Eat Your Low-Calorie Cottonballs
In a world of desk work and general stagnation, it’s no surprise that we’ve come up with some pretty insane ways of losing weight. Sure, some of them work, but a lot of them are meant to be done for a short period of time, and many of them cause major nutritional problems for the average person. Some of them are even downright dangerous. Regardless, the desire for thinness regularly outweighs the health concerns, leading to the diet fads we see below.
1. Baby Food
For a short amount of time, adults would restrict their caloric intake by eating only jars of baby food. Considering the food is quite literally for infants and toddlers, there is a huge lack of nutritional value and scientific merit for weight loss.
2. Grapefruit
This fad diet requires folks to eat a grapefruit or drink grapefruit juice with every meal. It stemmed from the idea that grapefruit can help burn fat, although that idea has been debunked. Eating so much grapefruit can actually damage your teeth, and many medications interact negatively with the citrus.
3. Atkins
The Atkins diet was a four-phase diet that focused on low-carb, high-protein, and high-fat meals. It required users to greatly restrict their carb intake, while slowly increasing their allowed amount of carbs through each phase. While the protein, vegetable, and fat portions of this diet are generally considered healthy, carbs are essential to brain activity and muscle movement.
4. Cabbage Soup
This 7-day diet asks you how much of a type of food is too much. Requiring folks to eat low-calorie, high-fiber cabbage soup, with specific types of fruits, veggies, skim milk, brown rice, and beef on certain days. If it helps, you can imagine you’re a part of the Bucket family. So we guess, your golden ticket is lost water weight?
5. Celery Juice
Labeled as a “reset,” this 10-day diet tells people to drink plain, freshly juiced celery every morning on an empty stomach. The diet is meant to reduce inflammation and boost your energy, but there isn’t a lot of tangible evidence to support these claims. You can also get an energy boost by…eating breakfast.
6. Ice
This hack diet is based on the idea that cold foods boost metabolism, as your body burns more calories trying to warm the cold substances. The body does, in fact, burn calories this way, but not enough that you’ll see a difference.
7. Beverly Hills
The Beverly Hills diet is a very strict, month-long, fruit-based diet. It’s based on the idea that certain enzymes in foods do not react well together. When the diet first came out, it told individuals to only eat fruit. Today, the diet focuses more on what time of day you eat and what food combinations are allowed, rather than specific foods or food groups.
8. Cotton Balls
This insane diet trend has people eating cotton dipped in liquids, juices, smoothies, or condiments. The idea behind this is to fill up your stomach (again, with cotton) to make you feel full, consuming virtually no calories. There are massive health concerns with this diet, as several folks who tried this diet had gastrointestinal obstructions.
9. Juice Cleanse
Juice cleanses are still popular today, but are typically used as a morning cleanse rather than drinking your three meals. Old juice cleanses asked individuals to only drink fruit and vegetable-based juices for a set amount of time as a means to detox the body. This fad diet lacks nutrients, protein, and healthy fats, which often leads to fatigue and headaches.
10. Zone
The Zone diet focused on consuming a strict intake of 40% carbs, 30% protein, and 30% fat. While it can help with weight loss and inflammation, the diet has also been criticized for discouraging whole-grain foods, legumes, and certain fruits. While the Zone diet isn’t necessarily bad, it is complicated and time-consuming, making it unachievable for those with busy schedules.
11. Master Cleanse
This intense diet is not for the faint of heart. It asks people to only consume a mixture of lemon juice, maple syrup, water, and cayenne pepper, a morning salt-water flush, and an herbal laxative tea in the evening. While it claims to eliminate toxins from your body, this cleanse will have you feeling extremely lethargic due to its extreme lack of nutrients.
12. Tapeworm
Probably the most dangerous diet on this list, the tapeworm diet requires you to swallow a pill with a tapeworm egg inside. Once the tapeworm hatches, it will eat whatever you’re eating, the idea being that you can consume whatever you want while still losing weight. That’s great and all, but you gave yourself a tapeworm infection, so you didn’t have to practice self-control.
13. Prayer
The Prayer diet is based on the idea of mindful and meaningful weight loss, as you turn to a higher power to assist you in your journey. There’s nothing wrong with incorporating a spiritual element into your health regimen, but if you’re only praying and not making any other changes, it may not be as effective as you’d hoped.
14. Charcoal Cleanse
Activated charcoal is typically used to treat poisoning or overdoses, so it makes sense that folks would believe it to be an excellent aid in digestion and detoxification. While it might work for some, activated charcoal can interfere with certain medications and can occasionally lead to constipation or even bowel blockages.
15. Macrobiotic
The Macrobiotic diet asks folks to eat plant-based foods, such as unprocessed grains, vegetables, beans, and soups. However, this diet is very restrictive, as it doesn’t allow for meat, dairy, refined sugars, or any processed foods. This type of diet can lead to protein, calcium, and vitamin B deficiencies.
16. Vision Glasses
The Vision-Dieter Glasses were invented in the 1970s, which used “secret European color technology” that would help wearers reduce hunger cues. The glasses were seized by the FDA and were confirmed as fraudulent shortly after they were created.
17. Shangri-La
The Shangri-La diet asks you, “How much do you love drinking oil?” If the answer is a lot, continue. This diet tells individuals they can eat whatever foods they like, as long as they’re consuming between 200 and 500 calories of flavorless oil each day.
18. Chew And Spit
This diet style asks folks to chew a mouthful of food and spit it out after all the flavor has been extracted. Not only that, but it also required you to choose certain foods for a specific amount of time. We don't need to tell you that this diet isn't healthy, but it can lead to disordered and even obsessive-compulsive eating habits.
19. Special K
This early 2000s two-week meal plan asked folks to replace two meals per day with a bowl of Special K cereal. It might have led to quick weight loss, but it severely lacked any substantial nutrition to get us through the day.
20. Ice Cream Cleanse
This yummy cleanse had people eating solely coconut-based ice cream for four days in a row, claiming weight loss, mental clarity, and detoxification. Unfortunately, only eating ice cream for four days means you’re eating sugar and fat and basically nothing else. In the world of healthy eating, that’s generally a no-go.
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