Everyday Systems

Hi,

This may be a little off topic but I'm just curious as to what crazy diets people have tried before discovering the fabulously logical and sensible No S diet?

I've tried:

Raw food diet (AKA stoneage diet) - the concept is that you only eat raw fruits, vegetables nuts and seeds, drink water or fresh juices and nothing else. It is rather extreme and I barely lasted a misreable 2 days of hunger plus thumping caffeine withdrawl headaches

ok, this is embarrassing-but fun!! Before I confess, I just want to say I was young and gullible when I tried this and btw, it didn't work

I read about a Color diet, which claimed that foods that were "hot" colors, such as red and orange and yellow were burned off quickly and greens and blues (cool colors) didn't-it mentioned cows eating grass and all the very large (green-eating) vegetarian animals as examples Oh, and the best part-put all your water in red containers and let it soak in the rays of the sun to change the "vibrations" of the water to make it a better fat-burner. Sort of like sun-tea.

I still can't believe I tried that, even twenty years later I am thoroughly embarrassed that I thought it might work! And for the record, I only had about 10-15 lbs to lose then. Now it's a lot more! If only I had thought of NoS then!! After all, I had eaten that way all my life and not been fat-at ALL-and it was only after I deviated from the sensible Mom-enforced eating habits that I started gaining wight.

NoS is like coming home

Does the Zone count as a crazy diet? Because if so, I followed that for a couple of years. I actually felt great when I did it, but it got to be too much trouble to maintain in the long run. It was a huge hassle always to have a big serving of lowfat protein on hand (unless you resort to beef jerky, you always have to have a refrigerator or a cooler nearby), and the snacks got to be a pain too. Also, I had a hard time calibrating my food allowance to my exercise level, and I had trouble getting the right body-fat percentage to put into the equation too.

Wow, in retrospect it seems a lot more complicated than it felt at the time. No wonder I couldn't stick to it.

PS Jaxhil, I think you win the prize. That is one fantastically crazy diet you followed.

I can't compete with the color diet! The weirdest thing I did was the Bloomingdale's E.A.T. Healthy diet -- the theory was that you could train your appetite not to want to eat anything good by just never eating it. So you had three days at the beginning when you ate nothing but vegetables, half an apple, and a baked potato each day. On the fourth day you added in a fruit serving, and over the next week you added other foods. But you were never supposed to eat fat again -- no nuts, avocado, anything but very lean meat, no vegetable oil or anything but FF salad dressing. Your grain intake was pretty limited too. Suffice it to say that it is NOT TRUE that if you only eat cardboard, you stop wanting food!

I lost weight, but I also started bruising easily and felt like crap. And I gained somewhere in the neighborhood of a trillion pounds when I went off it at last.

Mine was the Warrior Diet, in which you eat very small amounts of whole foods and water during the day, and then, after you work out, you eat a huge salad, then a protein and cooked veg, and lastly, whole food carbs.

There are so many, but before I got married, I went on a very strict Atkins diet. I lost a ton of weight and looked good in my dress, but the side-effects were just awful: bad breath, constipation, exhaustion, always dehydrated. I gained back all the weight and more on my honeymoon!

Then to the other extreme, I did the Susan Powter diet where I ate a ton but it was all fat free or very low fat. Very little meat. All breads/starch.

Oh, here's another one I tried: the Carbohydrate addicts diet. Eat either nothing during the day,or 2 very small low carb meals, and then dinner is a one hour all you can eat pig fest. As much as you can stuff in for one hour!

Well it wasn't a published diet or anything, when I was a junior in high school (summer before senior year) all I ate was rice (plain minute rice) for lunch and a baked potato (with margerine) for supper. NOthing else. LOL
I went from 179 down to 150 in a hurry. Plus I was running every day. I still remember the looks on people's faces beginning of the school year of people's jaws dropping! I was very very UNpopular, so it was satisfying having people notice.

And I STILL thought I was fat at 150 LOL. Geez.

Hil, I think your diet is the goofiest one I've heard yet LOL.

Tiff

In my junior year in college I put myself on the "save money for booze" diet. It was remarkably effective -- I lost over 30 pounds in a few months (and almost failed out).

Reinhard

all the diets I have tried were calorie restricted. They made me an unpleasant maniac. And I couldn't count the days fast enough until they were over.