A great number of overweight people have at some time tried to crash diet. The term crash diet refers to the practice of dramatically cutting down calorie intake in order to lose a lot of weight in a short space of time. Often this can result in starving the body and surviving on a lot less calories per day than your body actually needs to function properly. Some popular crash diets include the maple syrup diet, the cambridge diet and the cabbage soup diet. But does all this starvation of the body come at a high price to our health and can it really result in permanent weight loss?