Extreme Diets

Here in the UK, it's the start of London Fashion Week. It's that time where us normal folk get to see cutting edge fashion from the front line...as well as tales of the most extreme diets. The latest to reach our ears is the banana bag. Sounds like something out of a kid's TV show where someone gets gunked doesn't it? Actually it's worse.
The banana bag is an IV drip containing multi-vitamins so that you get the vital nutrients to keep you alive - minus the food. Even Zoolander didn't feature anything so completely mad.
Originally designed as IV drips for undernourished alcoholic patients, it gets it's name from the distinctive yellow colour of the multivitamin. You couldn't make it up.

The Return of the Atkins Diet

Hmm, that couldn't clog up my arteries could it?

Despite the inventor of the Atkins Diet, Dr Robert Atkins being clinically obese and suffering heart disease when he died in 2003 aged 72, it seems that it wasn't the last nail in the coffin for the diet which 3million Britons followed during it's peak. No, Fitbitch has learned that it's back only now called The All-New Atkins Advantage Diet (http://www.atkins.com/Home.aspx).
Unlike the orginal diet which ruled out carbohydrates forcing the body to use fat as energy stores, this one allows you to eat them - although in limited amounts.
In the first two weeks, you're allowed just 20g of carbohydrates, increasing to 120g although only if you exercise too. But the major change seems to be that the diet now advises exercise - and to limit the high fat proteins such as cheese and red meat that many Atkins dieters used to gorge on before. Hmmm, methinks there will be another book out soon!

The Flash Diet

With 12.8 million of us on a diet at any one time in the UK, it's no wonder there's a new diet method launched every other day. But Fitbitch has to admit that this latest idea - photographing every meal or snack as 'evidence' of your diet demeanor's sounds better than most.
According to a latest US study, reported in The Daily Mail today, (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1052234/The-flash-diet-Taking-photos-meals-helps-slimmers-lose-weight.html?ITO=1490)
slimmers who kept photo diaries, were more successful at sticking to a healthy eating plan than those that just kept a written diary. Dr Lydia Zepeda, who led the study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: 'Nutritionists see diaries as a recording tools. Now they should explore the role of photo diaries as intervention tools.'
Anyone like to share their weekly photo diary? Let me know and I'll join you in sharing mine. God, I'm already thinking of all those biscuits I shove in my mouth and forget about!