Warning: some of these may ruin your appetite.
By Ben Radding
DOWN THE TUBES
The K-E Diet
Hip new diet or “enhanced interrogation” technique? The Ketogenic Enteral Nutrition Diet can apparently help you shed 10 percent of your weight in just 10 days. Oh, but there’s no actual food, just a “nutrient-rich formula” — and you never actually eat it, either. Instead, the formula is “supplied 24 hours a day through a tiny feeding tube, which goes through your nose directly into your stomach”. But don’t worry: “There are no drugs and no surgery,” the website assures us.
WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY
The Drive-Thru Diet
Who doesn’t dig the occasional Macca’s or KFC pig-out? Yet there’s a reason why these greasy indulgences are occasional — and by this, we mean once or month or less — the carb and fat intake is so huge it can take weeks of exercise to burn off the calories. And if you’re driving thru, and not walking to pick the order up, you’re already behind the eight ball.
SOUR DEAL
The Master Cleanse
Also known as the Lemon Detox Diet, or “You laugh at adult nappies now, but we’ll see who’s laughing later.” The Master Cleanse is a highly involved, highly preposterous way to cleanse and lose weight. Just mix up a lemonade and cayenne concoction whenever you feel hungry, which will be a lot, and take a laxative before you go to bed. Sorry, but that’s a gamble we are just not willing to take.
EAT THE WORM!
The Tapeworm Diet
It’s almost too good. Ingest a tapeworm, eat as you please, and watch the weight go. And when you come down with symptoms including nausea, weakness, abdominal pain and intestinal blockage, you’re already 90 percent sure of what’s ailing you!
SLIM AHOY!
The Biscuit Diet
Versions of this diet generally have you consuming four to six amino-acid-dense biscuits per day, adding up to about 500 calories. This effectively tricks your mind into thinking you’re not dieting. But fun as that sounds, we’re all about willpower, so don’t even call us until there’s a Tim Tam variety on the market.
CHEWBACKOUT
The Chewing Diet
Chew your food 30 to 80 times and then spit out whatever remains. Wait, WTF? Popular at the dawn of the 20th century, the diet is still in use today among camels and a couple of method actors prepping for roles as camels.
BOWL MOVEMENT
The Cabbage Soup Diet
“The problem with most ‘mainstream’ diets,” the website for the Cabbage Soup Diet says, is that “those recommended by major medical institutions work slowly…” Agreed — how healthy is a balanced diet, really? Instead, try eating cabbage soup for every meal for seven days straight. Now practise saying “flatulence” and “lonely nights”.
BABY WEIGHT
The Baby Food Diet
First promoted by celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson, the Baby Food Diet offers some choice: you can eat nothing but baby food, eat a mix of baby food and regular meals or eat baby food as snacks in between your regular meals. Look younger in no time!
TRÈS MALNOURISHED
The Air Diet
Perfect for guys who love cooking but hate the annoying eating part that inevitably follows, the Air Diet involves sitting in front of your food, putting some on a fork, staring at it…and then not eating it. Supposedly, the smell and sight of food tricks your brain into thinking you have eaten. Common side effects include gross malnutrition and a mild form of post-traumatic stress disorder — but you will totally fit into your skinny black jeans again.
DROP THE BALL
The Cotton Ball Diet
The Cotton Ball Diet (we’re not kidding) requires you to ingest several cotton balls a day, and because they’re fluffy, they, like, fill you up, right? Filling, yes. Digestible, not so much. If you have ever rushed a dog to an emergency room because he chewed through a pile of Christmas ribbon, you have seen a glimpse of your near future.