The amazing miracle weight loss system that can make you lose 10 pounds in 10 days no matter what you eat! Eat as much as you want, eat more than you want, eat double what you want, and still lose weight with no exercise! Drop one pant size in a day, but beware because this might work so well you’ll pop out of existence! If these advertising claims are true then rapid weight loss is a miracle reality of the modern world, requiring no effort on the dieter’s part.

Hogwash! But even though they mostly aren’t true, Americans spend over 40 billion dollars a year on pills, programs and weight loss products that simply don’t work. That doesn’t stop people from coming up with all sorts of crazy diets and weight loss products. Remember Beyonce’s starvation master cleanse diet? It consisted of taking in nothing but lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper and water. Seriously! It also claimed to cleans the system from years of built up toxins. Who knew, maple syrup destroys toxins. Next time a poisonous snake bites someone have them eat some pancakes. Then there are the magic pills, creams, and diet supplements that guarantee to burn pounds without exercise, guaranteed. No that wasn’t a typo, they mention the word guarantee so often it starts to lose meaning. And when they don’t mention exactly what is involved in the guarantee it doesn’t have any meaning. It’s simply a way of making people think the product works.

Another diet is the VLCD or Very Low Calorie Diet. They work, and studies prove it. The problem is they are often sold to people for home use to drop a few pounds. That’s a problem because of their nature. VLCD’s are extreme diets designed for seriously overweight people. These diets often have people eat half or less of their daily caloric intake. They’re designed to be implemented in medically supervised closed settings, where people can’t cheat. When used outside of a closed setting, often a clinic called a fat farm, these diets can be dangerous to the dieters health and will generally not work because of binge eating after a period of partial starvation.

Rapid weight loss, if it works, creates a number of problems with the body. Painful Gallstones develop in up to 25% of people who lose large amounts of weight over a few months. Careless dieters can often become dehydrated because they don’t realize a large portion of the water people need to drink comes from foods. It’s easy to compensate for this by drinking more water. Malnutrition can develop from not eating enough protein over a long period of time. The body can even become unable to process protein, which leads to serious illness and even death.

Rapid weight loss is a great idea. But it’s not for most people, and should be administered and supervised by qualified medical professionals.