When you first start a crash diet – and literally stop eating – you might notice that you lose a fair amount of weight, but the ugly truth is that the weight you are losing is mostly water and muscle mass. Body fat is notoriously difficult to get rid of because it's difficult to break down, when your body doesn't have enough energy coming in from food it will automatically start using energy stored in your muscles – you are effectively turning yourself in to a globule of fat!

Your body is a remarkable piece of machinery and one of the most advanced chemical factories on Earth. It is also extremely efficient which is not good news if you plan on losing weight by simply eating less. If you can't understand why you are putting on weight or not losing any weight then the first thing many people try to do is reduce what they eat.

The problem with simply reducing your food intake is that your body will soon realize that it is getting less food and as a result your metabolism will slow down to compensate and when you start eating normally again (which invariably happens on a crash diet) you'll find that you end up putting on even more weight than before.

Unfortunately for us humans the only thing we're addicted to slightly less than a death by chocolate cake is an instant gratification quick fix solution to our weight loss problem. A diet plan which promises to shed 5 pounds a week is always going to sound more attractive than a diet which has been meticulously researched and proven to reduce your weight in a healthy way over a period of months.

You might even think that doing a crash diet and severely restricting your calorie intake will have no long term impact on your health, but unfortunately it has cost some people their lives. If your body doesn't have enough energy to burn it places enormous strain on your internal organs as they struggle to function without the vitamins and minerals that they require, the strain can be so intense that it can actually lead to organ and heart failure.

It can be very tough sometimes to stick to a long term, healthy weight loss plan, especially if a big event like a beach holiday or wedding is coming up, but following a crash course diet will wreak havoc with your metabolism and could cause you to put on even more weight than when you started as your body is used to processing less food and if it suddenly gets inundated with calories it will attempt to grab all of them and store it as fat.