14 of the Most Extreme Diets

From just plain wacky to downright dangerous, people will go to extremes to shed extra pounds. Promising fast, easy weight loss and requiring little to no long-term behavior change, these crazy diets rarely work, and can be deadly.

One-Hit Wonders: Only a Handful of Loyalists

These diets haven't taken hold in the mainstream, and that's not too surprising. Even body-image obsessed celebrities haven't adopted weird diets that include drinking only fermented tea, wrapping everything they eat in a tortilla, or only eating eggs.

1. The Burrito Diet

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Behold the power of the burrito! Wrap it in a tortilla, and call it diet food. With a strategy similar to Subway sandwich spokesman Jared Fogel, overweight Matt Lisk reportedly lost 80 pounds in eight months by eating burritos from Chipotle. He wrote a book called The Burrito Diet and has managed to keep off the weight. Allegedly.

2. The Eggs, Eggs Everywhere Diet

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Perhaps it was the man who ate nine eggs a day for nine months! Celebrity chef Nigella Lawson's husband allegedly lost nearly 60 pounds by eating eggs, scrambled or boiled, for every meal during the better part of a year.

Très Français: How Do You Say “Malnourished” in French?

These diets either have roots in France or have been embraced by French women...who, contrary to popular belief, can get fat.

3. The Air Diet

Pretend eating: it's the new...eating. Dieters dish up a plate, use a fork and knife, and bring real food up to their mouth, but don't actually eat it. By mimicking the act of eating, they claim to feel satisfied. However, dieters are allowed to eat unlimited amounts of water “soup”. Thankfully, it's easy to make (the only ingredients are water and salt), so starving dieters are unlikely to collapse from the effort it takes to whip up a steaming bowl of NOTHING.

4. Forking Diet

This diet should be called the “Fork That Diet” instead. Dieters are only allowed to eat food that can be prepared and eaten with a fork. No slicing, dicing, spreading, grating, rolling, or scooping, which is meant to prevent eating calorie laden condiments, big hunks of red meat, carb-laden breads, or other dieting distractions.

5. The Five-Bite Diet

This diet is a lesson in extreme portion control. By eating five bites of any food you want three times a day, you'll be svelte in no time—and are likely to develop an eating disorder.

Junk Food to Ditch the Junk in the Trunk?

Stave off hunger, rot your teeth, swap your blood for high fructose corn syrup, and become a diabetic!

6. The Candy Diet

Eat lots of hard candy to suppress your appetite. Never mind the extra empty calories, tooth decay, and spikes in blood sugar that can lead to...you guessed it, binge eating.

7. The Cookie Diet

Eat as many of the diet's “special” cookies you want during the day and eat a tiny, lean dinner including one cup of vegetables and a meager portion of meat. This might not add up if you're a real cookie monster!

8. The Beer and Ice Cream Diet

Eat all the ice cream and beer you want on this Homer Simpson-inspired diet, which is based on the theory that your body has to work harder to digest cold foods, burning more calories. Save time, and have a Guinness float! But can the energy expended on digestion possibly burn off all the extra calories consumed eating only beer and ice cream?

One Question: For Real?

Dual-purpose body piercing (lose weight and look cool!), facial feature analysis, and eating cotton balls to lose weight? Ummm….sure.

9. The Facial Analysis Diet

A specialized facial doctor can look at your face, eyes and hair and know what you need to eat for optimal health and weight loss, down to which vitamins and minerals you're lacking. Weight loss can probably be attributed to the fact that dieters are typically directed to eat more vegetables and drink more water—which makes perfect sense. But do you really need a fancy doctor to tell you that?

10. Ear Stapling

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Somehow stapling a certain part of your ear cartilage supposedly helps with appetite control, and can even help you stop smoking by reducing cravings. Maybe because it F$*%^ hurts?

11. The Cotton Ball Diet

The only items on this diet's menu are cotton balls. Seriously. You can either eat them dry or soak them in gelatin. Good for the waistline, but murder on the digestion. Not to mention that you'll slowly starve to death.

Three Words: Sick and Wrong

While much of the world still battles infectious disease, parasites and other public health threats, our vain society uses these diets to try to get sick in order to lose weight.

12. The Tapeworm Diet

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Aspiring parasitic hosts pop a pill containing eggs, or bravely swallow a live one, and tapeworms will grow in the gut to consume extra food. It's not only disgusting, but potentially dangerous, as major complications can include digestive tract blockage, organ damage, and even death.

13. The Get Sick to Lose Diet

Purposely infect yourself, so that your body burns calories while fighting illness. Will people stop at nothing to avoid a little physical activity? Everything about this is just wrong, wrong, wrong.

14. The Sleeping Beauty Diet

Catch up on your rest and lose weight— this sounds too good to be true! But, think again. The idea is to sleep 24/7 for several days in a row so you slowly starve yourself, which might take sleeping pills to achieve (a big red flag!). While you may not technically make yourself sick, you might overdose on sedatives and never wake up.

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