This is how people have dieted for the last 200 years
People have been searching for a miracle weight loss "cure" for centuries and boy, have they tried all sorts of crazy diet plans. Here, we chart the history of the dieting phenomenon, from what those Victorians swore by, to the fad diets that won't go away. Don't try most of these at home.
Water and vinegar
Water and vinegar is the key to weight loss. Well, that’s what they thought in 1820 after British poet Lord Byron popularised the first “fad diet”. He advised drinking three tablespoons of vinegar in a glass of water before a meal to aid fat loss - did it work? Well, it hasn’t stuck so we presume not.
Sugar and starch
Cutting most sugar and starch dates all the way back to the mid-19th century when William Banting asked Dr. William Harvey what his recipe for weight loss was and this was the answer. After following Harvey’s advice, Banting did actually drop 50 pounds, prompting him to write the first ever diet book, Letter on Corpulence Addressed to the Public, in 1862. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?
The power of chewing
Your mum may have told you to chew your food properly before swallowing but we bet she didn’t expect you to do it 100 times, right? Well, if losing weight’s the goal, Horace Fletcher would expect you to. The man lost 42 pounds and claimed it was because he chewed his food 100 times per minute before being swallowed. It’s no wonder he gained the nickname "The Great Masticator".
The birth of calorie counting
In 1918, Lulu Hunt Peters became the first person to popularise calorie counting after she promoted it in her book Diet & Health: With Key to the Calories. What an effect she’d have on diet trends through the ages…
The Hollywood Diet
Some of you will know it as The Grapefruit Diet, others as the Hollywood Diet, either way it was one of the biggest fad diets of the 1930s and enjoyed a resurgence of popularity during the 80s. Based on claims that grapefruits actively burn fat, people were told to eat a grapefruit with every meal but it turns out, it’s only really good for introducing more fruit into your diet should you need it. Next!
Tapeworms, anyone?
Don’t try this at home, kids. In the mid-50s, opera singer Maria Callas announced she’d lost 65 pounds on The Tapeworm Diet. Yep. You’d swallow a pill loaded with the parasites so they could eat the food inside you and not an ounce would go on your thighs. We’d rather poke our own eyes out…
Weight Watchers arrives
One of the only diet plans that is still going strong today, Weight Watchers was founded in 1963 by Jean Nidetch, who described herself as an “overweight housewife obsessed with cookies”. Fast forward to 2010 and Jennifer Hudson loses 80 pounds by following the famed point system.
The Sleeping Beauty Diet
Ah, now we get to The Sleeping Beauty diet plan. Yes, you heard this right. Rumoured to have been trialled by Elvis, this is a dangerous mix of taking sedatives and sleeping for long periods of time so you don’t have to eat. Absolutely, totally and utterly crackers. We’re glad this has no place in weight loss culture today.
No carbs please.
This was the year the famous Atkins Diet was born. Invented by American physician and cardiologist, Robert Atkins, he advocated cutting carbohydrates to a bare minimum and consuming a high protein and fat diet instead. Although it’s wielded results for many (Kim Kardashian follows it today), it has no shortage of critics who claim that banning a food group is dangerous for overall wellbeing. Everything in moderation and all that…
Meal replacement becomes a thing
Slimfast hits the shelves. This was the first popularised “meal replacement” scheme. It instructed users to have a shake for breakfast and lunch followed by a “sensible” dinner.
The Beverly Hills Diet
The Beverly Hills Diet became popular this year. Coined by Judy Mazel who became an overnight diet “guru”, the diet instructed people to eat only fruit for 10 days (lots of pineapple) and then gradually reintroduce other foods (never eating protein and carbohydrates together though). Doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs to us.
The Oprah Effect
Seven years later, Oprah Winfrey walks onto the set of her show in a size 10 Calvin Klein jeans and the whole world goes berzerk. The most famous woman in America puts her 67 pound weight loss down to a liquid diet called Optifast. She has since spoken about what a mistake it was not to eat a morsel of food for four whole months - within as little as two weeks, her metabolism was “shot” by the diet and she was piling back on the pounds.
Fake food
Low-fat food, sweeteners and substitutes became huge in the 90s but ten years later in 2000, experts announced the global obesity crisis. For the first time in history there were as many obese people as there were malnourished. It's only actually now that people are realising that "low-fat" often means it's stuffed full of sweeteners and sugar making it, yes, a whole lot worse for you. Just read this.
What's your blood type?
The Blood Diet becomes a thing (yes, really). Brought to the masses by naturopathic physician, Peter D’Adamo, he stipulated that people should eat according to their blood type. Those with A blood group should stick to a vegetarian diet mainly and those with O should follow a high-protein/low-carb diet. Those in group B are advise to eat a balanced omnivore diet. We won’t bore you with the rest but all we’re saying is this is way too complicated for us.
The Dukan Diet
The Dukan Diet becomes the “in” fad. Invented by French doctor, Pierre Dukan, the protein-based diet plan gains the same kind of reception as other well known diets like Atkins or The South Beach Diet did in the past. He had been promoting it for 30 years but after he released his book, The Dukan Diet, in 2000 it sold 7 million copies, and has since been translated into 14 languages and published in 32 countries. The essence? In a nutshell, there’s a list of over 100 “allowed” foods and the diet follows four stages where by you slowly reintroduce previously forbidden food.
Caveman eating
Despite the Paleo diet being talked about as far back as 1975, it didn’t hit the mainstream until Loren Cordain released the best-selling books, The Paleo Diet. The diet is essentially about eating like a caveman - not eating anything that wouldn’t have existed back then. Expect to have a breakfast, lunch and dinner of vegetables, fruits, nuts, roots and meat.
The power of fasting
2012 was the year the BBC aired the documentary Eat, Fast and Live Longer and suddenly everyone was swearing by the fasting diet, the 5:2. Anyone from your colleague, to your neighbour, to your aunty to your mum was attempting intermittent fasting to shed those pounds.
Just juice
Ah, the year of the cleanse - juice cleanses specifically. Nutritionists, bloggers and journos insisted that by doing a juice diet, you would allow your body to enter “detox” mode and would subsequently lose a combination of nasty toxins as well as unwanted weight. However, although it was all the rage for a good year, many people have shunned it after realising that as soon as you begin to eat again, you go back to the same weight. Funny that.
Sugar free
2016 has definitely been the anti-sugar year. As more and more specialists find that sugar isn't just effecting our weight but also our health, all sorts of measures have been taken to restrict it from our diets. The wave of writers (looking at you Madeleine Shaw and Deliciously Ella) who cook sugar-free has risen, companies have made steps to reduce the sugar quantity in food and beverages (looking at you Starbucks) and this year the government even introduced the sugar drinks tax. Yep, sugar = devil, people. We wonder what we'll be avoiding next year...
Read next: 21 "healthy" foods that have a shocking amount of sugar in them.
