Diets That Don't Work

Let this list of diets that don't work inspire you to go for a brisk walk and eat more vegetables as a rational alternative to popular and silly diet fads.

Sometimes when people try to lose weight, they adopt tactics that are both bizarre and dangerous. 

Dieting for health goes back to classical times. According to Louise Foxcroft, author of “Calories and Corsets: A History of Dieting Over 2,000 Years,” fad diets to fight fat took off in Victorian times, when women began lusting to fit into narrow-waisted corsets. Back then, some diet remedies contained arsenic, in dangerous amounts, advertised to speed up your metabolism.

With Charles Goodyear’s invention of vulcanized rubber, both men and women began wearing rubber underwear that held in fat and made them sweat, hoping it would lead to weight loss but gave them infections instead. 

Let this list of silly diets inspire you to go for a brisk walk and eat more vegetables as a rational alternative.  

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Chew and Spit

Horace Fletcher advocated chewing a mouthful of food until all "goodness" was extracted, then spitting out whatever remained. A shallot needed to be chewed 700 times, according to Foxcroft. Highly-intelligent men such as Henry James and Franz Kafka took up Fletcherism, and at one point dinner parties were timed to make sure people were chewing enough.

Because they consumed so little fiber, people defecated infrequently. Chewing food well is fine. Spitting it out sounds dangerously close to bulimia.

Vinegar and rice

The poet Lord Byron inspired a generation of young women to eat only vinegar and rice to achieve his fashionable pale thinness. Drinking vinegar is still a popular weight-loss strategy and there’s even some evidence it helps lower the blood sugar spike from carbs. But living on vinegar isn’t advisable.

Smoking cigarettes

In 1925, Lucky Strike launched an ad campaign: “For a Slender Figure — Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet.” Nicotine can indeed suppress appetite and even blood sugar levels — but smoking could give you heart or lung  disease or cause a stroke.

Some people have chewed nicotine gum as a weight loss aid. Just remember that nicotine gum has side effects, and nicotine is more addictive than crystal meth.   

Tapeworm capsules

Tapeworms can live in your intestine and eat your food before you absorb any calories. They can cause malnutrition, along with stomach pain — and pieces of the worm can randomly come out of your anus.

But women have swallowed capsules of tapeworms, usually one called Taenia saginata, to lose weight. In 2013, an Iowa woman bought capsules online and ended up in the hospital. 

Sleeping beauty

In the 1960s and 70s, some women took sleeping pills and dozed off chunks of the day to stop themselves from eating. It’s hard to imagine they didn’t get depressed, too. 

The hCG eiet

Also from that era, the hCG diet exploded again on the internet in 2011. HcG stands for human chorionic gonadotropin, now often prescribed to boost fertility. The hormone helps make pregnant women nauseated in the first trimester.

Research in the late 1970s and early 1980s debunked taking the hormone to boost weight loss. Proponents have said that you’ll lose less muscle, boost your metabolism, and keep weight off as long as you get injections of the hormone, rather than taking capsules. As with any crash diet, you risk depression and headaches and even potentially fatal blood clots, says David Katz, MD, founder of the Yale University Prevention Research Center.

Cabbage soup

You should ignore the thousands of entries about cabbage soup diets on the internet. The promise is eating cabbage-based soup for a week, and very little else, will help you lose 10 pounds.

Cabbage is high-fiber, low-fat, and low-calorie. But you won’t get the protein or nutrients you need. If you restrict your calories dramatically on the diet, you may well shed some pounds, which can happen with any extreme diet restriction.

But you’ll lose mostly water and muscle rather than fat. You could be light-headed during the diet. When the weight comes roaring back, discouragement could lead you to give up on your health.

A much better idea is to make vegetable soup and a slice of a whole-grain bread a frequent choice for a lunch or a light dinner. 

Baby food

Tracy Anderson, a celebrity work-out guru, has recommended eating two meals a day of jarred baby food as part of a 600-calorie a day diet. Again, crash diets can lead to quick weight loss and disappointment when you regain. 

Breatharian diet

On the argument that plants can survive on air and sunlight, some people have tried refraining from eating any food. A handful have been known to die from the practice, according to news reports. 

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