The saying “beauty knows no pain or inconvenience” never rings truer than when we think over some of the scary diet programs for weight loss that have become popular fads at various times in recent history. Even more frightening is that some of these disastrous strategies have come around more than once. You may even know someone who gave one of these a try!
Scary Diet Programs for Weight Loss that Should Never Have Existed
We’ve compiled this list of scary diet programs for weight loss not out of any recommendation to use them – in fact, please don’t! That said, we’re hoping you find them as horrifyingly fascinating as we do. Be warned, many of these slimming strategies are pretty gross.
1 – The Tapeworm Diet
As you can see, in this list of scary diet programs for weight loss, we’re diving right in. Few things are more horror provoking than the thought of having massive wormy parasites squirming throughout the inside of your body. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to dieters across the United States and several other countries – more than once over the past couple of centuries! That’s right, humanity didn’t learn the first time!
The idea behind this completely illegal and scary diet program for weight loss is to swallow a pill containing tapeworm larvae. Once the “worm egg pill” is swallowed, it enters the digestive tract, where the eggs hatch and the parasites continue to grow…and grow. While they do, they eat the food you’ve consumed, thereby saving you the calories. That said, while you may not find yourself growing, they certainly will.
Though milder cases can be treated with medication, it isn’t unheard of for doctors to have to extract fifteen-foot worms from a dieter’s body. That may be a more extreme case, but even on the milder side of things, a single tapeworm in the body can cause nausea, pain and bloating, as well as anemia and other forms of nutrient deficiency. If you’re lucky, that parasite won’t proceed to lay its own eggs within your body. This species is hermaphroditic and can lay fertilized eggs in a person all on its own. Infestation can send more worms out of the digestive system and into the blood stream where eggs can be deposited everywhere from the liver to the lungs, spinal cord, eyes, or brain.
Clearly, this is one of the more horrific and scary diet programs for weight loss, and it can also be deadly.
2 – The Feeding Tube Diet
The feeding tube diet is another extreme addition to our list of scary diet programs for weight loss. It promises you that you’ll lose 20 pounds in half as many days, targeting brides-to-be who are desperate to fit into their dresses and look their “best” in wedding photos.
Horrifically, it is exactly what the name implies. A feeding tube is inserted into the nose and run down into the stomach. Throughout the length of this extreme fad diet, a steady flow of protein and fat (zero carbs) is fed through the tube and into the stomach. You’re delivered a tiny 800 calories per day on this diet. The program promises to be safe and doctor supervised, despite the fact that you aren’t hospitalized for constant monitoring. Instead, you carry the food solution everywhere you go.
This diet is riddled with side effects (beyond the massive doctor’s fee of approximately $1,500), including constipation, fatigue and bad breath. Moreover, it also comes with the dangers of rapid weight gain that typically occurs once the “diet” is over and eating returns to some semblance of normalcy.
3 – The Tongue Patch Diet
Another scary diet program for weight loss guaranteed to make you squirm is the tongue patch diet which, like the first two on this list, is exactly what the name implies, only worse. This strategy sounds more like a sci-fi medical experiment than anything you’d expect a licensed doctor to provide.
The majority of the cases of the tongue patch diet take place in Venezuela, though ABC News has reported on a Californian cosmetic surgeon bringing it to the US for $2000. The promise is that in a 30-day period, you’ll lose 18 to 20 pounds.
That said, you’ll first have to undergo an outpatient procedure that sews a plastic mesh patch to your tongue. Throughout the month that the patch is in place, you’ll be able to consume only specially formulated liquid shakes and other beverages. If you follow it properly, you’ll take in only 800 calories per day.
Think you’d cheat because of the hunger pangs? Nope! The only thing more painful than your stomach on that liquid-only diet is the feeling the patch gives your tongue if you try to eat something even vaguely solid. Think your pain threshold would be high enough to withstand it, the patch also makes it difficult to swallow, which means that even if you could push past the pain, you likely wouldn’t be able to swallow the food you’d eaten.
4 – The Cigarette Diet (Also Known as the Nicotine Diet)
As smoking becomes decreasingly popular across the country, it’s still shocking that people can be convinced to light up for promised advantages such as slimming effects. Many of us have heard the claim that smokers eat less and therefore find it easier to control their weight. As a result, someone – though it’s not known who specifically, possibly there were several someones – decided to create a diet based on the use of cigarettes.
This health nightmare has been particularly popular in certain specific industries, which helps to explain why it was once called the “model’s diet”, as models were among the most common followers of the strategy.
The diet itself consists primarily of cigarettes and water. Of course, while it boasts of rapidly shrinking pounds, it forgets to mention the lung cancer, sallow skin, yellow teeth and nails, brittle hair, and emphysema that are also scientifically proven to be linked with smoking.
Of course, once the diet – which is meant to be short term, considering its 100 percent lack of nutrients – is complete, what is left is nicotine addiction. Anyone who has ever seen someone try to quit smoking knows that it is not only extremely challenging, but it is also widely associated with rapid weight gain.
Final Thoughts About Scary Diet Programs for Weight Loss
It can be easy to feel desperate to lose weight. Following healthy, long-term strategies is extremely hard. It involves forming new habits while breaking old ones, and then maintaining that changed lifestyle over time. This can make us feel as though truly disastrous strategies aren’t really the scary diet programs for weight loss they really are. We just want something that works!
However, these and more common fad diets, simply aren’t worth it. Not even close. Building the right strategy over time, using the right diet pills to support your efforts so you can overcome the most challenging components, and making sure you’re always focused on your best health – not fastest results – is always going to serve you best. If you’re not sure how to proceed or if your current strategy isn’t working for you, your doctor is always your best resource for advice.
