This has got to be my favourite diet, ever!!  I used to own shoe shops and can think of nothing more delicious than a “shoe diet”.   My husband, being male of course, assumed one would be eating this with ham and chips.   The grin on his face soon disappeared when he realised this diet would involve me buying copious amounts of shoes…. to add to the breeding ground “known as my wardrobe”.

The gist of this diet is that having new,shiny,gorgeous shoes makes us feel happy and positive about ourselves and life.  Well what woman doesn’t just love stroking a new pair of shoes for hours.  Its not that we even want to wear them!!  I just like looking at them.

I would recommend buying this book cause it will sure cheer you up if nothing else.  Oh and your other half really will think youv’e gone mad.

Go for it girls.  New shoes equates quick diet loss.

I think the ultimate diet treat would be a new pair of “Jimmy Choos”.

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Another crazy diet for you to have a giggle at. I wouldn’t give this one a go if I were you unless you particularly like the taste of commercial baby food. No wonder most babies spit it out! Poor things can’t even answer back.

The rules are as follows for a quick fix diet.  Prepare yourself for extreme hunger, temper tantrums and downright misery.

Replace two of your three meals a day with, yes you’ve got it “baby food” oh how yummy.
Baby food always reminds me of vomit, I think its the diced carrot affair going on that really doesn’t do it for me.

The point that has really got me thinking is that there is only about three mouthfuls in the average baby food jar and unless you want to pass out from hunger and end up admitted to your local hospital. (Imagine explaining to the staff what you’d been eating!)  you would have to really shovel some of that stuff away.

If you really wanted to give this a go you could always replace your snacks of crips, chocolate and milk shakes with a jar of “home-made hotpot”.  I suppose the benefit would be no washing up cause you could just eat it out of the jar and mealtimes would be over in less than a minute.

If anyone has tried this please let me know because I am intrigued.

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We all want quick diet loss and we all know the “blacklist” of naughty foods we are not to eat! but how about some of the foods we can eat, and I mean more than a lettuce leaf every two days.

Below I have listed some foods that will add volume to your diet and still keep your calorie intake under that magical number.  Adding volume will help with those hunger pains we all experience when we start dieting.

Whole grains should be added to your diet - these have more fibre and are also lower in calories.

Try and stay off the refined grains.

Instead of drinking coffee, tea or soft drinks try giving good, old plain water a go (I know I don’t like it much either even though my mother has drummed it into me for years).  She tells me its the “elixir of youth”.  Wish it was lemonade instead…  I have to admit I have never found water particularly filling.

Eat “starch free” vegetables.  They can, apparently, help you lose weight.

Eat a green salad before your main meal.  It will fill you up so you don’t want to eat everything else in sight.   Try not to overload it with salad dressing.  I tend to find with salads I start off with really good intentions and then “oh my” out comes the salad dressing by the bucket load..

Anyway  tips on how to feel full  when your really hungry are useful.  Let me know if any work for you.

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Well here is an interesting celebrity diet I came accross.  An eating pattern that typifies quick fix diets. Cheryl Cole has a personal trainer, is not happy with her figure and feels she has “fat days” but is happy to tuck into egg and chips.  Ah, all is not lost for the rest of us we might think but Cheryl Cole will have enough time and money to soon burn this meal off.

What this does prove is that she will, like the rest of us pig out on unsuitable food and then resort to a quick fix to acheive quick diet loss.  This is a trap that many of us fall into without even noticing.  Have you ever sat on a cold,rainy Sunday watching a film and consuming the entire contents of a box of chocolates, seven bags of crisps washed down with wine or beer.  Well I have and then on Monday decide I am going to survive on soup and crispbreads.  By lunchtime I am starving with a headache…

This is a classic example of “yo yo dieting” to try and compensate for the previous days bingeing.  It is far better to accept that there are days you fancy something that isn’t particularly good for you and moderate your intake.  Don’t do what I do which is use willpower all week and then eat the entire contents of the fridge on Sunday.  Your feelings of guilt will only increase.

Allow yourself a small treat at regular intervals and you will be less inclined to pig out at the weekend. Well it works for me as long as the fridge is “empty” on a Sunday.

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Well this has got to be another one of those crazy,quick fix diets. On this diet you are supposed to stop eating food and drink loads of water and cut down on your sodium intake.
If the warning bells aren’t ringing already they should be…

I mean it is rather obvious that are bodies are not designed to just drink water – hence the teeth we are born with, oh and the extra wisdom teeth we don’t need anymore because were not running around the forest hunting prey.

