You can lose a few kilos in the lead up to Christmas with minimal effort.
Just spoon in some clay between meals, eat like the cavemen used to, be a vegan before 6 (but definitely not after), and drink your own urine when thirsty.
Sounds easy enough, right?
Wait…
Though in a perfectly rational world the above suggestions would make us gag, these days it seems every second person seems to be trying one fad diet or another.
Why? Because the celebs are doing it. And if it get us even an inch closer to looking like them, it seems we’ll take it. Even if the Biggest Loser turns out to be our happiness, wellbeing and–ultimately– our health too.
The British Dietetic Association has today released their “Top Celebrity Diets To Avoid in the New Year” list.
The association is comprised of over 7,500 dieticians. Not people with a qualification via the internet, but actual qualified dieticians who don’t need to mask their degrees under the alias of a ‘health’ or ‘lifestyle’ coach’.
The underlying message? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
1. Urine Therapy.
Urine therapy is used by some celebrities for its alleged cosmetic or medical and wellbeing purposes. Some claim urine can have an anti-cancer effect, though there are absolutely NO scientific studies to back this up.
While Bear Grylls may have turned to urine for the sake of survival on his TV show, if you have access to real food? No excuses. Give this one a miss.
2. Paleo diet.
Miley Cyrus, Matthew McConaughey and celebrity chef Pete Evans tout this diet as their favourites. It basically advocates sticking to the foods cavemen in the prehistoric era used. Which all sounds nice and natural– except for the lack of dairy products, grains, sugar, legumes, and ‘processed’ oils and salts. Paleo followers don’t believe we have evolved to digest foods in the modern diet. But then, Pete Evans has also claimed that paleo could ‘cure’ autism, so best to take what he advocates with a serious grain of salt (pun intended).
Celeb chef Pete Evans follows the Paleo diet.
3. Sugar free.
You can’t walk into the health section of a bookstore without Sarah Wilson’s ‘I Quit Sugar’ hitting you in the face. Eva Longoria, Megan Gale and Tom Hanks are all super fans too.
But some versions of the Sugar Free Diet call for a person to cut out all sugar from your diet. This would include vegetables, fruit, dairy products and nuts if followed accurately. So… yeah no. Eat the chocolate, people. Life is too short not too.