic dysfunction (obesity being a symptom of an underlying condition, not the condition, itself). Mess with them, go rogue, or stray and you're in for extreme hunger, tiredness, muscle wasting, and nutritional deficiencies.

I aslo have to applaud Kaplods' excellent post - there is an addictive quality to fast losses, surely, and slow aren't given nearly the lauding they deserve. But either cycling your weight with quick losing and frequent maintenance breaks or losing slowly overall, tend to be more sustainable than going at it full throttle and falling hard off the wagon. I have lost and maintained weight loss both with slow, 'failing' diets and the quicker losing but long breaks cycling methods - both work equally well and the losses by the end are about the same for the time given. It comes down to what is sustainable for YOU and can be done in a health-promoting way.

VLCD (very low calorie diet) is a more precise term than "crash diet," and is generally used to describe any diet under 1,000 calories for the average person (keeping in mind that while a 1,000 calorie diet is a vlcd for most adults, it might not be a vlcd for an 80 year old adult who has physical disabilities and is 4'10").

In the short-term, and with very limited usage, a vlcd can make sense, but unfortunately the "cultural tradition" is to misuse the vlcd.

Cleanses and Detoxes are mostly myth. The body does a great job of self-cleaning and detoxifying and most of the cleansing and detoxing diets only clean out your colon (usually unnecessarily unless you happen to be constipated) and your bank account (if you use the expensive health food versions).

Researchers have searched for and have never found any evidence that cleanses and detoxes do anything positive for your body. All they do is give you unpleasant, unnecessary and sometimes very expensive diarrhea.


VLCD's are a lot like potato chips and sugar. They CAN be used healthfully, but it's often so difficult to do so, that for many people it's better to avoid them entirely than to try to use them appropriately.

At the very least, consider getting your doctor involved, because there are some specific health issues related to vlcd's that a doctor can't prevent, but can monitor to ideally diagnose before significant damage is done.

VLCD's are associated with a host of health problems including gallbladder, kidney, and heart damage, and other health risks. Sadly, there's no known "safe" exposure. One person can be on vlcd's for decades before experiencing problems, and another person with a similar seeming health-history can experience damage in only a few weeks.

With all due respect, I don't think crash diets are good for much else than giving people a false sense of security and potentially helping set up dangerously disordered eating patterns. I've worked with far too many bulimics to ever believe that crash dieting has any beneficial effect for anyone.

I've read the book you mention. The problem, though, is that the vast majority of people who engage in crash dieting behaviours *don't* know what a crash diet is "good" for, and they wind up in unhealthy, sometimes even life-threatening situations.

In any case, on a forum like this one, I certainly don't think crash dieting is something that should be encouraged in any way, shape, or form. The key to lifelong weight loss/maintenance is smart food choices and regular exercise, not whatever crash diet is currently coming through the airwaves. (17-Day Diet, I'm looking in your direction.)

I read and followed the book for the recommended amount of time and followed it to a T. Yes I agree that for many people, they will take the tips and try to follow them forever, just as the author predicted - but if they do follow it as recommended...I don't know I guess that I just don't like to say that it a person will follow the guidelines or just run with it - because I was always told, for example, that without having foods in moderation or without cheat days, I will eventually binge, but what helped me not binge was cutting out certain foods and eating (around) the same amount of food a day. And it can have the opposite affect on others. I just don't really want to assume what will happen because its based on the condition that the person will follow that mental route of "I will do this forever or do it in an even more extreme way." I'm not trying to push for it, I'm just saying that its not an absolute how exactly a person will follow a crash diet. I guess that I am trying to say that it may be possible for a person to follow the guidelines and go into a more moderate phase, but it is also possible that it could lead to emotional/physical problems.

Eh, fair enough. I think, too, that for a lot of people (myself included) the very term "crash diet" holds certain psychological connections, and since a lot of people tend to use the term to describe any kind of restrictive, very-low-calorie diet, there's this automatic connection that goes "crash diet = bad".

