The weirdest ways to nail down a summer body

There are endless complicated detoxes and puzzling diets online, and even reading about them is enough to make you feel exhausted. Rather than trying them out and making yourself miserable, read the experiences of the people mad enough to attempt them, and relax.

The ‘teatox’

Teatoxes are fortnightly diets aimed to get you “back on track with your healthy eating an active lifestyle”. A box contains 14 “daytime teabugs” – which contain ginger root, lemongrass and dandelion leaves – and seven “nighttime teabags” – which produce a laxative effect and should only be taken every other evening according to the box.

Newcastle Psychology fresher Shannon was inspired to use this method when she saw the box in her local ASDA. She said: “I lost 6kgs on the challenge – I weighed 77kgs at the start and 71kgs by the end.”

Shannon bulk bought her Bootea and shared the cost between her friends. She said: “It made me work harder at normal weight loss methods like eating well and exercising. It made weight loss much easier and because I was doing the teatox I think those things were a lot easier”.

But the cost of the diet eventually because too expensive and when she read reports of some girls became unexpectedly pregnant from drinking Bootea Shannon stopped drinking them. But for her the experience on the odd tea was a good one. She said: “My urine was maybe slightly darker but everything else was fine. I just didn’t like the reported side-effects for some people so I stopped drinking it.”

Celebrities from all walks of life have tried the health supplements. Vicky Pattison from Geordie Shore recently snapped herself with a packet of the stuff. Even WBA Heavyweight Champion David Haye says it keeps his “pipes clean” and drinks it with his training sessions.

Blending

“New year, new me” that’s what Heather McDonald thought at the beginning of 2015 when she was given a new blender for christmas.

The Sheffield second year decided to commit herself to the blender life and for a week during her revision period had all her meals blended into a smoothie.

The English student explains: “I’d got a new ‘fad blender’ and just did my own experiment to see if it made a difference to how I ate and if I lost any weight if I blended all my meals.”

For Heather, the reason she blended her meals wasn’t to be healthy or change what she ate but to prove to herself she could be disciplined enough to change her eating habits. She explained how her mind-set and discipline made a huge difference: “It soon became apparent that it was too time consuming to snack, because of the effort it took to blend everything. Snacking is about eating something quick and easy, and this was neither.”

Despite the lack of snacking and extra calories, Heather’s energy levels were high. She said: “I was fine. I had exams around the time I as eating the smoothies and revising and stuff was fine.

“I’d recommend it to lazy people definitely. Instead of eating a whole cake because you’re too lazy to make a meal it’s great to make it into a smoothie. You’re more likely to eat soup or a smoothie.”

Watermelon all day (and a salad at lunch)

In a “Devil wears Prada” styled diet Physics graduate Yasmin allows herself a block of cheese or toast in the morning but conforms to a watermelon meal at breakfast and dinner.

Yasmin, who finished her degree at York this year, said: “For breakfast I allowed myself a few pieces of watermelon and a choice between cheese or toast. For lunch I’d have a salad. And for dinner I’d have as much watermelon as I wanted. At the start of my diet I weighed 65kg and I dropped 3kg to 62kg.”

The Physics graduate would buy a big watermelon for the whole week to get her through her big regime. “Sometimes I would need to change around the salad lunch with the watermelon dinner because it needed to fit with my shift pattern”. For dinner she allowed herself to eat as much of the fruit as she wanted and sometimes mixed it up by making watermelon smoothies.

For Yasmin, who tried the watermelon routine after failing to find success with other diets, the technique worked perfectly and was without any side effects. She said: “I guess I tried it because I needed a proper structure and I wanted to stick to a plan. I didn’t want to cut specific stuff out of my diet because it hadn’t worked in the past.”

She lasted just two weeks into the one month program, but advises future watermelon-dieters to “stick with it – because it does work”.

Weekday veggie, weekend carnivore

Oskar Rice is a vegetarian – but only for four days a week. The Urban Studies fresher’s weird choice of diet was inspired by a lecture he attended at the Royal Geographic Society about global carbon emissions.

He said: “I worked out that if I wanted to reduce my carbon footprint I would have to cut back on my meat consumption on three or four days a week. The lecture said that around 15 per cent of global carbon emissions come from the food industry. It was incredible how much CO2 came from producing meat.”

Sheffield student Oskar has maintained his weight of 67kgs throughout the nine months of change in diet.

Oskar does relax the diet a little, allowing himself to eat fish during the week but not meat. He said: “I’m really a pescatarian during the week. I allow myself to eat fish because farming fish doesn’t produce as much CO2. I started in August before starting uni.”

Despite his commitment to reduce his carbon footprint his friends relentlessly rinse him every time he’s seen eating meat. “My flatmates do take the piss. They give me a lot of stick for it. It’s really difficult not to grab a kebab after a night out during the week when I know I shouldn’t.”