Yo-yo dieting
diets,diets health product,diet plans
Slim woman taking measurements
Take a look around your office at lunchtime and it\'s a safe bet that at least one person will be munching on a bowl of Special K for their lunch while another eats a carefully prepared carb-free, low-GI salad. With most women on a diet at some point, if not most of their lives it\'s no wonder that the diet food industry is a big business but with some weight-loss plans causing severe flatulence, and others giving followers unsightly acne, just how far is too far to go in the name of losing weight? We take a look at the good, the bad and the bizarre diets which most of us have unwittingly tried and failed at, at some point in our lives...
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The Cabbage Soup diet
diets,diets health product,diet plans
Cabbage soup diet
The Cabbage Soup Diet promises fast weight loss as long as you eat nothing but, you guessed it, cabbage soup for seven days. You can eat as much soup as you like but the bad news is that the sheer volume of cabbage soup in this diet can cause flatulence making this an incredibly antisocial diet.
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The 13-minute diet
diets,diets health product,diet plans
Woman watching a clock impatiently
The 13-minute or Burns Diet from Vitaline involves eating every 13 minutes in order to fire up your metabolism so that your body burns fat at its maximum level. You\'re probably thinking that that sounds a bit bonkers and you\'d be right, not only do you have to chop up hundreds of carefully-sized pieces of food but you have to make sure that you can eat regularly. Not good news if you\'ve got any meetings at work coming up or an important presentation.
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Diet rating: 2/10
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Read our review of the 13-minute diet
Weight Watchers
diets,diets health product,diet plans
Fridge full of vegetables and fruit
One of few diets which doesn\'t ban any food groups and allows you to eat anything within reason, Weight Watchers has been popular with women for generations and is still going strong today. The downside is that it can be an expensive business after paying the weekly attendance fees or online charge and then investing in the Weight Watchers meals on top of this. If you are desperate to lose weight though and want a failsafe method with group support, the results will far outweigh the expense.
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Diet rating: 9/10
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Read our review of the Weight Watchers diet
The Maple Syrup diet
diets,diets health product,diet plans
Woman holding a glass of maple syrup
If it worked for Beyoncé, it\'ll work for me! At least that\'s what many women thought after the Bootylicious star lost most of her booty on the Maple Syrup Diet for a film role. The diet involves drinking nothing but an unpleasant tasting concoction of syrup, lemon juice, cayenne pepper and water for one to two weeks and, if you can stick it out, can help you to lose over a stone in two weeks. The trouble is, you won\'t be able to stick it out unless you have the will power of steel and don\'t mind feeling and looking terrible for a fortnight. On the diet you will consume a meagre 60 calories a day instead of the recommended 2,000 meaning you won\'t be able to concentrate for more than five minutes. The likelihood of this diet is that you\'ll be hitting the bacon butty van within a day, either that or you\'ll be fired for repeatedly falling asleep at your desk.
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Diet rating 1/10
Atkins
diets,diets health product,diet plans
a fork with a raw piece of meat
The Atkins diet was made famous by the plethora of celebrities who shrunk before our very eyes after falling prey to the promise of fast weight loss, despite gorging on burgers, cheese and steaks. Several years later and the buzz has died down after it was discovered the that diets strict no carb rule sent blood pressure and cholesterol soaring and had the unpleasant side effects of bad breath, acne and fatigue. That said, the diet is still proving popular in America where the prospect of being able to eat a burger with cheese every day seems too good to resist.
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Diet rating: 5/10
Read our review of the Atkins diet
The GI Diet
diets,diets health product,diet plans
GI Diet
The GI Diet emerged shortly after the demise of the Atkins, thanks to its healthy, balanced approach to food and emphasis on eating for improved health rather than weight-loss alone. After you\'ve managed to get your head around the GI scale of good and bad foods this diet is pretty straightforward and is more of a life change rather than a quick fix.
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Diet rating: 9/10
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Read our review of the GI diet
The Zone
diets,diets health product,diet plans
The Zone diet
Probably one of the most complicated diets going, The Zone became incredibly popular in the \'80s thanks to its many celebrity followers. The one thing the celebs have which us mere mortals don\'t though is someone who can prepare all of their meals and work out the tricky ‘block\' system which decides how big your portions are allowed to be. If you do manage to get to grips with the portion control and foods allowed on the diet you can expect to lose a couple of pounds a week but sceptics believe the diet to be unhealthy due to its severe restriction of carbohydrates.
Diet rating: 6/10
Read our review of the Zone diet
The Cheater\'s Diet
diets,diets health product,diet plans
Woman hiding a doughnut
The Cheater\'s Diet works by followers sticking to a strict diet Monday to Friday and then being allowed to eat what they like at the weekends. Sounds great but this diet is not as simple as it seems, you still have to stick within guidelines when it comes to your ‘free\' food and your weekday diet bans bread, alcohol and sugar. The moral of this story? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
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Diet rating:
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Read our review of the Cheater\'s Diet
The Cambridge Diet
diets,diets health product,diet plans
The Cambridge Diet
A diet which is based on something called the ‘very low calorie diet\' should raise alarm bells but not so it seems with this weight-loss plan which is having a bit of a moment right now despite falling out of favour with slimmers in the \'80s. The diet works in a very similar way to the Slim Fast plan in that you are only allowed to consume approved shakes, bars and soups provided to you by an approved Cambridge Diet counsellor. Sound expensive? It is, and incredibly restrictive. Our advice is to stick to eating real food and lose weight the traditional way, not through eating man-made chemicals.
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Diet rating: 3/10
Read our review of the Cambridge Diet
The Macrobiotic Diet
diets,diets health product,diet plans
Plate of cheese and milk
The Macrobiotic Diet is all about understanding energy and life and yin and yang, and in order to do this you apparently have to cut out dairy. Despite this excessive measure the Macrobiotic Diet has a huge celebrity following, including Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna, due to the freedom and healthy approach advocates of this regime say it provides. A typical day on the Macrobiotic Diet would involve lots of herbal tea, porridge, yeast-free bread and vegetable pate. It all sounds very healthy but for every advocate there\'s a sceptic and many condemn this plan due to its extremely low calorie content and lack of iron which can cause anaemia.
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Diet rating 5/10
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Read our review of the Macrobiotic Diet
