Guest Post: 10 Weirdest Diets in History

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Diets have been around far longer than you can imagine. It’s safe to say that people from a long time ago were also pretty concerned about their weight, fitness, figure and health – concerned enough to try out different techniques on how to effectively carry out an diet. Eventually, these diets developed, became popular, and were named. Some of them are rational, some of them are just downright weird.

  1. The Avoiding Swamps Diet

Thomas Short, in 1727, produced the observation that people who live near swamps are relatively heavier than those who live far from it. The solution: do not live near a swamp.

  1. The Chewing Diet

When he was denied health insurance because of his weight, Horace Fletcher in 1903, created a diet technique that made him lose almost 40 pounds. He recommends that you chew every bite of anything you eat 32 times, and then spit out whatever is left in your mouth. The diet even gained a motto: “Nature will castigate those who don’t masticate”.

  1. The Drinking Man’s Diet

A best seller book on diets, Robert Cameron’s technique on dieting was popularized in the 1960s, but was eventually put down by the Harvard School of Public Health. Basically, and as the name would suggest, it recommends that one drinks gin or vodka during meals.

  1. The Caveman Diet

The caveman diet technique is when you eat only what had been available to cavemen in their era ten thousand years ago. Fresh greens, fruits and vegetables, and plainly cooked meat or fish are what this diet will revolve around.

  1. The Sleeping Beauty Diet

It’s always the perfect duo – eat and sleep. However, when you are sleeping, you cannot gain more weight than when you are eating. Thus, this diet technique suggests that you sleep more often, and yes, some even went as far as being sedated.

  1. The Graham Diet

Sylvester Graham is known as the father of graham crackers, which is a food that is ideal for losing weight because of its low fat and calorie content. The story does not end there. Graham was a minster and vegetarian who suggested that too much sex make people fat. Although some people did believe him, this diet technique did not last long in the high ranks of popular diets.

  1. The Blood Type Diet

A theory was put forward wherein each blood type has a special set of diet and food list that will make for a more effective weight loss and fitness program. For instance, if you have type O, you are recommended to avoid grains in your meals and you should do aerobics.

  1. The Cotton Ball Diet

If you are thinking that this diet means eating cotton balls, then you are not wrong. As weird and ridiculous as it sounds, this diet is eating cotton balls as meal replacement. How can it go wrong? Cotton balls have zero calories, fats and they taste nothing. It can go wrong in many ways.

  1. The Tapeworm Diet

There was a time when tapeworms were actually wanted in the body, instead of out of it, for diet purposes. At the start of the 20thcentury, tapeworm pills were taken by those who would like to lose weight but eat more. However, this practice was discontinued by the U.S. government because it brought about serious side effects such as developing cysts, meningitis, dementia and seizures.

  1. The Slimming Soap Diet

Is there anything a soap cannot do? Apparently, it was used to make one lose weight, too. Back in the 1930s, soap products such as Fatoff and Fat-O-No were sold to the public were they were told to scrub hard for the fat to easily come off of you.

 

If you think your diet technique is weird now, then it probably is. Then again, it may not be as weird as the ones they had before. Whatever your diet technique may be, it goes right back to what you eat and how much you eat. PhenterProcan be your aide for a successful diet. Stay healthy.

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