New Year’s Diets: Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time!

December 17 | By: Chris Knight

First of all—how are you? Did you have a good holiday? Too much nog and nosh? Pantaloons feeling a mite tight?

Every January, a brave subset of humanity decides the best way to begin a new year is by swearing solemn oaths to shed some recently added poundage, starting immediately. These resolutions typically involve dieting or fasting—partly because food is delicious, and partly because humans apparently enjoy suffering.

Thus, fad diets are born: glittering promises and wistful wishing, wrapped in pseudoscience and sadness. But don’t feel bad, gentle reader. New Year’s self-loathing has been with us for ages. Let us stroll, fondly and mockingly, through some of the worst ideas we’ve ever collectively agreed to try in the name of svelteness—or some reasonable facsimile thereof.

The Grapefruit Diet: When Life Gives You Lemons, Choose Grapefruit Instead and Cry

In the 1930s, someone decided that eating half a grapefruit before every meal would melt fat away—because enzymes, or magic, or maybe the Great Depression made people especially susceptible to citrus propaganda.

Sure, grapefruits are fine. But after a week of sour pulp and disappointment, the only thing shrinking is your will to continue living.

The Cabbage Soup Diet: Hot Vegetable Water, Three Times a Day

Ah yes. Seven full days of cabbage soup. That’s it. That’s the diet.

This plan resurfaces every few years like a soupy, gas-laden cicada. The claimed benefits include rapid weight loss, mental clarity, and presumably the ability to clear a room in seconds. Nutritionists warn against it, but your grandmother’s friend Sheila swears it works—and who are we to question Sheila?

The Baby Food Diet: Puréed Regret

For a brief period in the 2010s, celebrities insisted adult humans should consume 10–14 jars of baby food a day. Nothing boosts self-esteem quite like sitting in your car, spooning lukewarm mashed peas from a jar decorated with a cartoon giraffe.

Looking for a fulfilling adult meal? Absolutely not. Here—have some pastel-coloured goop.

The Cotton Ball Diet: No. Absolutely Not.

There was a truly terrifying moment in internet history when people dipped cotton balls in juice and ate them to feel full. This is not a diet. This is a cry for help wrapped in cellulose.

Even the fad-diet universe—which has tolerated some truly impressive nonsense—drew the line here. If you’re ever tempted to eat laundry supplies, please instead eat literally any real food.

The Tapeworm Diet: Early 1900s Chaos at Its Finest

You know a diet is bad when Step One is “acquire a parasite.”

The pitch was horrifyingly compelling: ingest a tapeworm, eat whatever you want, lose weight, and deal with catastrophic consequences later. Tapeworms do not judge your snack habits. They also do not leave willingly.

The Breatharian Diet: Just… Don’t Eat

And finally, we arrive at the inevitable conclusion of human dieting logic: eating is the real problem.

Breatharians claimed one could survive on air and sunlight alone. The only weight loss this diet guarantees is the kind that comes with no longer participating in earthly existence.

And in Conclusion

You are an amazing person. Your family loves you. The dog adores you. Stop worrying about how you look and focus on how you feel—inside, where it counts.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a bucket of pralines and cream with my name on it.