For the record, I know that Atkins and other diets like it have helped many people lose weight. I agree with you, though, that the problems that often crop up after people take part in these diets is that they get into this cycle where they keep up the "extreme" phase of the diet for longer than is strictly healthy. (I'm thinking of a particular person I know, who has been following the 17-Day Diet for about three months now, has lost 90 pounds -- 35 pounds in the first 30 days -- yet doesn't exercise and still binge drinks on the weekends.) I feel safe in saying that, no, I don't think that person will ever maintain that weight loss once she enters the "maintenance" cycle of the diet (if she ever does) because...well...hello, 90 pounds in 3 months with no exercise whatsoever? I don't think so.

I guess it's like everything else, as you say -- moderation is key. It's just scary when you've seen so many instances of crash dieting gone to the extremes. It's not fun watching a fourteen-year-old girl have to be restrained in order to have a feeding tube inserted because she has gone over her 500-calorie limit for the day and she refuses to eat anything else. It affects your thinking after a while.

Back in 2005/06 I went from 193 to 143 in under a 12 month period. I restricted calories A LOT and did tons of cardio. My thinking was that once I got to my goal weight I'd start eating "normal" and healthy and workout normal and healthy. And here I am.

That's just MY experience.

There are many ways to achieve long term success. Controlling calories and meeting your bodies micronutrient needs does not need to fit into the Snoofie paradigm.

I guess I just can't presume that much about anyone's particular willpower, or what particular method will be too much for them mentally, because Weight Watchers drove me nuts and the Rapid Fat Loss was fine for me. Bodybuilders are human too, I can't assume my will power is different from theirs and a lot of bodybuilders for example, follow Lean Gains as do non bodybuilders. How we got here is also individual. I never crash dieted before. I did emotionally eat and go into a slow, moderate diet phase every time. Some people have never dieted before at all-and how we "got off track" isn't necessarily because crash dieting caused us to stray off of any diet. Some people were able to successfully lose weight but may have gone through something that resulted in a big gain. Plus what type of diet it was may also have an impact-VLCDs can range a lot.
As far as those who can handle a crash diet, I don't know if a few weeks of going on a VLCD will permanently damage the metabolism - or maybe it will. Personally, I think it can depend on how extreme the VLCD is and how long they go on it. But if someone knows that risk and not to do that forever, and still decides to do it, that is not promoting a crash diet. Its just giving out information of what may (or may not) happen.
The Rapid Fat Loss helped me because I incorporated a lot of the habits I maintain today. But a way of dieting that is vastly different from what I do now might have been overwhelming.

"The Snoofie paradigm"? Holy ****, buddy, get off your high horse. I've seen you run around here plenty, touting your own opinions as though they were gospel, so lay the **** off. I've already said in another comment that perhaps my own professional experience has given me a sort of knee-jerk reaction to the term "crash dieting", as I associate that with inherently unhealthy and non-sustainable eating patterns and that's my hang-up, but I still believe that for *most* people, VLCDs are tough as **** to maintain over the long term, and *can* potentially be harmful if the people involved end up falling into the wrong mindset.

This is pretty much exactly what I've been thinking the entire time I've been reading this thread, especially the responses from those who've done crash dieting in the past: "Well, obviously it didn't work in the long term, or you wouldn't be here, would you?" Mean? Yep, probably. But true. I mean, backsliding (or whatever you want to call it) can happen with any diet plan, but you can't exactly claim a plan is "successful" if you can't maintain it. (Although I guess that has to do with the willpower of the particular person involved and their motivation to keep up the behaviour once the weight loss phase is over.)

As for promoting/supporting crash dieting/VLCDs on this forum...gotta say, I'm disappointed that that's even going on. I suppose everyone has their choice to make, but...like, would bulimia be encouraged here, too? There has to be a line drawn somewhere, doesn't there? And so many ED cases start with people thinking, "Well, I'll just cut down to 500-800 calories a day till I lose X pounds!" and then they just....keep on going. 500-800 calories a day is not enough to keep a person going over the long term, and the idea that there are people here who are going, "Oh, well, that depends on the PERSON!" makes me sort of ill.