The following diets have been tried by Santa and his elves and are not recommended by any North Pole residents.
Snow Diet. You stay hydrated but hungry. Be on the lookout for yellowish reindeer pee in the white snow.
Keto Flying Meat Diet. Eat reindeer meat only. Please don’t consume Rudolph.
Sugar Cookie Diet. Nibble cookies morning, noon, and night. A glucose coma may be on the way.
Gobble and Oink Ketone Diet. Turkey and ham daily for 30 days and nights. Gravy allowed.
Wrapping Paper Diet. Low in calories. Eating ribbon and bows are not allowed.
Christmas Tree Diet. You munch the pine needles until the tree is bare. High in fiber so have extra toilet tissue around. Douglas Fir is the best-selling author of the book “Trees, Wreaths, and other Decorations for Holiday Weight Loss.”
Walnut Soup Diet. Be on alert for angry squirrels.
Partridge and Pear Diet. Twelve days of fowl and unusual eating. Caution: Do not eat the five golden rings.
Raw Cranberry Diet. Pucker up, chew, and swallow. Disclaimer: Dr. Yule Tide is not responsible for the resulting pinkish teeth discoloration.
The Giggle Diet. Ho-ho-ho your way to health. And jingle your bells often. Food is not on the menu. You laugh fat away. Dr. Love-Money is chuckling all the way to her mansion in Maui.
The Sprinkled Doughnut Hole Diet. Yes, you guessed it. The hole is eaten for 30 days. Dieters are encouraged to dunk the doughnut hole into their coffee mug.
The 4 Food Group Diet: pine cone, penguin, ginger bread, and Christmas cactus. May cause indigestion and flatulence.
Mrs. Claus is hot under the collar with these foo-foo fads. She is starting a scam-tracking map along with Mrs. Kringle. “Enjoy foodie with the family!” shouts Mrs. Claus.
“Diet scams rank No. 1 among health care frauds reported to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), with on-the-make marketers deploying a variety of tricks to get people to purchase their wares. Some create websites that look like those of legitimate magazines and news organizations and fill them with phony articles claiming that celebrities have achieved amazing results from their products. The FTC recently obtained a $500,000 settlement from affiliate marketers in Florida who the agency said sent emails from hacked accounts to trick potential customers into thinking a friend or family member was urging them to try some weight-loss miracle pill,” according to a 2018 article on the AARP website.
The following items were found to be fraudulent, according to Mrs. Kringle. Hot chocolate-infused underpants that melt away fat cells. Candy cane fat-burners are a rip-off. Peppermint oil patches do not induce weight loss. Frankincense and myrrh sprinkled on food does not block calories from being absorbed. A pomegranate a day will not dissolve cellulite.
“If diets worked, we’d all be thin by now. Instead, we have enlisted hundreds of millions of people into a war we can’t win,” writes Neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt in her 2016 book, Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession With Weight Loss.
Diet pills, patches, and potions belong on the naughty list. Lifestyle changes belong on the nice list.
My column is using humor to point out that fad diets do not work—seriously.
Melissa Martin, Ph.D., is an author, columnist, educator, and therapist. She lives in Ohio. Contact her at melissamcolumnist@gmail.com.