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Samantha Clowe never wanted to be a 'fat bride,' and now, sadly, she won't be one at all. The obese 34-year-old, who was looking forward to her upcoming nuptials, died after an intense crash diet. Described as "fit and healthy" by her family, Clowe lost 42 pounds in 11 weeks on the controversial Lighter Life Diet, which restricts dieters to just 500 calories a day.

We're all aware that crash diets aren't great for you, but you can die from them? You bet -- and this isn't even the first time this diet has killed someone. Just last December, a mother of five died after drinking 4 liters of water, as was recommended by the program. Amazingly, you need your doctor's consent to sign up for the program. Is anyone else having a hard time believing that a trained medical professional would give the OK for this kind of extreme diet?

A while back, Martha told us about LighterLife, the extreme calorie-restriction diet that's popular in the UK. The diet is wildly popular even though some people have experienced serious health problems as a result. Now a woman has died from drinking too much water while on the LighterLife plan.

Jacqueline Henson saw immediate results after starting the LighterLife diet. One day, she drank four liters of water as instructed by the plan. However, she drank all four liters within a two-hour period. She complained to her husband that her stomach was "solid" and that she felt sick. She later collapsed and died at the hospital the next day.

Extreme diets like LighterLife are just that ... extreme. I find it frightening that people -- so desperate to shed a few pounds -- are willing to put their health at risk in the process. If you want to lose weight, stick to the old-school method -- eating healthful foods that total an appropriate amount of calories for your body type and exercise more.

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In Britain, people are dying to be thin -- literally -- and one company is pulling in a profit of about $30 million because of it, according to this article from the Daily Mail.

A popular diet program in the UK, called LighterLife, is wildly successful these days, but it's costing some people their health -- and their lives. The program advocates an extreme calorie deficiency -- participants consume shakes that give them a total daily caloric intake of only 500 calories, and they end up losing weight at an alarming rate. LighterLife claims it's all perfectly fine because the body doesn't need those excess calories, adding that this type of starvation has been used healthfully for over 30 years. Yeah, right.

But now, some people are speaking out about the side effects of this diet. One former participant claims her vision is now permanently blurred and she suffers from ongoing memory loss; another, a dentist, says the lack of calories ruined his wife's teeth; another claims it led her to become anorexic. Other side effects include hair loss, menstrual disruptions and constipation. And if that's not frightening enough for you, consider this: One 25-year-old participant died from heart troubles believed to have been caused by the diet. Click here for some more horror stories.

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