Hilarious "Dieting" idea from the past, does anyone remember this? Please share yours too.
Replies
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It's kind of interesting to note that a lot of these fads actually have a small nugget of truth at their core. It's like someone read a small footnote somewhere about an interesting but insignificant bit of weight loss trivia, and saw their million dollar idea.
The cold starch diet was probably based on resistant starch research, and the food coloring one on studies of colour and appetite (Blue being the least appetizing). Sensa actually does have (very) theoretical roots in neuroscience. Of course, all of these things combined would still make almost no discernible difference in weight loss.
On the plus side, the thought of sprinkling brain altering chemicals on my cold, blue tinted cream of wheat makes me realize my childhood could have been a lot worse.4 -
This thread is hilarious!
Not so much a fad diet, but fad diet helper: my family had a little electronic thing you attach to the fridge door and every time you open the fridge, it OINKed like a pig a few times or it said, "eating again, fatty!?" at you. It didn't last long, that I recall. Lol.15 -
Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »In the 70's, my family went on a beet diet. All we were supposed to eat with this diet was canned beats, out of the can. Yuck! We didn't last too long with that diet..ha ha.
Other bad dieting advice is that diabetics used to be told they couldn't have sugar. In 1992, the American Diabetes Association changed this to where diabetics could have sugar in their meal plan.
Good lord! The beet pee in your house must have been stunning!
This brought back a memory of my uncle - a terrible hypochondriac - had vividly coloured urine the day after eating loads of beetroot. He rang my mother in a real panic about it until she calmly explained that it was due to excessive beetroot consumption (and no, he wasn't trying to diet).3 -
No a diet, but remember the electrical impulses to get all the affects of working out without the pain or time of going to the gym?4
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Stupid things I tried in the past:
- Slim Fast shakes
- Chroma Slim (I believe the plan consisted of zero fat, high carb, and chromium picolinate pills)
- Eating nothing but citrus fruit for a week (could have been worse, I guess)
- Wishing I was slim, thinking that someday I would be, without ever starting something
- The Zone diet
- South Beach
- Eat whatever I want, maintaining a calorie deficit for weight loss and at my TDEE for long term maintenance.
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I had a friend tell me she was on an Atkins diet, or some variation of that.
She had a hunk of dried out steak for breakfast and a larger hunk of dried out steak for lunch.
I remember her s-l-o-w-l-y making her way through those pieces of steak, chewing and chewing and chewing ... and I remember me thinking, "I just couldn't!!"
That lasted maybe 2 weeks.2 -
mintchocolategirl wrote: »This thread is hilarious!
Not so much a fad diet, but fad diet helper: my family had a little electronic thing you attach to the fridge door and every time you open the fridge, it OINKed like a pig a few times or it said, "eating again, fatty!?" at you. It didn't last long, that I recall. Lol.
Ok now that's funny2 -
I had a friend tell me she was on an Atkins diet, or some variation of that.
She had a hunk of dried out steak for breakfast and a larger hunk of dried out steak for lunch.
I remember her s-l-o-w-l-y making her way through those pieces of steak, chewing and chewing and chewing ... and I remember me thinking, "I just couldn't!!"
That lasted maybe 2 weeks.
So weird. Why dried out? Did she like it well done?1 -
I had a friend tell me she was on an Atkins diet, or some variation of that.
She had a hunk of dried out steak for breakfast and a larger hunk of dried out steak for lunch.
I remember her s-l-o-w-l-y making her way through those pieces of steak, chewing and chewing and chewing ... and I remember me thinking, "I just couldn't!!"
That lasted maybe 2 weeks.
So weird. Why dried out? Did she like it well done?
I guess.
Personally, I hate steak. It's awful. But if I am going to eat it, it has to be really well done. So I get that ... but it also seemed to be the toughest cut of steak available. Took her ages to eat it. Or maybe she really didn't like steak that much either? But somehow she was under the impression that all she could eat was meat.1 -
Oh, that's hilarious! xD My parents would never let me do that.
I was highly misinformed about weight loss when I was young. No joke, I believed that weight loss was eating less and exercising for a short period of time, and then once you got thin, you would be able to go back to regular habits and be fine. Ha! I tried this weird soup diet once that I found online where I'd just eating soup for every meal or something. Yeah. I did not make it to the end of the week. I think I lasted less than three days,, and I didn't even follow the guidelines very well.3 -
As for more recent ones I saw claims that vitamin B shots will make you loose weight. Nuts. I rather be a rolly polly than let someone stick me with needles.
Recently I actually gave the vitamin b injections at a weight loss place, I felt pretty bad for the people. $150.00 for 8 injections. I finally quit because I couldn't stand seeing really nice people being screwed over.1 -
As for more recent ones I saw claims that vitamin B shots will make you loose weight. Nuts. I rather be a rolly polly than let someone stick me with needles.
Recently I actually gave the vitamin b injections at a weight loss place, I felt pretty bad for the people. $150.00 for 8 injections. I finally quit because I couldn't stand seeing really nice people being screwed over.
What would the claimed advantage of an injection be over just taking a sublingual methyl b12?0 -
My aunt and I did the cabbage soup diet. The soup was good and you could eat as much of that as you wanted. I don't remember the rest of the diet just know we didn't make it very long lol1
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Milk and banana,.herbalife, slim fast, well let's just say if it was out there I tried it.2
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CorneliusPhoton wrote: »Stupid things I tried in the past:
- Slim Fast shakes
- Chroma Slim (I believe the plan consisted of zero fat, high carb, and chromium picolinate pills)
- Eating nothing but citrus fruit for a week (could have been worse, I guess)
- Wishing I was slim, thinking that someday I would be, without ever starting something
- The Zone diet
- South Beach
- Eat whatever I want, maintaining a calorie deficit for weight loss and at my TDEE for long term maintenance.
