With summer coming, all of us are beginning to worry about our bikini bodies and what we can do to lose weight fast. There are many diets out there that have reached popularity, but have negative health effects. Plus, they may not be effective in the long run.

One old diet is the Cotton Ball Diet. The cotton ball diet is exactly what it sounds like: you eat cotton balls, either by themselves or soaked in gelatin. The idea is to fill up your stomach with something that will take away hunger but not add any calories. However, the cotton ball diet deprives your body of key nutrients. Even the fiber that people believe they are getting isn’t the type of fiber necessary to sustain bodily functions. Not to mention the inevitable digestion problems.

Another old diet it the Tapeworm Diet. Before being banned in the United States, Fly by Night, Inc. sold pills called Megaslim that supposedly contained a live tapeworm. You could eat as much as you want, and the tapeworm would absorb at least half of the calories for you. Yet tapeworms may not actually eat enough of what you ingest to make you lose weight, and can cause bad infections, malnutrition, and even death by reaching other parts of your body, like your heart or brain, through your bloodstream.

New diets, reinforced by celebrities, are reaching popularity as well. The Lemonade Diet, also called the Master Cleanse, involves drinking a mixture of freshly squeezed lemon juice, syrup, purified water, and cayenne pepper for ten days.

The purpose is to cleanse the colon of built-up toxins while making the dieter feel younger and more energized. Beyoncé made this diet popular when she announced that she lost twenty pounds for the set of DreamGirls. However, after ten days on this diet you verge on starvation. Beyoncé herself says she wouldn’t recommend this diet for anyone.

The Cabbage Soup Diet involves one week of eating cabbage soup, water, and vitamins. The soup consists of cabbage, peppers, onion, tomatoes, carrots, mushroom, celery, and spices. You can eat as much as you want of this soup, but nothing else. Some celebrities like Sarah Michelle Gellar have reported results about this diet. You burn more calories digesting these foods than eating them.

The Grapefruit Diet, in which you eat nothing except one grapefruit per meal and a lot of water, is based on the principle of cutting back carbohydrates. A variation of this diet is to eat a grapefruit before every meal to cut back on meal size. The grapefruit can be replaced with any other fruit or vegetable.

Dieters average losing about ten pounds in a twelve day period. Yet this diet averages about 800 calories a day. The minimum calorie goal is much higher, and depends on the dieter’s height and weight. Similarly, both Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston support the Baby Food Diet, with which you replace two or three meals a day with jars of baby food.

You can also have one adult meal and snack on the baby food all throughout the day instead. This diet cuts out a lot of the fillers and added ingredients that adult food features. It also cuts out too many calories: dieters eat less than they should.

The goal with any of these diets is to shed pounds fast, and see immediate results. Yet most of these pounds come from water weight-dieters are likely to gain it all back once they begin to eat regularly again! Plus, most of them deprive your body of key nutrients and starve you, which could have damaging effects on other internal organs if used too drastically or longer than recommended.

Make sure to talk to a doctor if you are going to attempt one of these diets. It is much healthier to simply watch what you eat, cut out fatty or processed food, and exercise regularly. Those pounds have a chance of staying off, even if it takes a longer time.

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About the author

Katlyn Slough
Studying all kinds of Writing at Rowan University. In love with writing and communication. Hoping to see the world someday, and probably write about it.