Fad diets try to offer a quick fix for fast weight loss, and, even if
they work, the result is short-term and the pounds come bouncing back.
The biggest problem with unhealthy fad diets is that you shouldn’t stay
on any of them for extended periods of time because they are generally
unbalanced nutritionally. Many fad diets don’t work at all, and some can
be dangerous because they’re based on bad or strange ideas, like “The
Sleeping Beauty Diet” where you knock yourself out for several days at a
time with sedatives.
10. Caveman Diet (Prehistoric Diet, Stone Age Diet, Paleolithic Diet)
Editor Note: Turns out this diet is actually healthy for you. I have included a link to a Paleo Diet Recipe book – Click Here For Your Paleo Cookbook!
As you might guess, this diet revolves around trying to mimic the
diet of the caveman. Allowed foods include lean meat (I suppose dinosaur
meat was lean), fish, vegetables, fruit, roots, and nuts; and excludes:
grains, legumes, dairy products, salt, refined sugar, and processed
oils. All foods eaten are those that can be hunted and gathered. Please
tell me why we would want to pattern our eating habits after a caveman?
Wasn’t their average lifespan around 15 years old or something??
9. The Pasta Chocolate Diet
Am I dreaming? Pasta AND chocolate? You know the old saying: “If it
sounds too good to be true, then it probably is” and that’s the case
here. You can’t drink anything but water, and the only chocolate you get
is up to 1-ounce at the end of the day as an evening snack along with
some popcorn, but you do get to eat pasta for lunch and dinner.
Prohibited foods include sugar, alcohol, carbonated drinks, coffee, tea,
nuts, all junk food imaginable except for popcorn, fried foods, dairy
products, salt, and red meat. Do you know how small one ounce of
chocolate is? Is it really worth it to not have a steak every once in a
while? Most real diets encourage you to have some red meat prepared in a
healthy way. This diet offers major food restrictions with a reward of 1
ounce of chocolate each night along with the absence of some very
important nutrients.
8. The Chicken Soup Diet
You’re allowed one breakfast per day (only one?), then you can eat as
much chicken soup as you want for the rest of the day. This can’t be
good. You’re basically living off of cereal, bagels, yogurt, figs, and
gallons of chicken soup. This is similar to the “Cabbage Soup Diet” and
both diets smell of malnutrition–among other things.
7. The Zen Diet
It’s really a very simple plan–only eat food in its natural state, no
red meat, and limit other meat considerably. Some Zen diets forbid all
meat and dairy. The biggest problem is that little to no meat means not
enough protein necessary for brain chemistry, muscle repair, and bone
building; and little to no fat, the good fat, affects the body’s satiety
and ability to stabilize blood sugar and decrease inflammation. Bring
on the bacon!
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6. The 12-Day Grapefruit Juice Diet
This one really is too good to be true. You can eat till you’re full,
you can double or triple the amount of meat, salad or vegetables for
each meal, you can fry food in butter and use butter generously on
vegetables, and you MUST eat bacon when they say to eat bacon. You can
eat any kind of cheese, and you can have mayonnaise and regular salad
dressing. But as the name indicates you must drink 8 ounces of
grapefruit juice with every meal as it’s supposed to be the catalyst for
burning off what you eat as long as you’re eating the right
combinations of foods—don’t forget the bacon! You also have to drink
eight 8-ounce glasses of water every day. The promise, while gobbling
down all that cheese, butter, bacon, and mayo, and swimming in water and
grapefruit juice, is that you will lose 52 pounds in 2 ½ months. Right.
NEXT!
5. The 3-Day Hot Dog Diet
I’m not quite sure why they call this a ‘hot dog diet’ since the only
time you actually EAT hot dogs is on the 2nd day at dinner. Otherwise,
you’re eating regular diet foods like cottage cheese, tuna, fruit,
veggies, and black coffee or tea for 3 days. Correction, you are
instructed to have ½ cup of vanilla ice cream every night. Go figure—hot
dogs and ice cream? I think they added 2 hot dogs on the menu for the
second night just so they could call this a hot dog diet.
4. The Magnetic Diet
The foundation of this diet is in understanding which foods attract
either health or disease to the body. Contaminating magnetism supposedly
attracts disease to the body and includes refined sugar, cholesterol,
and white flour. Invigorating magnetism include fruits, whole grains,
vegetables, lean meat, and foods containing antioxidants. In addition to
only eating invigorating magnetism foods, the diet advocates doing
meditation and re-programming the mind towards engaging in more healthy
habits. Um, to me, it sounds like a new-age, catchy name for what we
already know—eat a balanced diet, reduce sugar intake, reduce stress,
and train your brain to replace bad habits with healthy choices.
3. Blood Type Diet
Developed by Dr. Peter D’Adamo, ND, you basically eat or avoid eating
foods according to your blood type, and this is supposed to help you
lose weight. For example, this diet specifies that blood type B people
should avoid corn, wheat, lentils, tomatoes, chicken, peanuts and sesame
seeds, and they should eat goat, mutton, venison, eggs, green
vegetables, and low fat dairy. However, the Mayo Clinic doesn’t think
much of this diet and they say that “eating or avoiding certain foods
according to your blood type isn’t thought to have any favorable
influence on weight or health” and they also feel that this diet plan is
unlikely to meet your nutritional needs at all. Again, another diet
that leaves you malnourished in the end as well as very tired if you’re a
B blood type person who has to go out and start hunting and shooting
all of your food.
2. The Air Diet
The Air Diet of the Institute for Psychoactive Research doesn’t
require you to avoid any foods or change your current diet or exercise
habits—you just breathe. Hmmm. How novel. Instead of focusing on what
you eat or how much you eat, you focus on breathing. The idea is that if
you practice rhythmical breathing, then you breathe more air. The more
air you breathe, the more weight you lose. The best part is that you can
do this anytime, anywhere—while driving, laying in bed, working,
walking, having sex, and so on. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty
sure I’m breathing when I do all of those things. Whatever. NEXT!
1. Tapeworm Diet
This must be the most disgusting diet ever thought of, and there is
evidence that “tapeworm diet pills” were marketed from 1900 – 1920’s.
Basically, you ingest beef tapeworm eggs (beef tapeworm is supposedly
the best choice), and then you take medicine to kill the tapeworm after
you’ve lost the desired amount of weight. It doesn’t take a genius to
know this diet is both ineffective and unhealthy. You’re not changing
your eating habits with this “diet,” so all the weight will come back
once the worm is gone, and it’s extremely unhealthy to have a parasite
living in your body sucking all of the nutrition out you.
by Pam Roberson
Looking for a safer diet plan? Check out one man’s Medifast Diet Review.
