The year 2022 is upon us, and for many of us, it comes with the same old problems regarding excess weight. If you’ve tried too many diets over the last few years, then perhaps you might be considering more serious options. You might be thinking about patented liposuction processes such as AirSculpt.
That’s may be a good idea, though you’re still facing the same problem of keeping the weight off afterwards. What you have to avoid, however, is to try strange fad diets that just don’t work. Worse, these diets can be very dangerous and may do more harm.
For the new year, make sure you don’t try any of the following diets:
Tapeworm Diet
From the name of the diet alone, you know this isn’t something good. In fact, it’s so bad that the FDA has actually banned it.
This diet involves swallowing a pill that contains a tapeworm cyst. After that, the tapeworm grows inside you. You’re basically “eating for two” when that happens, and the tapeworm consumes part of the calories you ingest to help you lose weight.
It’s doesn’t even have to be permanent, some of fans of this diet insist. According to these folks, you can swallow an anti-parasite pill once you’ve achieved the weight loss you were looking for. This pill will then cause your body to excrete the tapeworm out.
Aside from the rather icky nature of this diet, it doesn’t quite work as intended. The tapeworm doesn’t just consume part of the calories. It also takes in the nutrients your body needs.
Also, the side effects can be rather bad, as these include headaches, diarrhea, vomiting, and even epilepsy. The tapeworm can also move to other parts of your body—including your brain!
Baby Food Diet
Hollywood is responsible for a lot of fad diets over the years, as if these celebrities somehow gained doctorates in health and nutrition. Arguably one of the strangest of these diets is the Baby Food Diet, which involves consuming baby food as your meals even if you’re an adult.
From a certain (simplistic) point of view, it does seem reasonable, doesn’t it? After all, baby food is safe enough for babies. It’s pure, and generally contains lots of vitamins that babies need. And since you’re only eating a jar of baby food two or three times a day, you’re obviously restricting your calorie intake.
The problem is that this diet may be too calorie-restrictive, and you don’t get enough calories to function normally each day. Baby food also doesn’t have the nutrients that adults especially need.
Finally, it’s undignified and the food doesn’t taste all that nice. It’s hard to sustain for long, and once you return to solid food, the excess weight comes back.
Werewolf Diet
No, this isn’t a joke. There’s actually such a thing as the Werewolf Diet. It’s based on the moon cycles, which explains how it got its name.
More specifically, it involves fasting during the full or new moon, drinking only juice during the 24 hours of the moon phase. Somehow, the gravitational pull of the moon will quickly force out the toxins and water weight from the body. For other moon phases, you just have to refrain from eating past 6pm.
There’s really no science to back up these claims, aside from the fact that the moon does affect the tides. Our kidneys work to detoxify the body, regardless of the moon phase, actually.
The side effects of this diet include irritability, fatigue, and dizziness. It’s almost impossible to sustain as well, since the restrictions are just too strict for the long term.
Sleeping Beauty Diet
Again, we assure you that we’re not making these things up. This particular diet has a simple premise: you sleep more instead of eating. It actually involves taking quite a few sleeping pills so you sleep for a long time. The reasoning is that if you’re sleeping, you’re not eating.
It’s actually dangerous because this will disrupt your normal sleep cycle leading to poor sleep and poorer health. You’re also basically just starving yourself, and dehydration will also become a problem. You’re not getting your required nutrients (including vitamins and minerals) either. Sleeping too much also leads to decreased metabolism and muscle damage.
The HCG Diet
This diet actually came out way back in the 1950s, and it was proposed by a real doctor. The diet involves limiting the calorie intake to just 500 calories, accompanied by daily intake of the supplement hormone human choriogonadotropin (HCG).
However, there’s no real proof that the HCG helps with weight loss at all. The overly restrictive calorie intake also starves your body of the nutrients it needs. Without your needed nutrients, vitamins, and minerals, you’re just risking more health problems in the future.