On a more serious note though this diet, as are many quick fix diets is highly dangerous. There has recently been a court case regarding a woman who followed this diet and suffered a severe epileptic fit and suffered permanent brain damage. As my son suffers from epilepsy I know first hand how frightening and dangerous this can be.

She had been advised to drink four extra pints of water a day and decrease her salt intake. This resulted in her feeling unwell and she was then told to increase her water intake to six pints and reduce her salt intake even further.

Although the majority of us are not medically trained it should be obvious this is not healthy and severe consequences could result. Please always remember that with anything in life if it seems to good to be true, or to easy then it will be. There is no subsitute for a balanced weight loss plan.

If you take the time to plan a sensible, healthy eating regime you will reap the benefits. Stay away from those quick diet loss plans, or quick fix diets. They don’t work..

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Well here are some of the “wackiest” diets around at the moment.  These definitely fall into the quick fix diets slot..  

 First off in the  wacky diet parade is the “ice cream diet” – apparently you can lose heaps of weight eating ice cream all day.  I personally could not think of anything worse!!  The secret to this is “calcium”, yep ice cream is full of the stuff and studies have shown that dieters who took a calcium supplement lost 26% more bodyweight and 38% more body fat than those on a normal reduced calorie menu.

I think I would rather just eat the calorie controlled menu and up the calcium than eat cold, messy ice cream all day long – I think after the first day you probably would have developed a real aversion to it.

Another strange and rather disgusting sounding diet is the grapefruit diet – this has fat burning properties and if you follow this diet you should lose weight fairly quickly.  I dont actually know anyone who has followed this diet and would be really interested to hear from anyone who has.  Does it work, or does it just make you downright miserable.

One of the major players at the moment in the quick diet loss war is the “Beyonce Diet” or to give it the correct title the master cleanse diet.  This diet is also known as the maple syrup diet or lemon diet.

Beyonce used this diet to lose weight for her part in “dream girls” and thus this diet has become extremly popular.  Again I have never tried this diet and would love to hear your comments and views.

I do believe, however, that like any other detox diet you will suffer from certain side effects as your body rids itself of the toxins.  Always best to detox at weekends or when you dont have to be at work as you will feel very tired, irritable and with possible headaches.

Has anyone heard of the “Duvet Diet” – yes this really is a diet and consists of  spending hours underneath your duvet so you don’t gain weight.  Sounded rather bizarre to me especially the other advice given ie; wear a belt so you will feel full ( are you allowed to take it off  in bed I wonder)!! oh and avoid eating to much if you are pre-menstrual (well I am evil at that time and If my food were taken away I would not be held responsible) and if  that wasn’t enough they recommend using chopsticks…..so pack the silver cutlery away.

The last quick fix diet I am going to moan about is the baby food diet.  When my two children were little I occasionally gave them commercial baby food.  One of the many reasons I did not use it very often was because it smelt revolting and tasted absolutely foul…  and I ended up having to eat it first to convince my son that he would love to eat it.  Although he was only tiny he knew that mummy was really not enjoying the experience at all.  You lose weight on this diet because you dont have to chew – kinda rules out the need for teeth!!

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I am sure you have all heard the term “quick diet loss” or “quick fix diets.”  I became interested in these weird and wonderful diets after the birth of my son.  I was basically two stone overweight and wanted to lose it as fast as possible.  (Was mightly fed up with not being able to fit into my favourite jeans for nine months)!

These miracle diets seemed to be everywhere, in the press, celebrity magazines, you name it everyone seemed to be on one, and a lot thinner than me.   The first one I tried was a soup diet, well thats what my mother called it, she was on it at the time.  It consisted of fresh vegetables made into a nourishing soup.  Well I have to say I am not to sure which bit of me it was supposed to be nourishing but I felt awful.

According to the “instructions” I was supposed to drink or eat (i use the word drink as there was nothing really to eat or chew) three times a day.  I guess I was relatively normal for the first couple of days, tired but still convinced I would have the figure of a supermodel by the end of the week.  By the third day I was absolutely starving, exhausted and had a headache to die for.  Worst of all I had turned into, well my husband said a mad woman, I think he was over exagerating slightly!!!

My temper was a little frayed around the edges because I was so tired and hungry and felt positively ill. I decided that the quick fix diet wasn’t the answer and starting researching a more sensible balanced weight loss diet.

My days of quick fix diets were over but I am still fascinated by how consumers really believe they can lose weight on these supposed quick loss diets.   This blog is all about the diet industry as a whole, the fads, the myths, oh and the truth about how you will lose weight fast without starving yourself.

I will over the course of the next few months be reviewing every “strange” diet on the planet and I would welcome your comments and input.  Please let me know regarding any diet experiences you may have had.

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