Any doctor will tell you that the key to weight loss is diet and exercise. Any fad diet creator will tell you that advice is totally stupid. (Have you tried the delicious diet cancer?) So, it’s easy to see why there’s a worldwide obesity epidemic (and a general lack of seal penis in the common diet).
Ancient medicine was no different in terms of doling out fad diets like get-rich-quick-schemes. In fact, ancient cultures are still looked to for serious, scientific weight loss techniques. Here are 15 of history’s most baffling attempts to create an “easy” weight loss regimen. They were probably one of the 15 Weird Things Ancient Cultures Used To Do While Stoned.
15. Consume Nothing But Booze
William the Conqueror was King of England and just a generally conquer-y kind of fellow. After years of conquering whole roast hogs, William figured it was time for a diet. His solution? Get freaking wasted and don’t leave bed for days. Keep in mind he was also supposed to be, like, in charge of the country during this bender. The pounds shed away, and William soon found he could ride his horse again, which he soon drunkenly fell off of and died.
14. The Diet Of Olympic Champions – Nothing But Tube Steak
In ancient Greece, the breakfast of champions wasn’t Wheaties, but rather a pound or two of smoked pork. To get the ripped muscular bodies depicted in Greek tapestries and bathhouses, Olympic athletes were put on a strict meat-only diet. This explains why “speed crapping” never made it as an Olympic event.
13. Dozens Of Needles To The Stomach
Ancient Eastern medicine will always be a mystery to our doctors and their silly “scientific method.” For the ancient Chinese, the remedy for digestive ills and weight loss was simply to stick many acupuncture needles into the solar plexus. Isn’t it weird how similar rituals evolve from separate cultures? The Chinese have needles to the stomach for indigestion, the Japanese have Seppuku.
12. Rub Your Fat Away
Zander rooms were popular two centuries ago. In them, overweight people (notably athletes) would sit in a large contraption that looks like a sex toy from Hell. This device would oscillate back and forth, giving fat people a thrill that can be only recreated with spandex. The principle behind this was that a vigorous rubbing would make fat disappear, which explains why you only see skinny people exiting massage parlors.
11. Horace Fletcher’s Liquefied Diet
About one hundred years ago, a quack named Horace Fletcher stumbled upon a stupid idea and sold it to millions. That idea was chewing your food until it liquefied before swallowing. Fletcher took this diet to extremes, arguing any food that doesn’t liquefy shouldn’t be consumed. You know what doesn’t liquefy? Fiber. Thousands of Fletcher dieters found themselves facing severely painful constipation, despite consuming nothing but liquefied foods.
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10. Get Full On Vinegar
The originators of the detox diet were most likely Egyptians. They would brew a foul primitive vinegar concoction and use it to cleanse their bodies of alleged toxins. Side effects of this include vomiting and diarrhea, which means more weight loss!
9. Eat Graham Crackers To Look Like A Sexy Monkey
The Presbyterian Reverend Sylvester Graham was a dietary reformer from the American Colonial period. Not content to support the biblical notion that we didn’t evolve from monkeys, the Reverend advocated that we should aspire to be more like monkeys. In fact, Graham said that a vegetarian diet would give a man the vitality, strength, and the all around health of an orangutan. It will also give you plenty of poop to hurl at people who stare at your awesome physique.
8. Tapeworms Eat All Your Food For You
Tapeworms are parasites that live in a human’s stomach, eating all their food. It’s uncertain whether or not people have intentionally digested tapeworms to lose weight, as it does about as much for your health as the lesser-known tar heroin worm. But, there are many famous cases of this actually happening accidentally. Opera star Maria Callas enjoyed eating plenty of raw meat, a ripe source of tapeworms. She was able to melt the pounds away before the extreme weight loss forced her to get medical treatment.
7. Eat Like A Caveman
Let’s be frank. There’s nothing truly “ancient” about fad diets, as most prehistoric people were too busy starving to death to care about being fat. The Paleolithic diet, created in the 1970s, restricts the dieter to eating only foods that were available in the Paleolithic era, which ended 10,000 years ago with the development of agriculture. The person who popularized this diet, Walter Voegtlin, could have just said “Hey, let’s all avoid fried Twinkies and bacon cheeseburgers because, like, cavemen didn’t eat them and stuff.”
6. Eat Nothing But Air
The Breatharian diet consists of air. No water, no food, just crisp, calorie-free air. Inedia is the term used to describe the ability to subsists entirely on air, and has been scientifically demonstrated by NO ONE EVER. A lady named Jasmuheen tried to do it as part of a “60 Minutes” special, but the test was stopped after “60 Minutes” ruled she was probably, like, going to die.
5. Vinegar + Water = Eating Disorders
Not content with simply keeping the weight off by making horrendously tasteless food, the English decided to take a hint from the Egyptians and start their own vinegar and water fad diet. Made popular by Lord Byron in 1820, the diet encouraged its followers to fast and subsist solely on water and vinegar. It should be noted that Lord Byron suffered from anorexia and bulimia, so only use this diet if you want to be a male poet supermodel.
4. The Grapefruit Diet
The 1920s and 1930s were a dangerous time for the waistlines (and insulin levels) of the public. The popularity of the Silver Screen led to an obsession with skinniness. Combine this with a general ignorance as to proper dietary health, and conditions were ripe for ridiculous fad diets to sweep the public. Enter the Grapefruit Diet. This diet makes the claim that unhealthy foods are fine to eat, as long as they are eaten with grapefruit. The theory is that grapefruit makes a Clark Kent phone booth-esque change in your stomach, becoming a magic fat-preventing super fruit.
3. Roman Barfing Orgies
The Romans liked to have a good time, whether eating or having giant piles of sex. However, their enormous appetites didn’t match their tight sheet-clad stomachs, and they often found themselves full before they had experienced every course of the meal. So, they would throw up to enjoy eating even more food. I tried this, only instead of food I used grocery store-brand Vodka. Not an orgiastic experience, I must say.
2. Inuit Meat-And-Fat Diet
Some jerk in the 1920s looked at Eskimos and said, “Hey, how come they’re not fat?” Thus was born the Inuit meat and fat diet. You can eat three things: caribou, raw fish and whale blubber. Sadly, this rather fatty intake didn’t cause any weight loss for most of its adherents, who forgot the other key ingredient – shiver your butt off in a snowstorm until the fat burns away.
1. Prolinn and the Last Chance Diet
It is perhaps a sad reflection on modern life that the freakiest diet in history is not from thousands of years before standardized medicine, but rather from a few decades ago. In 1970s, Dr. Roger Linn had a successful book which advocated eating nothing at all but his miracle liquid called Prolinn. Prolinn consisted of ground-up and crushed animal horns, hooves, hides, tendons, bones, and other slaughterhouse byproducts that were treated with artificial flavors, colors, and enzymes to break them down. The theory is that, if you’re dumb enough to suck slaughterhouse runoff, you’ll probably just forget you’re hungry at all in a few hours.
Nobody wants to be fat. Everyone wants to be hot. Check out these 10 Ladies Who Should Replace Megan Fox and the 10 TV Cartoon Babes.
Evan Hoovler co-wrote the National Lampoon book, “Pimp it Yourself,” and is the former head writer of the T.V. show “Abused News.” He executive produces the sketch comedy troupe, Drunk Nerds.
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