We're 20 days into the new year.
How's that get-in-shape -- one other than round -- resolution going?
Oh, you'd answer but you're too busy planning the menu for your Super Bowl party, shopping for Valentine's Day candy and placing your Girl Scout cookie order? Psst, the new Toffee-tastic cookies are gluten-free (if not calorie-free). And the new Rah-Rah Raisin cookies contain not just fruit and whole-grain oats but Greek yogurt flavored bits (and plenty of sugar). They'd be a great addition to those Thin Mints (it says "thin" on the package -- and, after all, we are what we eat).
No matter, there are still 344 days left in the year to lose the lard. And to help everyone out, we're listing some of the more unusual weight loss methods we've heard about lately. If you don't try them (and in most cases, we don't recommend that you do), at least try to get a good belly chuckle. Laughing contracts the abdominal muscles and that has got to burn a calorie or two.
• Tree juice
Move over coconut water. We saw on Good Morning America that the newest hydration obsession is birch water, already popular in places like Russia, Scandinavia and China. Not only is it credited with curing everything from headaches to dandruff, the low-calorie water tapped from birch tree trunks is believed to remove cellulite. Even if it doesn't do any of those things, we'll all be toting it to the gym because it's trendy. What a bunch of saps.
• Kara Rosen diet
Kara Rosen, former New York magazine exec and now a London-based juicing guru, was recently mocked on Twitter when she revealed her puny daily menu to the U.K.'s Telegraph: Hot water with lemon, a few nuts, scrambled egg whites and green tea (weekend splurge: almond-milk cappuccino) for breakfast; green juice, green salad with avocado and chia seeds, and rice cakes for lunch; detox lemon drink for a snack; kale salad with pistachios, olives, dried cherries (sometimes with brown rice and grilled fish) for dinner, and ginger tea with lemon for dessert. What the kale? It even caused Piers Morgan to tweet, "Have a Twix, love." She has since been quoted as saying she -- shell shock! -- does indulge in the occasional Cadbury Creme Egg. Only organic, cage-free and yolk-free, we're sure.
• The Bulletproof Diet by Dave Asprey
One of the principles of this high-fat plan is drinking Bulletproof Coffee -- a 400-calorie cup of "low-toxin, high-performance" coffee mixed with grass-fed, unsalted butter and MCT (medium chain triglycerides) oil. Coffee and butter? We can do better than that "diet" concoction! Like a Starbucks Butter Croissant and a venti dark roast coffee -- only 315 calories!
• Gambler's diet
On Dietbet.com, competitive dieters can wager money on their weight loss success. The concept: Win a big pot while shrinking their own. If nothing else, you might lose weight ... in your wallet.
• Ear stapling
Proponents say this method, which involves stapling through ear cartilage to stimulate pressure points, can do everything from decrease appetite to increase the metabolism. We say: Wouldn't mouth stapling be much more effective?
• Appetite pacemaker
"The Maestro Rechargeable System ... is approved to treat patients aged 18 and older who have not been able to lose weight with a weight loss program, and who have a body mass index of 35 to 45 with at least one other obesity related condition, such as Type 2 diabetes," the FDA said recently in a statement. The device is designed to interrupt hunger signals from the brain to the stomach and therefore allow patients to feel fuller sooner -- as if fullness has ever prevented an overweight person from downing a dozen more doughnuts. Will this pacemakerlike contraption help people get to their ideal weight faster? Maybe. But it's sure to get them through TSA slower at the airport.
• Brick diet
Patrice, a 29-year-old from London who was featured on a recent episode of TLC's My Strange Addiction, shared her fondness for eating brick dust. "I've always got to have it," she says, estimating she has eaten a half ton of bricks (including a wall in her bedroom and part of her grandmother's house) in 12 years. That's one way to get a brick body.
I'll have a big, fat grin if you email:
jchristman@arkansasonline.com
What's in a Dame is a weekly report from the woman 'hood.
Style on 01/20/2015