Just for fun: what's the craziest/wackiest diet or weight loss plan you followed pre-WLS? The diet industry has no shortage of creative programs and gimmicks and I've been victim to several myself.

I think the silliest one I did was Suzanne Sommers' Sommersize (her original diet program). The theory was if you separated your food groups you'd lose weight faster. Carbs for one meal, Proteins for another meal, certain fruits on certain days... it was exhausting.

I also tried weight loss gum. Some confection created in the 90's that supposedly had an appetite suppressant added to it. Didn't do a thing for me.

Edited March 3, 201610 yr by needtorecover

I tried these high fiber pills called PGX Daily... they were good for me, but they didn't help me lose weight. Although I got a lot more exercise running to the bathroom from these little fiber bombs.

I tried Johnny Carson's diet of eating nothing but ice cream. (of course coffee ice cream for breakfast)

Loved it and after a few days there was considerably more of me to love!

I think that hormone drop, 500 calorie starvation diet. I lost about 30 in a month before going nuts. I believe I set some kind of regain record...all back in3 weeks and another 10 eventually found me !

That diet was promoted to me by a naturopath..I lost a little faith in t h em as a result. It was sheer misery.

Cabbage Soup Diet

I have tried all mentioned. One time I went on a Banana diet, where all I ate was banana's . How crazy is that...

Green tea, juice diets, crazy weight loss pills you get over the phone that make your heart beat a thousand times a minute... Lol

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I went on a low fat diet. Of course I had no idea what the heck I was doing. There was very little Protein, tons of carbs but focused on low fat.

I lost 60lbs in 4 months and my gallbladder!

My doctor told me that because of my fast weight loss my gallbladder decided to produce so many stones that they had to do an open gallbladder surgery. I still remember the surgeon telling me to be careful, that I was likely to gain all the weight back and then some.

That's exactly what happened. I gained that 60 back plus 40 more!

I then tried so many other diets that caused me to lose and gain. I finally decided that I simply could not diet anymore or I would end up weighing 500lbs. That was about 2 years before I had bypass.

Yes, diets are fattening.

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@@Djmohr That's horrible!! I remember the low fat craze in the late 80's/early 90's. I tried the high carb/low fat diet when I was a kid and that's when my yo-yo dieting started. I wish I could shake my 10 year old self and tell her she's NOT fat. When I complained about my weight to my friend's mom she told me "Don't worry, honey, you're going to find someone who loves that chubby belly of yours!" Made me feel 100000000 times worse because all I heard was "chubby belly of yours."

No child should diet unless they really, truly have a serious weight problem that's impacting their health.

@@Marie2016 My brother did something similar with corn. Except his end goal wasn't to lose weight, rather it was to see if he could eat so much corn he would poop nothing but corn. I think he lasted 3 days.

I have been pretty normal over the years. Nothing too extreme except maybe Atkins.

The craziest thing I let someone talk me into though was Topamax. My psychiatrist who was managing my depression meds decided I needed to lose weight so, without telling me any of the possible side effects, put me on Topamax. I lost weight but mostly because I had to force myself to eat because everything taste like dirt. It also made me druggy and sleepy and almost helped me lose my job all in the 2-3 weeks I was on it! I refused to continue to take it, although she really tried to get me to stay on it. It was an off label use for the med and was likely illegal. I felt like a guinea pig. It wasn't until I was in the throws of the side effects that I did a google search and found out about the drug. I never went back to her again.

pam

PS I know that they still use Topamax as a weight management drug and I wish anyone who is on it the best, but it messed me up bad and the dr. wouldn't believe me when I told her how bad the symptoms were.

Edited March 4, 201610 yr by mngreeneyes

I did Weight Watchers of and on for about 10 years. I thought, and still think, that the points crap where you had to have a little card to figure out your points or a computer/cellphone/something electronic was too much BS for me. I tried that plan 3 different times. No success worth mentioning. I also worked at a grocery store as a dairy manager. Every January (New Years resolutions) I would find those cards left all over my department. They were throughout the store. I would watch the people pull the card out and figure out if the food was good or not for weeks. Some would lose enough weight to notice. I would guess that 3 out of 4 put it back on and then some. I got to know them and they would ask about certain products (Hood dairy beverage, soy milk, etc.), so the weight loss was usually part of the conversation too.

I love my sleeve.

I KNOW what I should and shouldn't eat.

I don't need an app/card for every time I eat something.

I never tried anything crazy except the typical teenager stuff of not eating until 4pm when I got home after school. Worked great until I would binge. I did lose weight until I started getting hunger headaches.

@@mngreeneyes - Scary! My doctor did something similar to me - put me on Wellbutrin for weight loss (I think it's an antidepressant). It made me lethargic and crushed my appetite but in a bad way. I felt like you did, everything tasted bad and I didn't want to eat. The restriction from surgery is much more pleasant. I feel normal - that's all I wanted! Weight loss drugs are a Band-Aid, unfortunately.

@@jane13 - I did WW, too, many times. It was exhausting measuring the fat against the Fiber against the number of calories. I had my little card, too. I had one with a dial on it so I could calculate the points in food. One thing I will say about WW is they have a fabulous 0 point veggie Soup recipe. It was quite tasty and I ate lots of it. I am contemplating making it again for a delicious hot snack

Yes, diets are fattening.

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No truer thing can be said about diets

Edited March 4, 201610 yr by HanSolo1977

The cookie diet - expensive cookies and of course you lost weight because it was only 800 calories a day. I went on another one where you couldn't have cooked meat except beef jerky.