The Most Extreme Weight Loss Methods: Pros, Cons, and Results

Real Results for Effective Weight Loss

Extreme weight loss diets have always been around. Perhaps they are a manifestation of people’s constant search for shortcuts and quick fixes.

New dieting methods emerge and become popular for a while, and then are abandoned when people realize there is nothing magical about them. However, some weight loss diets are more extreme than others and can cause serious health problems. Here we go through some of the most extreme weight loss diets of all time.

Baby Food Diet 

The diet became popular in 2010 and is said to have been started by a well-known Hollywood celebrity personal trainer. It involves eating baby food instead of regular meals to limit calorie intake. One version of the diet calls for 14 jars of baby food a day (each jar contains about 20 to 100 kcal) which is very little energy for an adult and will surely result in weight loss. It’s unclear if the diet works because of the tiny portion size, or if the disgusting taste is baby food, which makes you skip eating altogether.

Tapeworm Diet

 This diet consists of ingesting tapeworms, a parasitic worm that lives in the intestines of individuals and consumes all the nutrients and this causes their hosts to lose weight.

This is a dangerous practice and can lead to serious health problems. In addition to a tapeworm being up to 25 feet long in the intestine, tapeworms can cause seizures, meningitis or dementia. We do not recommend you try this practice.

THE WEREWOLF Diet

Despite what one may think because of the name, this diet does not involve cannibalism on other humans. Instead, it involves tracking the phases of the moon.

There are two versions of the food, the basic werewolf food and the enhanced version. The original version involves a 2-hour fast during the full moon, where you only drink water and juice. The extended version begins with fasting on a full moon day followed by a dietary pattern specific to each phase of the moon. Remember that if you follow this diet, you may rightfully be called crazy.

Sleep Beauty Food Diet

The dish became popular in the 1960s and one of its most famous followers was Elvis Presley. It is an extreme dieting method that involves taking sedatives to sleep for several days straight because you will avoid eating while you sleep and thereby lose weight. It’s probably a great strategy for those who are too lazy to exercise and completely lack willpower. Obviously, this practice is very dangerous and not recommended.

Cabbage Soup Dish Diet

This diet is a radical weight loss diet that first gained popularity in the 1980s. This diet should include low-calorie cabbage soup for seven consecutive days. No other food is allowed. Proponents claim that 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) can be lost in a week.

The thing to remember is that most of the weight loss will just be water, not fat mass. When the seven days are up, keeping the lost weight will quickly return.

Cigarette Food Diet

The food became popular in the 1920s when several cigarette companies began promoting the appetite-suppressing properties of their products. Lucky Strike even went ahead and launched a campaign called “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet”, and believe it or not the campaign was a huge success.

Cotton Ball Diet

The dish gained popularity among models in the 1990s and has been around ever since.

It is accompanied by a cotton ball dipped in orange juice (or some other flavored liquid) and then eaten. The logic behind the food is that the cottonseeds are supposed to fill the stomach and thus satisfy the hunger.

Cotton balls can be considered “calorie free” but these days they are made with synthetic fibers and chemicals that are not very healthy and can cause problems in your GI tract.