Strangest Diets

With everyone striving to be that “perfect” weight but with little time to put in the effort required, fad diets have become all the rage and they have been for decades. But fad diets can lead to dangerous diets, to diets that are just outright bizarre. Some of these diets are not recommended whereas others are simply choices about where people choose to eat their food and where they choose to get it.

1. Cabbage Soup Diet

This diet is all about cabbage soup, and pretty much nothing else. For seven days you eat only cabbage soup, in combination with a limited number of fruits, vegetables and meat. Even though some research has shown that consuming a broth before a meal can encourage you to consume fewer calories, the cabbage soup diet is basically a starvation diet. But though you’ll be hungry and miserable for a few days, the only weight you will lose with this diet is water weight.

2. Master Cleanse

This diet is all about detox meaning that for a few days you consume nothing but the special mixture that the diet suggests. What is this mixture? Homemade lemonade, maple syrup and cayenne pepper, for the most part. If that doesn’t sound appetizing well you are definitely right, and that is all you get, TONS of it for days. This diet is much like starvation and keeps your body from getting many of the nutrients it needs so it is recommended that you avoid it.

3. Vinegar Diet

Now I cannot imagine anyone enjoying the taste of Vinegar which is the main reason why this diet seems so strange. Followers of this diet take a straight shot of vinegar in order to counteract the fat and sugar that is in their meals. There is really no proof that this is true and taking in too much vinegar can be very dangerous for one’s health. These fad diets rarely work but this has to be one of this most unappetizing that I have ever heard of.

4. The Vision Diet

This is perhaps one of the most bizarre diet ideas I have ever heard of. This diet functions on the idea that if food looks unappetizing you will not eat it. So the solution is to wear glasses with blue lenses, everywhere. I’m not sure if the blue tint really makes food look that unappealing as to starve yourself and really, who wants to go around wearing blue lenses? After all, the seventies are over and they have been for quite awhile.

5. Ear Stapling

This is a diet that may be debatable as to whether or not it is really a diet. But it is perhaps one of the few weight loss plans that has actually been declared illegal. Ear stapling involved piecing a part of the inner ear, the theory is that this decreases your appetite. While many people believe that this diet really works, no one can really understand why. But the reason why it has been declared illegal is that it can easily cause infection and even nerve damage if it is done incorrectly. With very few people knowing the exact nature of the process, negative side effects are very common.

6. Martha’s Vineyard Diet

This diet functions on the principle that it is healthier to eat foods in liquid form. So for this diet you only eat foods that you can suck through a straw, and most of your choices are fruit and vegetables. This diet has three plans a 21 day diet (recommended once a year), a 7 day program (recommended once a month) and a 2 day program (recommended once a week). Unfortunately science has proven that whole foods are actually better for you. Not to mention this diet also recommends regular enemas…which coupled with a liquid diet, does not sound at all like fun.

7. Cotton Ball Diet

This is another one that seems completely disturbing but a number of celebrities have jumped on this bandwagon. The idea of this diet is that you soak the cotton balls in gelatin and eat them. In theory the cotton balls fill you up and you will not crave any fattening substances. Personally I can’t imagine being able to stomach anything after the knowledge that I’m shoved a cotton ball down my throat. Though wasn’t this a myth about how to dodge the draft? (Swallow a cotton ball and have it appear as a spot on your lungs).

8. TapeWorm Diet

Now for most people a tapeworm is something you do not want. But for some people they believe that swallowing a tapeworm will solve all of their problems. What a tapeworm does is survive off the food in your stomach, but you have to be truly desperate to want a living worm growing and surviving on the food you eat. This is one of the most dangerous diets you can be crazy enough to go on. But despite the risks you can buy tapeworms online…which is gross and disturbing on many levels.

9. The Breatharian Diet

This is another truly bizarre diet that disturbs me to no end. The Breatharian diet suggests that when a person reaches absolute harmony they can live without the gluttony of food and drink. This is of course not true but there are many people who do ascribe to this belief that they can one day live entirely without food or drink. But there have been reports of followers dying from dehydration. So you might just want to go back to the idea that food and water are necessary to human survival.

10. The Freegan Diet

This diet while not entirely dangerous or unhealthy, it is just a little weird and unique. Freegans believe that too much food in the world is wasted, so they only eat food that has been thrown out. They walk through the city at night and go through garbage cans for food that is still good but was thrown out. They do not eat food that has spoiled but simply food that is going to waste. Though some freegans will go as far as eating roadkill, which may be a little too much for some people.

Most of these diets are unhealthy and unsafe, and they do not even lead to healthy and long-term weight loss. There has been plenty of research which shows that crash diets and fad diets can actually lead to weight gain because they do not teach healthy eating habits. The best way to lost weight in the long term is to diet and exercise the right way.

Author: Stephanie Schoppert — Copyrighted © roadtickle.com