Have you tried unhealthy diets just to lose a few pounds in time for an event? What about whittling down your meals to get in season for summer?

We’ve all had those times, usually sparked by insecurity in our bodies. But some diets are worse than others, and some are so bad that no amount of looking good in skinny jeans would redeem them from the horrors they wreck on your body.

Curious? Here are the top 11 diet fads you should be wary of.

1) The Hollywood Diet

The Hollywood Diet is a group of commercially-made snacks with a 48-hour diet plan. Advertisements claimed that the diet is guaranteed to have rapid weight loss effects in just two days. Popularized years ago, people still practice this diet today.

How it Works

The brand sells products such as cookie boxes, wafer sets, and juice drinks. For a day, you are only to subsist on one snack set. For example, you should only consume a box of Hollywood Diet cookies in one day plus water for the drink.

The company showed studies that conclude that the diet plan was successful. There was a considerable weight loss among the participants. However, another set of articles show that participants only lose water weight and not body fat in their diet.

Risks

You will starve yourself with this diet. Your body will have a deficiency in the nutrients it needs that will cause moderate to severe health problems when not addressed adequately. Here are things that might happen:

• Slowed Metabolism – The diet claimed to be low in calorie content. If the body does not consume enough calories, metabolism will slow down, and the body goes to starvation mode. Instead of losing fat, the body loses muscle mass, making you weaker and more susceptible to sickness.

• Hypoglycemia – Hypoglycemia is a condition where the sugar content is lower than what the body needs. It results in dizziness, fatigue, anxiety, and headache.

2) The Grapefruit Diet

This weight loss program started in the 1930s, and perhaps, it is the diet that every girl would dream about every day. However, it just too good to be true even though, the grapefruit diet has been popular in many countries for years.

How It Works

The diet is simple: you can eat whatever you want, and there are no restrictions on the amount of food you eat. All you have to do is consume 64 ounces of grapefruit every day. They say the juice from the grapefruit improves the body’s fat burning abilities. Unfortunately, no legitimate scientific basis proves the effectiveness of the diet.

3) The Feeding Tube Diet

K-E Diet one of the most extremes of diet schemes. You feed through a thin tube inserted to the nose, connected to the stomach. The diet solution has zero calorie content and is high in protein and fat. The K-E Diet is very expensive and is considered extreme and ridiculous by many critiques.

Adverse side effects that may develop from the diet are:

• Constipation
• Dehydration
• Fatigue
• Kidney Stones

An expert in the field states that this kind of feeding may trigger psychological issues by having an unhealthy relationship with food. Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia may develop from an unhealthy eating habit.

4) The Master Cleanse

This eating scheme is also called the lemonade diet. Stanley Burroughs’ book “The Master Cleanser” is the basis for the menu. The diet plan only consists of:

• water
• lemon juice
• maple syrup
• cayenne pepper

Celebrities such as Beyoncé Knowles attested to the losing weight after undergoing the diet. However, just like many diet fads, the results are only short term because you do not lose body fat but only water weight.

5) The 5-Bite Diet

The eating plan only consists of 800 calories a day. According to the developer, Dr. Alwin Lewis, the 5 Bite Diet Plan makes you lose 15 pounds in a week.

In this program, you only eat lunch and dinner.  For each meal, you are allowed five bites. You can drink as much as you want, but beverages with high calorie and sugar level is a big no-no.

The diet plan is tempting because you can choose whatever food you want. However, depriving yourself too much may cause overeating after the diet period. Doing this will only bring you back to square one of your weight loss journey.

6) The Cabbage Soup Diet

With the cabbage soup diet, you only consume less than 1000 calories a day. By subsisting solely through cabbage soup, the body will have a deficit in calorie and sugar. The diet will have you lose pounds quick, but your body will lack the energy it needs to carry out daily tasks.

Some long-term results from the diet will be:

• Slowed metabolism
• Deficiency in essential nutrients from protein
• Lack of fatty acids important for generating body energy

Nutritionists always recommend a balanced diet during meals. If you want to lose weight, you can reduce food intake but make sure you are still giving your body the right nutrients it needs.

7) The Sleeping Beauty Diet

This one of the most dangerous diet schemes of all time. Iconic personalities such as Elvis Presley underwent this diet. What you do is purposely sedate yourself to skip meals. Sleep-inducing drugs are the main elements of this diet fad.

Whenever you feel hungry, you will intake sedation pills. This eating plan may trigger stomach disease such as ulcer because of the chemicals and high acid contents of the sleeping drugs.

