We’re all guilty for forever being in search of a quick and easy way to lose weight. Fad diets seduce us with their promised “drastic” results and implied ease and simplicity, but they’re rarely reasonable or even healthy.
Remember: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and it could even be very harmful.
Tapeworm Diet
Tapeworm diet has reportedly been around since the dawn of the 20th century. Brave souls would swallow tapeworm cyst pills, so tapeworms would grow and mature inside their intestines, eating all food products until the dieter’s goal weight is reached. Tapeworms can grow pretty huge (30 feet) and can therefore cause a whole mess of other health issues, like diarrhea, vomiting, headaches and even epilepsy. This is an incredibly dangerous and unhealthy weight-loss option that could potentially be deadly, not only would this lead to serious nutrient deficiencies that can have lifelong complications, but you would regain the weight back as soon as the parasite is killed.
Hollywood Diet
Body “like a star.” The small selection of shakes and cookies for sale, on which you are to subside for 24 hours or more, will reportedly lead to a weight loss of two to nine pounds. Extreme low-calorie diets like this can be dangerous, especially when followed for more than a couple of days. This diet puts your body into starvation mode, and most of the weight loss you experience in the first few days will be water weight. Added potential side effects may include diarrhea, fatigue, constipation and nausea.
Baby Food Diet
This idea is to replace breakfast and lunch with tiny jarred rations of puréed food and then to eat a low-calorie dinner. Granted, it’s free of additives and preservatives, but this diet deprives you of the pleasures of eating real food and is not a good long-term approach to weight loss, following on that it’s much easier and more civilized to just up consumption of fruits and vegetables and decrease sodium content.
Feeding-Tube Diet
Yes, you read correctly a feeding tube. A “very low-calorie, protein- and fat-rich” solution with no carbs whatsoever is pumped through a tube the size of a strand of spaghetti that is inserted through your nose and into your stomach where it empties. Your body goes into ketosis, burning your own fat at a faster pace. This very low-calorie restricted plan is no more effective for short-term weight loss than just restricting your calorie intake of regularly consumed food. Aside from that, complications from this diet may include constipation, kidney stones, dehydration, dizziness and headaches, and, a more unhealthy relationship with food.
Lemonade Diet
The lemonade diet, has been around for a while and name-dropped by plenty of the Beyoncés of the world because it’s a ‘fast and easy’. As this miraculous elixir consists only of water, lemon juice, cayenne pepper and maple syrup, you’ll lose some water weight(but not for long). The likelihood is that you’ll gain all the weight back and more once you go back to eating solid food, and the problem is you may also have a harder time losing weight in the future, since such low-calorie diets cause you to lose muscle mass and decrease your metabolism.
Grapefruit Diet
Dating as far back as the 1930s, this diet still retains some level of popularity. If you eat a grapefruit before eating anything else, drink lots of water, cut out carbs and eat lean protein, you’ll burn more fat. Fans of this diet say if you do it for around 10 days, you can lose up to 10 pounds. It’s been suggested that eating grapefruit can help to slim the waistline and lower body weight, most likely due to the diuretic properties of grapefruit helping to shed water weight. In addition, the fruit makes a great high-volume, low-calorie option, helping to keep you full and encouraging less total calorie intake during the day.