Crash Diet

A crash diet is a diet which is extreme in its nutritional deprivations, typically severely restricting calorie intake. It is meant to achieve rapid weight loss and may differ from outright starvation only slightly. It is not meant to last for long periods of time, at most a few weeks. Importantly, the term specifically implies a lack of concern for proper nutrition. Crash diets are also known as "fad diets" and are often seen as quick fix solutions. Contrary to the belief of many who start this sort of diet, this form of dieting is neither healthy nor largely successful in achieving long term weight loss as it provokes a slow down of the body's basal metabolic rate - the body seeks to conserve every calorie and so weight loss becomes increasingly difficult. While some initial weight is often lost, the weight is usually regained quickly in the weeks that follow, as the individual reverts to their original pre-crash diet. It often becomes a vicious cycle in which the weight that is regained in often more than the starting weight, causing the dieter to revert back to the crash diet, lose weight, regain the weight, and so on and so forth.