What’s the Weirdest Diet You’ve Ever Been On?

Unfortunately, not all of us have the metabolism of a 16-year-old track star. (Darn!) We thus resort to diets to shed the pounds we don’t want to see anymore. From standard “cut the carbs and fat” diets, to more institutionalized diets like Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers, there are pound-cutting strategies for everyone’s taste. There are also some wacky, or “nontraditional” shall I say, diets that cater to our bolder sisters who have nothing to lose (figuratively, of course!). We talk about eating healthy and safe dieting frequently here at ModernMom, but now we want to know something from you! What is the strangest diet you’ve ever been on?

The Cabbage Soup Diet

The Cabbage Soup Diet is a seven day meal plan aimed at achieving fast weight loss. Apparently it originated in a hospital where doctors encouraged the diet to stimulate weight loss in patients preparing for surgery. Vegetables in the brassica family (cabbage, broccoli, caulifower) are super nutritious and have been shown to help prevent cancer, but prepare for a lot of gas!

The Grapefruit Diet

One fruit that contains all the magical properties of weight loss? Maybe, but results of the diet have garnered mixed reviews. Grapefruits are high in fiber and vitamin C and contain natural simple carbohydrates. However, many of the grapefruit diet plans involve eating a very low amount of calories, which could be dangerous for some people.

The Lemonade Diet

The lemonade diet is the part of The Master Cleanse program in which you consume only lemonade for a certain amount of time. In order to ensure freshness and proper absorption of nutrients, the lemonade is concocted and then ingested right after it’s made. For this drink, lemon juice is mixed with maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and water.

The Negative Calorie Diet

No food has a negative calorie value, but our bodies burn more calories digesting certain foods than they receive for actually consuming them. For example, if a bite of celery is five calories, it would cost your body more than five calories to digest it, therefore producing the “negative calorie effect”. Examples of foods with this effect are asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, and zucchini.