Weight Loss Diets

Are you feeling like a bit of a couch potato? Do you need to lose a few extra pounds? Weight loss is a piece of cake with one of these diets!

For as long as there have been ads, there have been individuals and companies offering us incredible diets to lose weight quickly. Unfortunately, many of these diets often involve "crash-dieting", which will help you lose a few pounds quickly, but not sustain the weight loss. Here are some of the crazier ideas.

Do you put vinegar on your fries or salad? In the 1820s, an English author used it as part of his weight-loss regime. Lord Byron took the phrase 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away' and tweaked it a little by drinking apple cider vinegar – whole glasses of undiluted vinegar. While a little vinegar can have some health benefits, health professionals warn of the side effects of having too much vinegar as it can destroy the enamel on your teeth and lead to severe stomach problems.

If restricting what you eat seems like too much of a bother, why not try a slimming soap? These became popular in the 1920s and '30s, with La-Mar Reducing Soap claiming you could use it to be "as slim as you wish". A similar product, Dr Paul Bouchard's Flesh Reducing Soap promised to "absorb all fatty tissues from any part of the body, and bring back natural slimness even to the worst case."

Before slimming soaps were invented, women went to other extremes in the name of beauty. They would take a pill with a tapeworm inside as it was believed that the tapeworm would eat any "extra" calories. These women purposefully put a parasite in their bodies to help them lose weight! And the side effects of a tapeworm infection - even voluntary - include diarrhea, fever, liver damage, and perhaps weight gain, as the tapeworm can produce an increase in appetite.

One diet fad which doesn't have life-threatening side effects comes from Japan. Michitaka Hirose, a university professor, has invented a pair of virtual reality glasses which can trick your brain into helping you eat less. For example, they can make the food you're about to tuck into appear larger, without affecting the size of other things around you. This makes your brain think you're eating a larger portion, which helps you to feel full more quickly.

He and his team have also used scent releasers built into the headset to trick people into thinking they were eating something far more delicious than they actually were. Imagine chewing on a carrot that smells of chocolate, or a piece of lettuce that has the aroma of a crunchy cookie!

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