Everyday Systems

About the worst I ever went on was the F-factor diet. It was all about fiber, and this was about 30 years ago. You had to make up this fiber mix and eat it twice a day, besides eating lots of high fiber foods in general. The fiber mix was made up of high fiber cereal, wheat bran, some dried fruit and maybe some nuts? (can't remember) Because of the wheat bran, it was dry as dust and when you ate it with milk, the wheat bran would just float on top and refuse to mix with the milk. It was very hard to choke down.

The book stressed all the benefits of a high fiber diet and carried on and on about how great your experience in the bathroom would be now that you were eating huge amounts of fiber. (I won't be more explicit than that, but the book sure was!)

I lost weight on the diet, but it was awful. As a 14 year old girl, I didn't have any problems with regularity which needed to be solved. I just needed to stop eating a can of Spaghettios every afternoon when I came home from school!

What was your worst diet?

I tried the Atkins Diet when I was about 16. At 5'5" and 125 lbs. I decided I was too fat ( ) and needed to lose.

I got down to 113 lbs, and felt terrible. I got angry at the least little thing and cried all the time. Common sense kicked in and I decided I'd rather go back to the *enormous* weight of 125 than be miserable all the time.

Kathy B.

I honestly can't say because most diets I've tried, I didn't last more than a week or even a couple days! Atkins was pretty bad. No carbs? That makes life impossible for me. Too difficult.

ksbrowne wrote:I tried the Atkins Diet when I was about 16. At 5'5" and 125 lbs. I decided I was too fat ( ) and needed to lose.

I got down to 113 lbs, and felt terrible. I got angry at the least little thing and cried all the time. Common sense kicked in and I decided I'd rather go back to the *enormous* weight of 125 than be miserable all the time.

Kathy B.

Gee, based on the formula I've read, you were at your ideal weight!

I don't think I've tried any weird diets. Weight Watchers was probably as weird as it got. I've certainly read about a number or weird diets, but never tried them!

The cabbage soup and brown rice diet for EVERY meal (with NO seasoning for either!)
Uggggh! Need I say more?

There are some pretty gross weight loss tactics in this post,
http://jezebel.com/359360/whats-the-dum ... ose-weight

Slim-fast. Not that the skakes are bad, or anything, it's just I was ready to eat the paint off the walls at the end of the day.

O43

Speaking of "shakes" (and I use the term loosely), anyone remember the Cambridge Diet? Not only was the stuff putrid, but it was sold through a pyramid-type scheme. I didn't make it through a single shake, it tasted so awful. Biggest waste of $20 in my life.

It was eventually taken off the market, not surprisingly. If you actually stuck to the diet, you'd be taking in no more than 900 calories a day.

UPDATE: Just googled it and found out it's still around! Unbelievable.

I was once on HMR protein shakes for 12 weeks (600 calories). A few years later I had to have my gall bladder removed. I was told that the diet and the fact that I eventually went back to eating normally were a direct cause.

Yesterday I heard of the strangest diet though: bananas, hot dogs, and hard boiled eggs, alternating one week each. Is that the craziest?

Kimkins. It's a very lowfat, lowcarb diet and after a couple of days your appetite is so suppressed that you can barely force yourself to eat. The diet is basically skinless chicken breast, eggwhites and plain green vegetables. I was tracking on Fitday and was eating between 450 and 600 calories a day! You'd think that would have set off some alarm bells, but I was thrilled with the super-fast weightloss. I lost 15 lbs. in 14 days and then got sick. (Surprise!) I ended up in bed nauseous and shivering for two days. It may have been a coincidence but it scared me into eating normal food again as soon as I could stomach it.

I also did the Rice Diet a long time ago. IIRC, it was nothing but rice for a week, followed by rice and fruit the second week. I assumed it was safe because it was put out by Duke University. I never got past the second week, however, because I wanted to EAT something.

Wow, I've done some stupid things to lose weight. Thank God Reinhard came along with some common sense.

Laura, that Kimkins thing is just scary!

Did you know Kimkins turned out to be a fraud? The inventor never even followed her own diet. Lots of people got health problems from following it and now I think there's some kind of lawsuit. I read the full story at
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2 ... mkins.html

wintry wrote:Did you know Kimkins turned out to be a fraud? The inventor never even followed her own diet. Lots of people got health problems from following it and now I think there's some kind of lawsuit. I read the full story at
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2 ... mkins.html

Yep - all that came out about six months after I had tried it and quit. One of the things that originally interested me in the diet was all the great testimonials and before/after pics, including Kimmer herself. Then one day, months after I had already gone off the diet, I looked at the site and noticed she had a new picture up and looked completely different. I was curious but figured it was just a different angle or something. Not too long after that it came out that the whole thing was a fake.

OMG, not till months later?! Eek! How did you feel? Vindicated? Really smart or lucky that you stopped before it permanently damaged your body

wintry wrote:OMG, not till months later?! Eek! How did you feel? Vindicated? Really smart or lucky that you stopped before it permanently damaged your body

I guess I was more shocked than anything. I'm a very trusting person by nature (a severe handicap in life, let me tell you) and was simply dumbfounded that someone would go to so much trouble to scam people. If I felt anything else I guess it would be stupid to have done such a severely restricted diet in the first place. It sounded very healthy at the beginning - lean protein and lots of vegetables. The reality, though, was quite different. I got caught up in a dangerous mindset bordering on anorexia that was encouraged on the KK forum.

Luckily for me, I think my body was way smarter than me, and revolted at such poor treatment before it went too far. Quite a few others were no so fortunate.