I don't see anyone encouraging crash dieting here. Just people saying their own personal experiences with it.

I once went on a crash diet under a Doctor's supervision, stopped at his office every day on the way to work and got a shot and ate no more than 500 calories a day. OH, I lost, big time but I looked like death warmed over and gained all of it plus more when I went back to "normal" eating.

Assuming everyone has been doing it long term.

This is a huge overstatement, honestly. The entire term 'crash diet' is a bit imprecise, but as isaid in my previous post I have lost some weight in this journey in slow fashion and some in VLCD/maintain/VLCD style and kept BOTH off. In fact, thanks to the treatment of the latter I had actually had an easier time keeping weight off post-diet than after my maintenance periods calorie counting. You just can't paint medical protocols with the same brush as snarfing cabbage until it makes you so food averse you refuse to eat. They are not the same.

Similarly, when people misuse and alter protocols (I see this SO much with the one I am currently on, or people believing the induction phase of Atkins is the sum of the diet for life :?: ) that doesn't equate to a failure of the diet, but a failure of adherence, and quite frankly the two aren't equal. There are plenty of reasons to do ketogenic, VLCD, GAPS-style elimination, or other 'extreme' diets, to deal with underlying health issues related to the symptom of obesity. Used properly and transitioned off of correctly, with lifestyle changes afterward, the weight loss is often reasonably maintainable.

But with these diets or the methods we generally recommend on 3FC, of modest energy imbalances, if someone isn't willing to alter some of the obesity-inducing habits or refuse the obesigenic foods (in my case, anyway) they will have recidivism. That doesn't mean the diet is flawed, though their difficulties at relate to the diet they are not caused *by* the diet, in many cases.

That isn't always true and some people do diet themselves fat (Kaplods has had amazing posrs relating to this) by crashing, bouncing back, crashing again, etc, but I am much more hesitant to paint these programs with a broad brush compared to how I once felt, since I have personally benefitted from them and find it health-promoting and very sustainable. Experience has given me pause, you might say ;)


ETA: I do realize I am an unusual case, having become obese after medication (I was just overweight before that!), and not done anything to fix it until I was good and ready. Then I have been working at it ever since, with slow times during pregnancy and a mental break to maintain, but really no significant regains or bouncing throughout. I have never adopted a diet plan, failed at it, quit, and regained weight. And so my only experience with diets of varying stripes is finding if they did or didn't suit my needs and adjusting accordingly. The only cycle I underwent was a maintenance/loss cycle, not the crazy-inducing regain merry-go-round. That may make me a bit unusual, but it was why I took umbrage to your comment. Not everyone on here is a serial dieter and implying such is an unnecessary overstatement.

I don't see this as "fast" weight loss. In fact, I lost about 40-45 lbs. in about 6 months calorie cycling 9800 calories per week (average of 1400 per day). I definitely wouldn't qualify what I did as a crash diet or even VLCD. I was uber moderate, moreso than I had ever been in the past. When I think of "crash dieting," I'm thinking of more like 500 - 800 calories a day with losses of 3-4 lbs. a week.

Interesting reaction.

It does depend on the person. There is no one-size-fits-all. I agree that in most cases crash diets do not work for the longterm, but then again, have you seen the longterm success stats for moderate weight loss programs? They're just as dismal. In fact, I remember reading about some study that was done that suggested that whether one lost weight the "healthy" way or the "crash diet" way, neither was a good predictor of longterm success (I cannot find that article right now, but if I do, I'll edit my post to include it). Some people need the motivation of seeing the numbers drop initially; it gives them the motivation to continue losing, even with a more sensible eating plan. In fact, that's the entire reasoning behind the 17-day diet that you so eschew. That diet is cyclical, with initial weight losses being somewhat fast, but each new cycle, foods are added, so that after about a month, you're eating a healthy diet. I'm not advocating that diet, but I am saying that no one way works for everyone. Someone else mentioned that none of us would be here if crash diets worked, but that assumes that most of us have never lost the healthy way, and from posts I've read, many people here have been on moderate weight loss diets in the past and still regained. I know I have. I've done the standard 1500-calories-per-day & exercise route, and I still gained it back. I think the key to longterm weight loss success is not solely how one initially lost the weight but more about whether one is mentally ready to make the lifelong sacrifices that it will take to keep the weight off.

To the OP, I don't advocate crash dieting because it takes too much suffering, and it could have an adverse affect on one's hair, nails, etc. (essentially, putting even more stress on the body than losing weight in a more moderate way would).

This paragraph makes me very uncomfortable. In my opinion, it comes dangerously close to fat-shaming (and, yes, people who struggle with their own weight issues are still capable of fat-shaming.)

Newsflash: Not everyone who has a medical condition that causes weight gain has the means to consult a doctor for said medical condition. Even if they did...okay, so let's say a person is taking a certain essential medication for a life-threatening condition. Now let's say that this medication causes weight gain. What exactly is a doctor going to do -- tell them to go off of the medication? I mean, be serious. Really.

In addition, not everyone has the means to procure healthy foods, or the access to those foods, either. I don't know what it's like where you live, but where I live, a 2-litre carton of milk is approximately $4. A 2-litre bottle of pop, on the other hand? $1.25. It's not a problem for me to spend $400 in a single grocery trip. If I spend that money on healthy foods (which I do), the amount of food I end up with will do me approximately a week. If I chose quick, easy, less healthy food, I'd probably get two or three weeks out of the amount of food I could buy. These are things that people sometimes cannot control.

I don't want to go on and end up saying something I won't be able to take back, but honestly, not everyone is in the position where they can afford the healthiest food possible. And for those people who have medical conditions, not everyone can get to a doctor at the drop of a hat (and some can't afford to go to a doctor at all.) It's all too easy to say "oh, you should just have willpower!" or "well, if you have a medical condition, you should go to a doctor before you get fat!", but in the real world that **** doesn't always fly.

Honestly, I read the above quoted paragraph and it reads to me like, "Well, it's your own fault you're fat, and if you weren't so lazy, you wouldn't be." I'm sure that's not how you meant it (or at least I certainly hope it isn't) but that's how it felt to me.

Though it oddly seems to now be off-topic in this thread... Does it need to be either/or for you? What about a middle ground? If you're only losing ~1 lb per week now, why not drop your calories a few hundred to 1200 or 1250 and lose ~1.5 lbs per week, instead of risking nutrient deficiency at a very low calorie intake?

I ate at an average of 1250 cals/day for most of my weight loss and didn't suffer any ill effects. I certainly have some substantial metabolic adaptation at this point, but I think it's much more due to the length of time I've been calorie restricting than my calorie intake level (that is, I don't think I'd have a lot less metabolic adaptation if I'd been eating at, say, 1400 rather than 1250).