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

A long time ago, i tried the 48 hour Hollywood diet. UGH You drink some nasty juice all day and nothing else. Worst diet ever, but i was young. I think i was 18 or 19. So young and so gullible.

A few years ago I tried the lemonade diet. To cleanse myself. I stopped because I got a terrible rash on my face. Hahahaha ...memories!

I ordered it and never used it.

Richard Simmons Deal a Meal

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GUVgNhJvHjs

Too funny JustWatchMe. I ordered that too and never used it. Had some of his videos too. Remember JANE Fonda workout! I also tried Nutrisystem in the late 80s. Was successful with Herbal Magic but put it all back on again when the stresses of life took over. Looking forward to RNY in the next couple of months

Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

The craziest thing I've tried was something called the 5 bite diet. It's promoted as a diet mimicking the weight one would lose through bariatric surgery but without actually having surgery. You're supposed to wait as long as you can before you eat. When you finally do eat, you have 5 small bites of food 2x a day....it was a total fail!!!

Sent from my SM-G925V using the BariatricPal App

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.

My craziest one too.

Sent from my SM-G900W8 using the BariatricPal App

I remember 2 of my coworkers injecting themselves with hcg and barely eating. I considered trying it but the injecting myself part creeped me out. There's no telling what was in those vials.

I think I tried them all. At least, it sure seems like it. Most of them worked for me as long as I followed them. Probably the silliest thing I tried was drinking shakes to lose weight. Note to self: you’re not supposed to drink your calories if you want to lose weight! They just left me hungry and craving actual food. Thankfully, I never tried anything flat-out dangerous like some of those weight loss pills or supplements or cleanses.

The craziest thing I've tried was something called the 5 bite diet. It's promoted as a diet mimicking the weight one would lose through bariatric surgery but without actually having surgery. You're supposed to wait as long as you can before you eat. When you finally do eat, you have 5 small bites of food 2x a day....it was a total fail!!!

Sent from my SM-G925V using the BariatricPal App

Five bites?! That's hardly enough to satisfy me post-WLS let alone the pre-WLS version of me who could eat a serving platter worth of food in one sitting, no problem.

I have seen the bariatric surgery diet without bariatric surgery advertised on the net. Because of course you will lose weight if you eat small portions of a low carb/high Protein diet. The reason one has the surgery is to make that diet feasible without losing your mind in the process!

I vaguely remember some diet in middle school where I had to eat grape fruit, and pitas filled with tuna salad....

I have done Atkins before... really not much different than post-sleeve except I'm not quite as strict on the carbs now.

I also did 5:2, which was actually really great. I would definitely recommend it for people trying to lose weight without WLS.

Edit: Thought of a couple more: Did Slim Fast for a while in my early 20's. And did Nutrisystem for about 2 months at one point.

When I was 18 or so I followed a diet that had you fast one day, next day you could eat fruit (mixed with plain yogurt okay). I can't remember, but the amount was no doubt limited. Next day you had veggies, after that dairy? I can't remember it all except the day before your next fast you got to have steak if you wanted it.

Also have tried WW numerous times (the one back in early 80s was okay; crap after they went the no fat route) Nutri-System, cabbage Soup, calorie counting, Atkins and South Beach. I did well on low carb diets. The diets didn't fail me. I sabotaged myself each time I got close to a specific weight. (Why I'm seeing a shrink now.)

Does my diet when I went away to college of "one cup of Easy Mac per day" count? lol!

At that point I honestly had no appetite so I really had no desire to eat anything else, except maybe some salad from the meal hall or their Pasta dishes you could customize (pasta + broccoli + garlic + olive oil was my favorite). I did lose 15 pounds while I was there, though - mostly due to hardly eating and a ton of walking. I left the school after a semester and a half and of course I gained all the weight (and much more) back.

Other than that, the craziest thing I ever tried was the Zi Xiu Tang Bee Pollen pills. The ingredients seem fine and all, but there are so many different companies trying to market the same thing so you never know if you're really getting the legitimate product. Plus the FDA found that some of the Zi Xui Tang pills being sold had other harmful substances in them. Here's a link to a consumer update about them: http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm401676.htm Scary! Even when you google the Zi Xiu Tang pills there are several sites that are claiming to be the "official" pills so it's difficult to find out which one is actually legitimate. I took it for a few months and I thought it might have worked, but I stopped taking it when it became so difficult to figure out which website was selling the real deal. My friend at the time recommended them to me so that's why I tried it to begin with. She told me one of her friends lost 30 pounds using the pills. I don't think I lost more than 5-10 pounds while I was taking them - can't remember bad side effects, either. I just know it was risky.

My worst one was "The fart Diet" also known as the "Good God I can't eat any more sodding cabbage soup diet".

Second worst was the Pot Noodle diet. Breakfast of fruit then 2 Pot noodles a day.

I had a friend ask me to join her in doing "Virtual Lap Band" Apparently they hypnotize you into thinking you've had WLS and you magically eat like you do as if you had it. Needless to say I did not opt in for my BS Detector 9000 was screaming at me...

I had a friend ask me to join her in doing "Virtual Lap Band" Apparently they hypnotize you into thinking you've had WLS and you magically eat like you do as if you had it. Needless to say I did not opt in for my BS Detector 9000 was screaming at me...

I'd rather be hypnotized into believing I was a super model with my own personal French chef and a hot body builder personal trainer and maybe a Latin lover poolboy...wait, I might be getting carried away. .. but I think that would stand a better chance of working than an imaginary lapband. That is a hoot

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using the BariatricPal App

Hollywood cleanse...absolutely disgusting.