$40 billion

$40 billion...

This is the amount Americans are currently spending every year on their efforts to lose weight. Is it working? Well no. We are fatter than ever. We try time after time, jumping on the latest fad diet or pill or exercise machine. Let’s take a look at some of the craziest diets in history:

1820 – the vinegar diet (side effects include vomiting and diarrhea – yep, weight loss!)

1830- Graham’s Cracker Diet –eat crackers and bread, they won’t make you promiscuous

1857 - Zander Rooms – fat massagers

1903 – Chew and Spit it Out

1920s – the grapefruit and coffee diet

1925 – the cigarette diet (they were allowed to advertise the appetite-suppressing benefits)

1930s – slimming soap (hand soap that “firms, tones and de-fats”)

1935 – Dinitrophenol – a weed killer that mysteriously caused factory workers to lose weight…so 100,000 dieters consumed before discovering it was causing blindness and death

1954 – the Tapeworm Diet

1964 – The Drinking Man’s Diet – you can drink gin and vodka, just don’t eat carbs

1970s – the “last chance” diet – consumers drank Prolinn, a juice made of
slaughterhouse byproducts. And then they died.

1979 -The Martinis and Whipped Cream Diet

1970s - The Sleeping Beauty Diet – just go to bed for a week (Elvis)

1980 - Breatharian Diet – who needs food when there’s yoga

2000 - Vision Dieter Glasses – food is less appealing

2000 - Cotton ball diet

This isn’t just history folks. We still have electronic ab belts, the Lemonade Diet, The Jello Diet, The BananaSlim diet. “No pills – just bananas”… That is just bananas. Is there a better way? Stay tuned!