It seems that every week there is a new crazy miracle diet ready to make you lose all the weight you could dream of within a week. Luckily most of us are wise to these fads and tend to give them a wide berth. Check out below to see some of the most notorious dieting fads through history.
Baby Food Diet
The babyfood diet essentially does what it says on the tin. You replace your standard three meals a day with baby food. This works by the simple fact that the amount of food you’re ingesting is significantly less than would be otherwise having full adult meals. Whilst you may gain vitamins and nutrients from the baby food, it lacks many other components required for a healthy and balanced diet. It doesn’t sound particularly appetising either!
Chewing Diet aka Fletcherism
The chewing diet originated in the 19th century from Horace Fletcher. It derives its name from the very action which Fletcher suggested: Chewing! Fletcher claimed that we can lose weight and be healthier if we chewed our food until it was ‘purified’ – essentially until it was a liquid within our mouth. This could potentially work, as the more time we spend chewing our food and extending the process of which it takes to eat then the better the chance that we feel full and subsequently not eat as much.
Cabbage Soup Diet
The basic idea is that you eat as much Cabbage soup as you could possibly want! The upside to this is that you will lose a lot of weight and muscle, however as soon as you stop the diet the weight will quickly return. As well as the standard risks associated with yo-yoing weight, the cabbage soup diet will most likely cause you to frequent your toilet much more often than you’d like.
hCG Diet
A rather worrying and expensive diet that came around in the 1950s. The theory goes that you will lose weight if you restrict your daily calorie intake to 500 calories and have daily injections of hCG, a hormone which is produced when pregnant. Whilst you will certainly lose weight on this diet, this is most definitely down to the meagre calorie intake and not the injections. Whilst the risks of having these injections could cause numerous unwanted side effects.
Master Cleanse Diet
One of the most famous fad diets to make this list. The Master cleanse diet is a favourite amongst a host of celebrities and Hollywood regulars. The trick is to forego any solid foods and have a concoction of ‘lemonade’ mixed with maple syrup and hot cayenne pepper. Whilst at first this doesn’t sound very pleasant, that’s likely to be because it’s not! Whilst you do get the nightly treat of a laxative before you go to sleep, the consequences of such a combination need no explanation.
If you want to avoid these and other fad diets and you’re serious about wanting to start losing weight in a healthy and controlled way then you may be interested in our virtual gastric band. To learn more about the virtual gastric band, with lots of healthy and sustainable tips for losing weight permanently, why not download our free guide: How To Smash Your Weight Loss Goals Without Crash Dieting?
Simply click on the image below to get your free copy now!
