Not for the faint of heart: the most terrible diet of the past
'21.06.2021'
Source: Racked
In the early nineteenth century, the consumptive species that might shock today was considered ideal, and diseases that led to severe weight loss were encouraged in every possible way. The blooming appearance, according to the doctor Thomas Trotter, was "so unnatural and strange, could indicate a short life span and the birth of unhealthy offspring." What diets did the ladies resort to in order to look in time?
Swallowing tapeworms
Get ready for the shock. In the Victorian era, many women tried to lose as many kilos as possible to fit the fashion and be able to wear fashionable clothes that required aspen waist, writes Racked... One of the ways to lose weight quickly is to swallow tapeworm, which will live in the intestines and absorb the food eaten by its “owner”. Of course, no one ate alive - they were sold in pill form and hatched in the body immediately after swallowing.
True, this is not the worst. The really disgusting part was to extract a huge worm, especially since they can grow to 9 meters in length. Pills were sold that, in theory, were supposed to kill them. But in practice, one of the methods required him to sit down in front of a bowl of milk, open his mouth and wait for the worm to want milk and crawl out of his mouth. Regardless of how effective the method was, a giant worm crawling out of its mouth is hardly worth an attractively narrow waist.
Cigarette diet
Cigarettes were originally announced on the market as a tool for weight loss. Cigarettes could not only give the lady masculinity, but also help her look slimmer in dresses without corsets. The 1929 ad of the year said, “Smoke Lucjy, and you will never miss the sweets that make you fat.” And that was the main part of their advertising campaign!
There were other announcements: “Is that you in five years? [Image of a woman with overweight] When the temptation subsides, stretch out your hand for Lucky! Although it is possible to avoid lung cancer, it is better to reach out to the candy.
Diet of Empress Sissy
Today, what the eccentric stage stars and fashion bloggers do is considered fashionable and exemplary. But they are all nothing compared to the 19th century Empress Sissi. She went to bed, covering her face with pieces of raw meat. To maintain her 48cm waist, she lived mainly on juice broth made from raw ducks. She even had a special “duck juicer”! The cabbage soup diet doesn't look so bad now, does it?
Bathing in wine and strange herbs
Hannah Woolley’s 1690 Book of the Year “Ladies' Dictionary” suggests that bathing in all sorts of strange substances will help ladies lose weight. The idea of bathing in wine sounds good (assuming that you do not need to clean the bath after that), but imagine that it had to be filled with wormwood, calamine, camomile, sage and other herbs, sometimes quite unexpected. In addition, all this does not work.
Prayer for weight loss
There is a certain level of selfishness when a person thinks that God cares about the results of his high school basketball game, but even that doesn't compare to how much the devil wants you to be fat. Apparently, this is exactly what the buyers of the popular 1977 book on diets, which was called: “God help, the devil wants me to be fat,” by S.S. Lovett, who believes that, by analogy with the temptation of Eve, the devil tempts you with food.
These terrible bouts of hunger temptation can be resisted by prayer and a series of exercises in which you present yourself as a very thin person. You should also fast for 10 days on the water and read the Bible while the rest of the family enjoys dinner. All of this is illustrated with pictures of overweight women - apparently Lovett found this amusing.
Sleeping Beauty Diet
Hmm, that sounds attractive. For several days, the one who went on a diet was intensively fed with soothing ones, implying that a sleeping person cannot eat. The problem is that heavy doses of sedatives used on humans can destroy their health and completely destroy the natural sleep cycles. In addition, they all turned out to be brutally hungry after waking up and were prone to drunken overeating. And during the session you can die. It is better to just sleep a little longer at the weekend.
