Bizarre diets

Hollywood  celebs like Lady Gaga, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Cheryl Cole have reportedly used the baby food diet to slim down. Here's looking at the three craziest celeb diets. 

The Maple Syrup Diet 
Singer Beyonce used this diet to lose weight for her role in Dreamgirls.

The Kids' Cutlery Diet 
According to actor Liz Hurley eating on a nursery plate using children's cutlery is a great way of reducing food intake as she believes it tricks her into thinking she's eating more than she really is. Also, when she is trying to lose weight, she restricts her food intake to just watercress soup.

Raw Food Diet 
Actor Demi Moore swears by this diet; which even extends to raw meat.

Official Indian Diet

It's a manual that has an exercise-cum-diet plan for the average Indian as per Indian Council of Medical Research norms. The new norms call for exclusive breastfeeding of babies for more than six months (revised from the earlier four), and for those with a sedentary lifestyle, an increase in vegetable and fruit intake from the present 150 gm a day to 300 gm, increase in minimum fat percentage in terms of total calorie intake from 15 gm a day to 20 gm a day, cutting daily salt intake to 6 gm, reduced usage of processed foods and drinking lots of water. Health and food experts have their say on the new food pattern....

Chef's take 
Chef Jaydeep Mukherjee says the official Indian diet looks good but he'd add more choices to it. "From a chef's perspective, the diet could become monotonous," he says, "There's plenty more that could be added to the diet to increase its appeal. The average urban Indian today is adventurous when it comes to food and I think other regional and international cuisines have a lot to offer to healthy diets."

Nutritionists 
Nutritionist Naini Setalvad finds the food plan to be good but also high in quantity, especially grains. "There are too few fruits and the vegetable portions are less. Also, there should only be one cup low-fat cow's milk throughout the entire day, including tea. For lunch, either have roti or rice and choose between dal and dahi. Fruit is not had at dinner but is an apt snack in the evening so women and men can have even three fruits then," she says.

Fitness enthusiast 
Trainer Deanne Panday says the diet works but can be tough to maintain and offers tips to make it work. "For instance, if you are having a dosa, try and make it with just one teaspoon oil or if you're having a curry or vegetable, see that it's not overdone, or its goodness will be lost. Adding a steamed fish for lunch or some fruit for breakfast to it might be a good idea. You can also add a cucumber or carrot salad and at night, if you're eating rice, drain the water from it so that so as to get rid of its starch quotient." 

Is The Lemon Diet good For Weight Loss?

Celebrities such as Beyonce used the lemon diet to lose 20-10 kilos in 2 weeks and Naomi Campbell? She simply swears by it. Today we're talking about what this celebrity lemon diet is, and how it helps or does not help permanent and healthy weight loss. Will the lemon diet really help you shed those extra kilos? Or will it just set you up for long term weight management issues? Let's find out.

What is the celebrity lemon diet? The celebrity lemon diet is also called the ‘master cleanse’ diet in which one has to observe a 10 day long fast that supposedly flushes out toxins from one’s body. While on this diet, you consume around 6 to 12 glasses of lemon juice mixed with sea salt. The mixture essentially involves maple syrup, filtered water, pepper and lime juice. You are forbidden from eating solid foods. The diet is pretty tough and it is said that eating crushed ice helps. One is advised not to exercise or do any kind of activity in which the person is most likely to get tired.

Is the ‘master cleanse’ lemon diet any good? Well.. People who have observed the diet tend to swear by it as it leads to instant weight loss, fewer cravings of junk food and skin glow (although we seriously doubt this skin glow). The diet comes with side effects too. One may experience recurring headaches as the extreme fasting takes a toll on the body. And in order to maintain the lost weight, one has to continue measuring their calorie intake closely. Regular exercise becomes a must in order to maintain the lost water weight. Also, one needs to check their salt intake as high levels of sodium, if consumed after following this diet, can lead to instant weight gain.

Many experts believe that this diet does not work as a complete solution to weight loss. Though the Vitamin C found in lemon helps in amplifying fat oxidation, which leads to sudden weight loss, the diet is devoid of the right balance of nutrients such as carbohydrates and proteins. This diet can be best compartmentalized as a model diet and works best for people who need to look thin fast.

The lemon diet in no way promotes a healthy lifestyle and is a happy part of fad diets which may or may not work. Though, including a bit of lime juice in your everyday diet ensures a good supply of much needed Vitamin C, it is simply not the best solution for your weight loss.

Morning Banana Diet

Developed by Hitoshi Watanabe and his wife, Sumiko, the morning banana diet has gained super fame by word of mouth and real weight loss results seen by its observers. The morning banana diet is a pretty simple plan that banks on the high digestive and resistant starch properties of bananas to aid rapid weight loss. With the morning banana diet, a person only has to eat bananas for breakfast, and anything else for lunch, dinner and snack-time. Sounds too good to be true? Let's find out...

People on the morning banana diet cannot eat anything after 8pm, and also need to stay away from ice cream, beverages (other than water), alcohol and after-dinner desserts. But guess what? The good news is that one sweet snack is sanctioned right after your afternoon meal. The morning banana diet does not state exercise as a requirement. 

Hence we come to the question, does this diet really work? If yes, then how?
While bananas are known to aid digestion, by aiding smoothing digestive processes in the body, the morning banana diet seems too good to be true. Firstly, it banks on the fact that bananas contain fiber and a resistant starch that aids digestion. However, bananas also lead to rapid blodd sugar spikes (leading to quick energy output) that also flatten out pretty quickly. This means that you'll feel hungry again pretty soon after that breakfast full of bananas. WebMD's Kathleen M. Zelman, MPH, RD, LD. suggests that you mix the bananas with some yogurt and ice to make an appetite controlling smoothie. 

Other than the factor regarding quick digestion of other foods, and resisting digestion and integration of its own bulk, bananas do not have any unique weight loss properties. Therefore, if you ignore exercise, eat 'anything' for lunch, dinner and snacks, and even curtail alcohol and ice cream, your weight loss will be temporary at best. 

Bottom-line: Bananas are great energy-giving snacks that have a rightful place in any healthy weight loss plan. But to credit an entire diet plan to merely eating bananas for breakfast, and then paying little to no attention to what you consume for the rest of the day seems a tad irresponsible for healthy and permanent weight loss. Therefore, we suggest that even if you want to eat bananas for aiding digestion and promoting fat burn, you should still stick to eating right throughout the day and continuing a sustained exercise programme to really achieve the weight loss results you're after.