水戸セントラルビル

diets to avoid
Many people from all corners of the world are trying to lose weight for different reasons. While for some it’s due to a medical or health reason, most of us do it so we can get back our hot bodies that never use to gain weight when we were younger.

We all know that gaining weight is far easier than losing it because unhealthy food is everywhere and just tastes so damn good that we lose control. Some of us will try a new, trendy-sounding diet or product so we won’t at least feel guilty about not doing anything about it.

Here are a few interesting ones.

The Chopsticks Diet which sounds like another way of saying “eat Japanese food to lose weight”. This sounds sensible as long as you REPLACE the yummy, unhealthy foods with Japanese food in Japanese-sized portions. Japanese tourists that visit America tend to freak out when they see American-sized food portions.

Weight-loss lollipops may help if you tend to get the munchies between meals. Again, you need to REPLACE a bad habit with a good habit. Use these to help you stop pigging-out on potato chips, pretzels, and obviously cheese-laden nachos or french fries.

Weight-loss glasses? O…kay. Moving on.

Some people have become so fed-up of being overweight that they’re willing to try anything that claims you can easily lose 10 pounds in 10 days. These methods are extreme, invasive or right out of a horror movie. Try to not even consider going down these scary paths.

1. Tube Feeding

The Tube Feeding weight-loss trend is often used to help women lose weight rapidly before walking down the aisle in a wedding gown. It involves inserting a feeding tube through their nose, esophagus and into their stomach. The tube stays there for 24 hours each day for 10 days. Low-carb and high protein formula is then drip-fed through the tube totaling approximately 800 calories a day. This way ensures that you avoid eating altogether.

This procedure is usually considered for the injured and ill who are not able to eat on their own. Rapid weight-loss like this is considered to be dangerous, expensive, and non-permanent. The dieters that tried this reported feeling hungry and very tired all the time and it was difficult to last the entire ten days.

2. Tongue Patch

The Tongue Patch is a small, one inch abrasive material that’s actually sewn onto the top of your tongue with six stitches. It’s designed to make eating solid foods so painful that it forces the wearer to stick to prescribed liquid-only diets of about 800 calories a day for up to a month. The target market seems to be for those that find it too difficult to control their junk food addiction. This practice seems to have started in Venezuela because the culture is very focused on beauty and is well known for its successes in beauty pageants.

This procedure is also expensive. If desperate dieters don’t learn better eating habits after trying this, they will most likely regain the weight after several months.

3. Starvation

Just like an engine, your body needs fuel to perform all its tasks. It is also important that your body cells acquire important building blocks, including healthy fats and proteins in order to maintain the tissues and continual state of healing. Consuming too little for too long can trigger a flow of side effects such as the breakdown of bone tissues, muscles and organs. Other side effects include hormone imbalance, fatigue, hair loss, depression, sleep disturbance, suppressed immunity and increased risk of injury.

There is a safer alternative called Intermittent Fasting, which is basically skipping a meal or two on certain days. Be sure to consult your doctor, especially if you have issues with blood sugar regulation, have diabetes, suffer from hypoglycemia, etc.

4. Stimulants

Some people have fallen prey to using stimulant drugs to help them lose weight fast. While stimulants are known to suppress appetite, they can lead to addiction, nervousness, or heart-arrhythmia. Similarly, other illegal stimulants, over-the-counter or prescription medicines are not advisable as they come with side effects that range from mild to severe such as impulsive behavior, mood swings, poor judgment, high blood pressure, seizure, and stroke.

One stimulant that’s encouraged is green tea. It’s been shown to improve metabolism, protect against cavities and is attributed to reducing risk of death from some causes.

5. Drunkorexia

This relatively new term usually describes limiting food calories so that one can binge-drink without gaining weight. Some techniques that people have come up with involve excessive drinking to the point of throwing up, exercising before drinking, restricting calorie intake and compensating it with alcohol, or even starving yourself the day after a full night of over drinking. The side effects associated with this behavior are getting too drunk too fast because of lack of food, impaired decision-making, trouble concentrating, acute alcohol poisoning, increased risk of injuries and a weakened immune system.

6. Smoking

luckycigs

photo by dok1

Some people smoke as a way to help them lose weight fast, fully understanding the health hazards associated with it. Sure, smoking does suppress appetite, increase metabolic rate slightly and dulls taste buds. However, research and experts estimate the health risk to be as dangerous as adding on 100 pounds of body weight. Not recommended.

7. Tapeworms

vintagetapeworm

photo by orionpozo

Okay, this is just wrong. Tapeworms are creepy, wiggly things that can grow to about 20 feet long. Rumor has it that this was probably marketed in pill form with the “logic” that the worm would happily absorb your calories so you can eat as much as whatever you want. Now here’s the part that was most likely left out of the sales pitch. Once the tapeworm has hooked itself to the intestinal wall, it produces millions of eggs that it fertilizes by itself. That’s right; eggs that will hatch into larvae right inside the gut! My, my, doesn’t that sound pleasant?

Taenia_saginata_adultWait, there’s more. The tapeworm splits off into smaller sections to spread its offspring through the feces or crawl its way out through the anus so it can try to infect other animals. (Barf!)

Possessing tapeworms in the U.S. and some other countries is illegal to keep people from getting their hands on them and cause harm. These worms pose seriously dangers to those using them, which include organ function disruption, brain damage, blindness, digestive blockages and in worse case scenarios, death. Hopefully, just by reading this, you’ll have lost your appetite and eat less today. Your welcome.


Bottom line
The hustle and bustle of modern life has everyone looking for the instant gratification of quick and easy weight loss. The weight loss product market is a $60 billion dollar industry selling this single dream, which almost always results in consumers wasting their time and money.

The method that works for most people is eating clean foods with a little bit of exercise. Don’t look for rapid results or you’ll end up frustrated, or worse, end up sacrificing your health. Healthy weight loss is at a rate of one to three pounds per week. Since it takes years of an unhealthy lifestyle to become overweight, it will take time to look and feel good again after learning a new healthy lifestyle.