Crash diets remain as popular as ever.
When people want to lose weight quickly, perhaps for a big upcoming event, or maybe for a quick shot of self esteem, they often take drastic measures by going on a crash diet, also common referred to as a starvation diet.
There are different types of crash or starvation diets, but as you can tell from the name, most of these diets involve eating very little food.
The terrible irony of these kinds of diets is that they trick your body (and not in a good way) by sending it into starvation mode.
When a human body is in starvation mode, the metabolic rate (or rate at which calories are burned) slows way, way down to accommodate for the lack of food/fuel.
Not only that, but with these kinds of drastic diets, it is not only fat that people lose.
They also lose water weight and lean muscle mass.
Losing muscle mass is the exact opposite of what you want to do because lean muscle mass is what enables you to burn more calories, not only when you are active and exercising, but also when you are at rest.
When people lose a lot of weight very quickly because they have put themselves on a crash diet, this is not the kind of weight that they tend to keep off over the long haul.
It is better to eat healthy food and exercise regularly in order to lose weight gradually over the course of several weeks or months and keep it off.