I forgot that I also did Nutrisystem!!! Yuck.
Gosh, I have been a yoyo for way too long!!!3 -
When I was in my teens, there was a lot of diet stuff at my home. My mum did slimfast, she drank mate tea, she bought apple cider vinegar to be had before each meal. There was a lot of low-fat cooking or stupidly small pasta sizes. And I was signed up for aerobics. None of that made me slim even though I participated.
I did get slim by going on a self-designed diet that consisted of cupasoup, undressed lettuce and - as a treat - these weird individually wrapped squared that I think were made of prunes of sth like that. I lost weight like mad. In retrospective I realized how close I was to a fully fledged eating disorder.1 -
I had a friend tell me she was on an Atkins diet, or some variation of that.
She had a hunk of dried out steak for breakfast and a larger hunk of dried out steak for lunch.
I remember her s-l-o-w-l-y making her way through those pieces of steak, chewing and chewing and chewing ... and I remember me thinking, "I just couldn't!!"
That lasted maybe 2 weeks.
So weird. Why dried out? Did she like it well done?
I guess.
Personally, I hate steak. It's awful. But if I am going to eat it, it has to be really well done. So I get that ... but it also seemed to be the toughest cut of steak available. Took her ages to eat it. Or maybe she really didn't like steak that much either? But somehow she was under the impression that all she could eat was meat.
She probably saw hoe expensive a good cut of steak was. Good steak, when cooked properly, is divine. Shoe leather is not.2 -
I had a friend tell me she was on an Atkins diet, or some variation of that.
She had a hunk of dried out steak for breakfast and a larger hunk of dried out steak for lunch.
I remember her s-l-o-w-l-y making her way through those pieces of steak, chewing and chewing and chewing ... and I remember me thinking, "I just couldn't!!"
That lasted maybe 2 weeks.
So weird. Why dried out? Did she like it well done?
I guess.
Personally, I hate steak. It's awful. But if I am going to eat it, it has to be really well done. So I get that ... but it also seemed to be the toughest cut of steak available. Took her ages to eat it. Or maybe she really didn't like steak that much either? But somehow she was under the impression that all she could eat was meat.
She probably saw hoe expensive a good cut of steak was. Good steak, when cooked properly, is divine. Shoe leather is not.
Yup. I hated steak too until I learned that my parents always cooked it to death. A nice medium rare cut in a restaurant that knows it's business is a bit of heaven that fits into my calories easily.2 -
In the 90's one of the diet fads was to keep your fat grams under 20 per day. So sad to think back at that now. Gotta have my fat.
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How about the tumblrina's idea of "intuitive eating" where you eat whatever you want because "your body is telling you that it needs it". And that they'll even out at the healthiest weight for their body.5
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ubermofish wrote: »How about the tumblrina's idea of "intuitive eating" where you eat whatever you want because "your body is telling you that it needs it". And that they'll even out at the healthiest weight for their body.
My friend tried that diet. Didn't work.1 -
I remember Ayds. I still have a used box that contains old PG Tips cards :-P2
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ubermofish wrote: »How about the tumblrina's idea of "intuitive eating" where you eat whatever you want because "your body is telling you that it needs it". And that they'll even out at the healthiest weight for their body.
My friend tried that diet. Didn't work.
No kidding, lol0 -
I had a friend tell me she was on an Atkins diet, or some variation of that.
She had a hunk of dried out steak for breakfast and a larger hunk of dried out steak for lunch.
I remember her s-l-o-w-l-y making her way through those pieces of steak, chewing and chewing and chewing ... and I remember me thinking, "I just couldn't!!"
That lasted maybe 2 weeks.
So weird. Why dried out? Did she like it well done?
I guess.
Personally, I hate steak. It's awful. But if I am going to eat it, it has to be really well done. So I get that ... but it also seemed to be the toughest cut of steak available. Took her ages to eat it. Or maybe she really didn't like steak that much either? But somehow she was under the impression that all she could eat was meat.
I think this happens OFTEN. People learn one thing about a diet like "you can eat meat with every meal" and never learn about the actual diet, like how Atkins encourages leafy green vegetables in large quantities.2 -
In the 90's one of the diet fads was to keep your fat grams under 20 per day. So sad to think back at that now. Gotta have my fat.
Oh.....sounds like the "T-Factor" diet. I worked with a gal who did this. She didn't lose weight (could be the pound and a half of grapes she liked as a snack).
Anyone remember - Dexatrim, Accutrim, etc? Originally marketed as cold tablets (Contac) - side effect was loss of appetite. The catch - that side effect only lasted a few days. Wonder if the "new" versions still use the same cold medicine.1 -
The Rotation Diet from the 1980's. This had you zig-zag your calories (not unlike 5:2). However (unlike 5:2) the Rotation Diet was a weekly average calories of less than 1200 calories a day.....no thanks.1
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The food combining diet.2
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Mine was a fitness plan. 13y o me in "sauna shorts" of inflatable green rubber, jumping rope in my garage on 100plus degree days.2
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There was also "tapeworm pills." An urban legend, of course,
NOT an urban legend. Popular when my grandmother was a kid. You took the green pill to start losing weight & the red pull to stop. There was a display in the window of a shop in town. One of the green pills had hatched & was wiggling across the display.5 -
My mom and I did one when I was on high schoolmate 80ies, the Cookie Diet lol. She paid for these special cookies that were "good" for you and we would eat only cookies three times a day lol, made it maybe a week. (That was only because she paid so much for all the "special" cookies .2
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