Well I have gotten a lot of really um....interesting, advice lately.

My boss actually has a medical degree yet some of the things she says makes me question her sanity. Such as the no breakfast, lunch (whatever come from the uni), dinner an apple max diet plan. She's also modified it to skip the apple and just add a glass of water for dinner, and if your really hungry go to bed. Breakfast is miles on the treadmill. She looked at me today and in the most serious way said, "being hungry is great isn't it". I hate with a passion exercising (my short attention span is the main reason) so she told me not to exercise! I force myself on a daily basis to do 1 hour of exercise, but apparently I can skip it and just cut my lunch in half! With her as my example I'm glad I picked law school over medical school!

I've heard of spitting in a cup, but that's used normally by wrestlers who need to make weight, they gain it back as soon as they are done weighing in! Not a long term solution! The second you drink a glass of water you gain it right back!

Quote:
"When I told a friend that I was having alot of trouble staying on my diet, he replied "Just eat like a normal person".

Given the rates of obesity in much of the Western world, we *are* eating like normal people. We need to be the exceptional ones that have a healthy, balanced diet.

I watched my parents do various diets through the years too, though neither one of them was quite as bad as I've gotten, I don't think. Thank goodness they never made me drink vinegar.

I did actually get tired of meat, though - my father is a hard core carnivore who thought that Atkins meant "meat, meat, meat, and skip the veggies".

When I was 16, my grandmother was still trying to diet..she was a beautiful but plump 60 something lady. A friend of hers recommended drinking a full measuring cup of vegetable oil before every meal. My grandmother suggested I try it. She had the luxury of being a stay home wife/mom and could be 5 steps from the potty anytime the oil decided to make it's exit. I didn't try it as it sounded just too gross!

I remember her losing 25-30 lbs on the diet. The food slid right through her. She was getting 6000 calories a day from the vegetable oil but that must have passed right through her too if she was losing. She didn't mention anything about "oily stools"...reminds me of Alli or Olestra ads. Blech.

My grandmother struggled with her weight her whole life. It makes me sad to remember this. She always hid from cameras, we have no pictures of her. She was plump but the sweetest most beautiful person, inside and out. I wish she had loved herself more.

My (use-to-be) best friend advised me to stay away from fruits because they will make you fat because of the sugars. She said might as well just eat the candy bar.

2.5 months in, I've lost 22lbs and she's still at zero. =P

Along the lines of people who ought to know better ... registered nurse. "I'm going to try the gym for a month. Just the treadmill, I don't want to get bulky."

This is a great thread. I have heard of almost all of these diets. I didn't see the one everyone was doing at my job in the late 90s. They would mix vinegar, hot sauce and lemon juice together and drink that, no food just the drink. I was probably the only person not doing it.

I took those dexatrim pills and my mom made me stop almost as soon as I started, I didn't sleep a whole weekend. I took them as instructed by the box and was just awake. The only good thing was we were in Alaska, it was summer and the sun was shining and I could walk around base because I was jittery. She told me I was talking too fast and asked if I was on drugs. I told her what I had taken and she said you can't have any more of those. My mom had one of those machines with the belt that shook the fat loose...every time I used it I would itch terribly until I took a scalding hot bath.

The jittery cleaning ladies is PRICELESS!!! LOVE THAT ONE

My brother wanted me to do this "master cleanse" thing with him for weight loss. Drinking a mixture of Lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper all day as a "detox" (no food, just the liquid).

If the crunchy granola types thing this is good for you, great, but it isn't a long term solution to lose weight.

My dad:

Just skip every meal except dinner. Nobody needs more than one meal per day.

My favorite is getting diet advice from people who are actually bigger than me. A girl in high school told me, "Do what I did, just build a ton of muscle and then swim the muscle off!" Ok, a) swim the muscle off? Swim it off? How? How does that even work? and b) She was bigger than I was by at least 50 lbs.

And when I talked about going vegetarian if only to cut out the fast food temptation, a friend of mine went on some huge tirade about how soy products cause cancer and all kinds of illnesses. I'm pretty sure the millions and millions of people in Asia who have largely soy-based diets are much healthier than a 360+ lb. American chick. Just saying...