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How NOT To Lose Weight

October 10th, 2008

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time hanging out in weight loss forums such as Dr Phil. I tell you what, if you’ve got a spare hour or so and want to make your own worries about your body image disappear, then follow my lead. There are some seriously desperate people out there. And it’s hard not to admire their courage in sharing (sometimes a little too much). But you do have to wonder at the advice that’s being given out online. Sure, most of it is from ‘novice to novice’ (as opposed to professional advice), but that doesn’t stop it being pretty damn scary.

And just a little bit funny – surely, with all that we now know about health, surely .. there isn’t anyone out there that actually thinks this sort of thing works?!

How NOT To Lose Weight (I’ve left the spelling mistakes in – it adds that something extra!)

day 1- all you have to eat is furits in whole day but not the
bananas + mangos. try water melon in the breakfast.

day 2- all you have to eat the vegetables in whole day
cocked or uncocked but dont put oil in it, should be
boiled.

day 3- today you can mix the furits and vegatables, there is no
limit how much you eat.

day 4- today all you have to eat is 8 bananas and three
glasses of milk, thatsit.

day 5- today you may eat one cup of rich without oil only
boiled but you have to eat 6 tomatos and drink
a lot of water.

day 6- you can eat one cup of rich as yesterday with
vegetables in whole day.

day 7- to is the juices day. you can drink as much as you like
the whole, thatsit.

after seven days you have to come back on your normal life but should take meal with brown bread for 3 days. then if you wanna loose more you can do the same again or just leave it and have fun in your life.

i asure you that i did this and i loose 5 kgs in 7 days.

Hmmm, any takers?

Now I’m not too sure what ‘rich’ is, but I’m not really thinking that I want to email the author and find out!

On a more serious note – the really scary part is that there are people out there, even in our oh-so-evolved-and-educated society, who still believe in and follow these sort of crazy plans. I almost cried reading the blog of a 25 year old London girl, who documented eating less and less each day (basically a cup of broth morning and night), whilst upping her exercise, and then complaining about feeling woozy and grumpy. And, to top it all off, asking for advice as to what else she should cut out as she wasn’t losing enough weight! I mean sure, you can roll your eyes at her stupidity, but there is nonetheless an element of sadness that people do go to such desperate measures to change their body.

I guess when it comes down to it, despite all that we supposedly know about nutrition, there are still too many people out there who just aren’t getting the results despite their best efforts. So we do have to ask ourselves – is there a chance that conventional nutritional advice is all wrong?

My opinion – that’s pretty much a statement of fact, not a question. There’s a very real reason (well, several actually) that low-calorie and high-exercise doesn’t work. And those reasons are pretty much the basis of my new book. More on that another time ..

In the meantime, what is the craziest diet you’ve tried in your life? I once ate nothing but sultanas for three days. Yes, it was a long time ago, but ug, I can definitely still remember the aftermath. And it wasn’t pretty! I’m just glad I somehow got pointed in the right direction after that attempt. How about you? What is some of the useful, or plain stupid, advice you’ve received about health or nutrition?

Maybe we could put a book together!

Life is Now: Press Play

Kat

**PS: The reason I’m hanging out in weight loss forums? Market research for the book of course! But you guys are my best inspiration – I’d love to hear your questions or wonderments, or even your frustrations when it comes to getting in shape and why doing ‘all the right things’ sometimes makes no difference at all.

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6 people have commented
  1. Amy says:

    God, I’ve witnessed all sorts of crazy diets and I’ve even attempted a few! I worked for the Water Police a few years back & the head of their search and rescue swore by the Cabbage Soup diet for a week or 2 every few months …he was one angry mofo (when on the diet, of course!). A friend of mine in London put on 20kg when she moved there due to poor diet, binge drinking and many many curries and managed to shed 25kg eating one packet of crisps and one apple a day and drinking as much tea & water as possible. Unfortunately, it reaked such havoc on here hair and skin she looked terminally ill. No word of a lie. I find it hard to stick to a ‘diet’ at all & generally just meander between eating like I’m a food editor from “Gourmet Traveller” magazine and eating like I’m training …. though that is usually the times I forget to train! Love your blog, read it religiously and hoping that it’s going to continue to inspire me ?

    • Kat says:

      Thanks for the encouragement Amy great to know you are enjoying my blog! Had to laugh at those diet stories; they are all too familiar! See you round the blog .. Kat

  2. Brenda says:

    The dumbest thing I ever did was try to the the Atkins diet back in the 70’s without reading the book. I just cut out all carbs for about a week and felt awful, so I blamed the diet when really it is somewhat normal to feel icky for a few days when going off the carbs and sugar and because I didn’t read the book I didn’t know that you were not suppose to cut all carbs out completely. For years I saw that book continuing to be on the book store shelves while I was trying to follow the low fat diet that was recommended during the 80’s. (Another big mistake.) I would think “I can’t believe that Atkin’s diet book is still being sold……….people are so stupid” and this was before the popularity of Atkins hit. I failed miserably at low fat while having babies and not being able to figure out how to get the weight off. Finally I did read the Atkins diet and did my own version of it with the most success I have ever had. Now I know that there are also flaws with the diet like recommending soy, canola oil, not stressing healthy fats, artificial sweeteners and all the marketing products that came out. But it was the start of going down the right path……..away from starchy carbs, grains and sugar.

    Also……….Once I saw Dr. Phil’s wife on TV making a diet banana cream pie and she actually used margarine in it. I was shocked. And they were giving diet advise. I think they were still promoting the low fat diet the last time I noticed.

    • Kat says:

      Oh yuck, that sounds vile.

      At least you can look back now and think about how far you’ve come in terms of your knowledge Brenda – some people never get there!

  3. Ginger says:

    I did the leek soup diet for 3 days. To cleanse and jump start weight loss. I did it but was so misreable! Even went to my sister-in-laws for a cooking show and everyone was impressed with my self control. I think my insides ate themselves.