What you can learn from four crazy diets (besides what not to do)

We all know someone who diets on the fringe: the roommate who pops caffeine pills, the coworker who eats nothing but cottage cheese for a month. Whenever she gets on her latest skinny-by-Sunday kick, we roll our eyes and laugh -- until it works.

Though the insta-results of crash diets may tempt you to chuck your food journal and load up on six-packs of Breakstone's, there's a better way. After all, your friend isn't just torturing her taste buds -- research shows that ber-restrictive weight-loss plans can lead to fatigue, dehydration, constipation, and diarrhea. Long term, she's raising her risk for gallstones, osteoporosis, and heart damage -- not to mention upping the odds of gaining all the weight back.

You, meanwhile, can use her crash diet as a crash course in improving your own. We dissected four extreme diets (ones we'd never actually recommend trying) to find the facts behind the fads. Here's what they can teach you about dropping pounds safely and sanely.

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By Megan McNamara