Saturday, 23 April 2011

• 10 Crazy Diets in History: What Will You Eat To Lose Some Pounds?

  As the weather gets warmer and we start peeling off more layers of clothes, the pressure of maintaining a nice body shape seems to be growing. 
  
  I'm guessing that the first thing most of us will think of is to go on a diet. 
  
  In my own case, I have been trying to go on a diet; not necessarily for losing weight, but to fix my previous lifestyle of living on sweets
  
  And while my idea of a diet is the idea of control, moderation, exercise, and time management (restricting the time you eat certain things, for example), I've been looking at some crazy diets that I would never be able to do for a variety of reasons. 
  
  Below is a list of just a few I found mouth-droppingly insane:
  
  1. Tapeworm diet:
  
  Yes, this is exactly what the name suggests. At the turn of the century, diet pills claiming to contain these parasitic worms were popularly sold among women. They believed that by consuming these pills, the worms will eat up the extra portions within their stomach. 
  
  
  Of course, no scientific evidence has ever proven any of this to be true. On the contrary, I can only imagine that these women would have become seriously ill if they really put parasites in their stomachs!
  
  2. Cotton ball diet
  
  
  Some eat them dry, others soak their in gelatin for easier consumption. 
  
  People believe that by filling their stomachs with cotton balls, which are "high in fiber" (a.k.a., not the fiber we need for our bodies) and low in calories, that they will lose weight.
  
  First of all, I can't imagine how that would be appetizing, and second, that's going to cause some major indigestion!
  
  3. Twinkie diet
  
  I guess it's a little funny that I add this diet on this list just after my other post about what's really in a Twinkie went up on IRLF 
  
  The story is that a nutrition professor at Kansas State University wanted to prove that losing weight was all dependent on the calorie intake. 
  
  So, he decided to use himself for the experiment by living off Twinkies and other grocery junks that added up to 1,800 calories each day....
  
  I seriously hope he's alright.
  
  4. Blood type diet
  
  
  
  There is a theory that, depending on your blood type, you should have a specific and controlled diet. 
  
  The idea seems reasonable since it suggests that depending on your blood type, you have certain personality traits; and growing up, I used to do all these blood type personality analysis tests for fun with my friends. Most of the time they were accurate.  
  
  So they suggest that, according to your specific innate character, you should have a certain diet style, a way of eating, and of living. 
  
  But I find that things aren't that simple. If their theory is correct, it would mean that the entire world can be categorized into four personalities: A, B, O, and AB.
  
  That's just too generalized for me. But maybe this diet does work--if you've tried it, I'd love to hear how it went!
  
  I found a site that deals with the blood type diet program, it sounds a little different from what I heard, but if you're interested, here's the link! 
  
  5. Hallelujah diet
  
  
  With this diet, you are supposed to eat only the food listed in Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 29:
  
  
  ²⁹ Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food
  
  
  And only cook 15% of your daily food consumption, then exercise, rest, get tons of sunshine, and try to eliminate all your stress. 
  
  This actually sounds reasonable, eating healthy, consuming vegan style food, with tons of good rest and exercise; it might be stranger if you didn't lose weight after that. 
  
  6. Vision diet
  
  They say that red stimulates your appetite while the color blue represses it.
  
  Well, then why don't we just make everything look blue by putting on these glasses?
  
  However, apparently the diet doesn't work too well...
  
  Pity that would have been nice if all I needed to do to lose some weight was to wear a pair of glasses around!
  
  7. Sleeping beauty diet
  
  My friend naps all the time. And since I never nap myself, I have always half envied her and half could not understand why she slept so much
  
  But when you are feeling hungry or are craving to eat something, the best thing to do is to just sleep 
  
  It makes sense, the more you sleep, the less time you will spend awake and hungry; thus, the less you eat
  
  But I must say that this diet is highly discouraged for those of you who actually have things to do 
  
  8. Chewing diet
  
  
  My father always tells me to chew until the food becomes porridge-like in my mouth before I swallow.
  
  This really grossed me out, but chewing as much as you can before swallowing is the best thing you can do to lose some weight because:
  
  a) You really get to break down your food physically before it enters your digestive tract, 
  b) You automatically slow down with your food, 
  c) Which will make you feel full much earlier in your meal--so you won't need seconds anymore!
  
  But the chewing diet they describe here sounds really, severely disturbing. 
  
  Here, you are told to chew your food 32 times, then instead of swallowing, tilt your head back and let the porridged food trickle down your throat. 
  
  If there are residues too big to swallow, you must spit them back out
  
  The man who invented this diet had apparently lost 40 pounds in 4 months; and Dr. Kellogg also used this diet on his patients
  
  But honestly, I think I will gag if I tried to do this!
  
  9. Baby food diet
  
  
  This one's simple. 
  
  You basically replace your diet with jars of baby food.
  
  I don't know how this one will turn out, but some of my friends actually claim that baby food is good so perhaps it won't be as bad as some of these other ones--just very pricey!
  
  10.  Danish diet
  
  There was a huge fad in Korea a little while ago with this diet because of a rumor claiming that all Korean girl celebrities were using this diet to maintain their super skinny body figures (the girls in the picture above are not specifically associated with this rumor!).
  
  So my close friend was convincing me to actually do this diet with her, but I had to tell her that maintaining such a diet would only be possible if I wasn't doing anything else.
  
  When I went online to see how the diet worked, I was confused because there were so many different varieties of it. 
  
  But generally, the diet goes on for 13 days, and each day you are given a list of certain foods to consume. 
  
  Here is one version.
  
  To give you an idea, here's how the first two days will go according to this version:
  

  Day 1:

  Breakfast should contain a cup of coffee with sugar. Lunch may contain two boiled eggs, fourteen ounces of spinach, and a tomato. Dinner includes seven ounces of beef, and a green salad with oil and lemon juice.

  Day 2:

  A cup of coffee with sugar for breakfast. Lunch is composed of nine ounces of ham and a yogurt, while dinner includes seven ounces of beef, and a green salad with oil and lemon juice.
  
  Thanks for reading!
  
  What do you think about these diets? Have you ever tried them? Would you ever try them? 

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