New Fad Diets

All throughout history, people have used their creativity and ingenuity to lose weight and achieve that perfect body. From tapeworms to chocolate, in their desperation to drop that dress size, a few people have taken weight loss to the extreme, inventing weird and wacky ways to weigh less.

1. The Baby Food Diet

If it worked for Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, then surely it will work for everyone right? Who doesn’t love a celebrity endorsed fad diet? The Baby Food Diet consists of eating pureed vegetables 14 times a day, and while it may be bland, “Food that makes a baby grow is pretty good food.” (Dr. Samuel Klein, Director at the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University Medical School.)

Babies need an extremely nutritious diet to develop and grow properly, and without the additives, preservatives, and fillers commonly found in our everyday food, the Baby Food Diet is a highly organic, safe way to lose weight and still get the nutrition you need.

However, The Baby Food Diet is not as perfect as it appears. Although some people find these little bottles of mush appetizing and tasty, eating a regular diet of Baby Food requires incredible discipline. Baby Food tends to be flavorless and bland, leaving you craving salts and sweets at the end of the day.

Additionally, there’s something ideal about being able to chew your own food rather than simply gulping it down. Munching and crunching is a lot more pleasing to the palate than slurping and burping.

2. The Air Diet

Not to be confused with anorexia where skinny girls seem to subsist on air alone, the Air Diet doesn’t require a change in eating habits or exercise. Instead, you focus on breathing. Inhaling and exhaling to lose weight.

Needless to say, breathing air is obviously good for you. I tried to stop once, and it wasn’t pretty. Oxygen is a necessary part to survival and is essential for the proper function of all major processes in your body, including your metabolism.

According to The Institute for Psychoactive Research, the more air you breathe, the more weight you lose, which is true, in a strange sort of sense. Unfortunately, breathing faster doesn’t help you lose weight faster (unless you’re exercising).

3. The Coffee Diet

Without their regular cup of coffee, many people simply can’t function in the mornings. But can drinking a steady amount of coffee really help you lose weight? In theory, it can.

Coffee is well known for its high levels of caffeine, and caffeine, of course, is an excellent stimulant. Weight loss products and diet supplements often depend on caffeine to boost metabolism and burn fat.

Caffeine interacts with neurotransmitters called adenosines, and (when blocked), adenosines sends “fight or flight” signals to your brain, triggering an agitated response in your central nervous system. While in this state, your body will burn more calories for energy, and consequently keep those calories from being stored as fat.

However, the coffee diet has its caveats. High concentrations of caffeine can cause unpleasant side effects such as headaches, migraines, jitters, and insomnia. Additionally, caffeine is highly addictive (which is why some people need their “fix” before they can function). Eventually you’ll need more and more coffee to achieve the same amount of weight loss results.

4. The Tapeworm Diet

This diet is enough to make any dieter squirm in their shoes. By digesting tapeworm eggs, or if you’re feeling especially brave swallowing a live one, you will supposedly lose weight and still get to eat what you want. Why? Because these parasitic pests are doing you the favor of consuming your calories for you, so you can eat what you want without consequence.

Does anyone else see the potential problems here? This fad diet is not only disgusting; it’s dangerous. Major complications such as digestive tract blockage, organ damage, and death can result from letting these long worms live inside your gut. It’s even possible that rather than staying inside your belly, tapeworms will deviate into other parts of your body-even your brain!

Although this diet can help you lose weight, this pro doesn’t outweigh the cons.

5. The Pasta Chocolate Diet

The name alone is enough to make many dieters abandon their lemonade cleanses and detoxes.

Pasta? And chocolate? Really? Can dieting be so heavenly?

Unfortunately, this fad is not even close to being the dream diet many would believe. Not only does it require you to cut out sugar, alcohol, coffee, tea, nuts, and carbonated drinks, but the only chocolate you’re allowed to eat is a tiny 1 oz. sliver of a snack at the end of the day, your “reward” for making the “right” choices.

Junk food is completely forbidden (with the exception of popcorn, dairy products, salt, and red meat) and the only redeemable quality about this diet is that you can eat pasta for lunch and dinner. Of course, this is robbing your body of a wide variety of essential nutrients, but in the end you still get to eat pasta and chocolate!