5. Japanese Morning-Banana Diet
You have to be early to get a banana these days in Tokyo. Such is the appeal of a new banana diet craze sweeping Japan that importers can no longer satisfy demand for the previously unfashionable staple. Many Japanese have decided the best method is that advocated by Hitoshi Watanabe, 31, a salary man who ballooned after leaving university and entering the rat race – until he discovered the nutritional appeal of the banana. In 2006, his girlfriend Sumiko, a pharmacist with training in Chinese herbal medicine, recommended a simple, stress-free diet that revolved around one straightforward (nutritionists say questionable) premise: a breakfast of raw bananas and room-temperature water can boost the metabolism so much it allows the dieter to eat almost anything for lunch and dinner and still lose weight. Over the next six months he dropped a further 13 kilograms, married Sumiko and posted his story on Mixi, Japan’s version of MySpace, to instant acclaim from other desperate dieters.
The story became the first of a series of banana-diet books which have sold more than 600,000 copies – making Hitoshi a publishing sensation. The saturation media coverage has helped drive a huge run on bananas. And since, Tokyo Broadcasting System ran a TV program last month about how the former opera singer Kumiko Mori knocked 7 kilograms off.

The fruit’s newfound popularity has been attributed to the simplicity of Hitoshi’s weight-loss method. Dieters are expected to dine by 8pm and be in bed by midnight. They should avoid, but not necessarily cut out, alcohol and fatty foods. Best of all: they should feel no obligation to exercise. Although Hitoshi’s approach has been endorsed by biomedical expert Dr Noboru Motohashi, who says he lost 12.6 kilograms on a similar fruit diet, it has raised the eyebrows of other nutritionists. “Eating only one kind of food in the long term is not healthy because you cannot get the necessary nutrition.”
4. The Egg diet

The Egg Diet has become increasingly popular due to reports that some well-known people and celebrities have successfully lost weight by eating only eggs. Apparently, Nigella Lawson’s husband Charles Saatchi, lost over sixty pounds by eating nine eggs a day for ten months. There is also discussion that Adrian Brody lost 30 pounds in six weeks in preparation for his role in the Pianist by following the Egg Diet. He has since explained that he actually followed a variation of the diet where he ate eggs for breakfast, a small piece of grilled chicken for lunch and a small piece of fish with steamed vegetables for dinner.
There are several versions of the Egg Diet that are circulating on the Internet. The most popular version of the diet does not actually consist of eating only eggs but it does involve getting the majority of your protein from egg.
3. Sleeping Beauty Diet


As its name implies, this diet involves sleep – a lot of it. The principle behind this diet is: “if you aren’t awake, you aren’t eating”. Consequently, advocates take heavy sedation and sleep for days at a time in order to lose weight. Obviously the diet works but it is such an unhealthy approach to weight loss that it is insane to try it. Although some researchers have good reason to support this diet. According to them, how much sleep and what quality of sleep we get effects not only our Cortisol levels but also toys with hormones, Leptin and Ghrelin, which trigger our appetite. Both Leptin and Ghrelin influence our appetite and production of these hormones is influenced by how much (or how little) we sleep.
2. The Cookie Diet

 There are so many different diets out there these days that it seems everyone is trying a new one every week. This popular Hollywood cookie diet seems to be a new trendy, and many people claims it actually works. It was designed by Dr. Sanford Siegal, based in a carefully crafted cookie recipe, which works to suppress hunger. You eat only one meal a day and that is supper, and the supper needs to consist of 6 ounces of chicken, turkey or seafood.
The cookies are not for breakfast or lunch, but instead whenever you are hungry. You have to eat at least six of these cookies each day for the diet to work. In total, the six cookies plus one meal of supper, adds up to 800 calories, and this is the point of the diet. You need to make sure that if you are on the cookie diet you not only eat as recommended, but also drink a full 8 glasses of water each day.
1. The Monkey Chow Diet


Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald’s food. Adam Scott (aka “the last angry young man”) is eating nothing but Monkey Chow – a pelletised nutritionally complete food for monkeys. “Maybe I’ll lose weight. Maybe I’ll gain superhuman monkey strength. Maybe I’ll go crazy. Maybe it’s too late.” Maybe it’s the perfect answer for the diet-obsessed. No more worrying about the next meal. No cooking. No stressing out the number of carbohydrates or calories. No worries about shelf-life or shopping.
Of course, this is bound to have a few issues… At Day 5 Adam is reporting trouble in the plumbing department – with a diary entry of “Poop: Problematic”. Maybe the maximum 2.5% crude fiber has something to do with it.