I was surprised when an article about the history of diets pointed William the Conqueror (who later became the King of England) as the first documented case of dieting when he started to drink alcohol instead of taking in food after not being able to ride a horse because he was getting heavy. Generations passed, what the King of England did had been influential, not because he was the king and sovereign but because he lost weight and losing weight had now been the trend.
After William the Conqueror, there are still some individuals, women at that matter, who exhibited dieting leading to have been diagnosed having compulsions and eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia nervosa. In a generation where curvy and voluptuous women are the bang, Mary, Queen of Scots had a considerable weight loss and experienced diarrhea and vomiting - the primary symptoms of anorexia. Even St. Catherine of Sienna who, in the height of her fanaticism to Jesus, had (miraculously, they say) lost appetite to eat food. Contemporarily, celebrities like Mary Kate Olsen and Nicole Richie had also struggled to shed off weight which made them a bit scraggy for some time.
There are reasons why people want to lose weight - either to get public attention and to please everyone and for health reasons like preventing hypertension and other diseases. People do it in different ways: some people drink alcohol just like what William the Conqueror did, some are vegetarians, some are vegans, some only gulp energy drinks and water and some eat meat in raw. While there are some people, who took the most distorted and the most disgusting (people say) to lose weight.
TISSUE PAPER DIET
Yes, you heard me right. Tissue papers had been the diet trend for one celebrity who confessed and some of the slender girls in the modeling world who tried so hard to keep themselves thin to fit designer clothes. Psychiatrists call this identical condition as pica, a compulsion to eat non-nutritive things such as paper, plants, metals, soap, ashes and other inedible objects. However, people who eats tissue paper because of severe desperation to lose weight should be differentiated with people who suffer from pica, for the intentions are distinguishable. People with pica eat tissue papers because they have the appetite to, not because they want to lose weight.
What do tissue papers are made of? They are made of tree pulps which are generally of plant cellulose digestible by animals and humans. Eating tissue paper is not bad, but it is not advisable either. The actress Billie Piper, after hearing someone from the audience call her fat, had gone through voluntary starvation for five days and pushing tissue papers inside her throat just not to feel hungry. She admitted she nearly choked after eating a ball of those tissue papers. Some women in the modeling industry also admitted they do the same just to stay in shape without feeling hungry.
TAPEWORM DIET
Maria Callas, one of the most renowned opera singer in the 1920s, had revolutionized dieting in the early part of the 20th century. Originally 210 pounds, she weighed down up to 144 pounds. Her secret - a cestoda, a parasitic flatworm commonly known as tapeworms. Since the early 20th century, fad diets like tapeworms have been in different ads and were (unfortunately) tested by different people all over America. The process starts with ingesting a tapeworm from animals like cows and allowing them to live in intestinal tracts for some quite a time, usually in months. These parasites consume a significant amount of the food you eat and secretes protein which makes our digestion less efficient. The end point, it will leave you eating more but still losing weight.
However, tapeworm diet have been banned in the United States including the import and selling of tapeworms. Experts say that the ingested worms are harmful once it grow bigger. For one, it lays eggs which can scatter to the whole body including the brain. People who were into tapeworm diet reported diarrhea, abdominal pains, depression and psychosis. If people call these effects very "minor" on the part of the hosts, well, I don't think so.
With celebrities setting the trend, fad diets are a big bang nowadays. The dilemma is always between losing weight fast through surgeries or fast diets , or making sure that we don't sacrifice our health but patiently wait for a couple of months. Both have consequences, and both have risks. But we can always make a better choice.