The diet will cause you to lose muscle mass and water weight because in most cases, a person will not eat and drink for days at a time.

8) The Tapeworm Diet

The diet scheme started in the early 20th Century. Tapeworms are parasites that live in the intestines of humans and animals. Humans will be infected by tapeworms when they eat undercooked meat of affected animals.

Having these parasites in the body may cause mild to life-threatening conditions. Tapeworms feed on food from the intestines. Thus, resulting in lower fat absorption. Tapeworms are also easily dejected from the body by certain drugs. Therefore, they thought ingesting tapeworms can be an effective weight loss treatment.

However, tapeworms can grow as long as 30 feet in length. Digestive infections from the diet may result. Tapeworms also may reproduce by laying their larvae in the intestines.

Tapeworms can migrate from the intestines to other body organs and reproduce there. These may cause larval cysts and infection in other body tissues.

9) The Prolinn Diet

Finally, the worst invented diet habit. Roger Linn founded the Prolinn diet in the1970s where he made a 400-calorie drink you are to subsist on. The diet has been a controversy for years because of the content of the protein drink and where it originated.

The Mystery Drink

Roger Linn claimed that eating nothing but the drink will result in weight loss. Many people did not make a big fuss on where the juice came from, but a lot were surprised when they discovered its origin. Reports show that the liquid protein came from slaughterhouse residues such as animal horns, hooves, and bones.

When people are still unaware, the product went to the market, and about four million people tried the diet. Fifty-eight were reported to have died from a heart attack.

10) The Air Diet

The Air Diet is one of the diet regimes which put the body into starvation mode. An elite fashion brand popularized this diet. The fashion company released a campaign featuring celebrities holding up food but eating nothing.

The diet only comprises water and salt soup. The air diet plan allows you to smell the aroma of food but not eating it. The science behind the diet plan is that when you feel food, you are tricking the brain that you are eating.

The controversial campaign has gained a lot of comments from critics. It is promoting a negative body image to the public and building an adverse relationship to food.

11) Intermittent Fasting 

Fasting is widely popular in many diet programs. There are several testimonials of how this diet works. It is also claimed to be a good diet for cleansing and detoxification. Some positive claims include:

• Growth Hormone Production
• Lowering of Blood Pressure
• Glucose Homeostasis

However, experts say that intermittent fasting is not for everybody. This diet plan does not allow people with specific diseases.

Risks

Studies show that a sample of people who underwent intermittent fasting experienced constipation, fatigue, inability to focus, and irritability.

The diet plan only takes a few days at a time. Therefore, there is a danger of binge eating.  When you went through fasting, you deprive your body of fat and carbs. Thus, after the diet period, there is a possibility that of ending up binge eating.

The Importance of the Right Diet Plan

Achieving your fitness goals requires effort. Invest time and money to get the body that you want. You need motivation, dedication, and commitment. More than exercise, being fit is also about what you eat.

Therefore, developing the right diet habit is integral to your fitness journey.  What you put inside your body represents you who are, people say. This saying is true because what you eat affects your appearance and mood. So, to be healthier, pick out a good diet plan right for you.

Here are things to consider in an ideal diet program:

It Should Be Non-Restrictive

A good diet program should be practical with your body’s needs. Food groups with fat and sugar should not be restricted. Also, a non-restricting diet plan allows you to indulge yourself with sweets and carbs from time to time.

It Should Be Moderate and Balanced

Ideally, the diet should comprise all the food groups from the food pyramid.  Also, avoid drastically cutting fat and calories because depriving yourself of moderate indulgences will cause you to overeat. Furthermore, a diet comprising of too little to zero carb contents can cause serious nutritional problems in the long run.

It Should Be Flexible Enough for Personal Preference

You can always personalize your diet program. Include healthy food that you like. Do not force yourself to what you cannot tolerate eating.  To sustain the diet program, you should be able to pick the food that you can endure.

The norm for beautiful always falls under the category of thin and petite. With this perception, many girls and boys starve themselves and participate in crazy diet plans to reach the standards of society. With these practices, people compromise their mental and physical health.

These habits and practices become an invisible disease that corrupts our perception and compromises our lifestyle choices. Instead of being happy and healthy, many people are miserable and unsatisfied because of some unrealistic goals set by society.

Thus, upon learning about some of these diet fads and being more aware of their actual results, we should be able to take a step back to think about our willingness to sacrifice health. To sacrifice it for our beauty and desire which cam result to going through health issues because of nutritional deficiencies from these diet practices.

Ponder about these things while you are at it. Remember, health is wealth and always be kind to your body.