Funny Fitness Headlines

Think you’ve tried every diet known to man? Think again.

All the rage in Hong Kong, women there are eating giant intestinal roundworms in order to lose weight.

It’s called the Parasitic Worm Diet, and it is exactly what its name implies.

Giant. Intestinal. Roundworms.

That look like this.

The diet has suddenly become so popular that the nation’s health department had to release a warning on the dangers of doing it.

What is this world coming to that the health department must release a warning against eating worms??? Do we really need someone to tell us this is dangerous?

The specific worms these women are eating are called Ascaris worms. Once eaten, the worms burrow in their intestines and eat whatever food comes in.

And here are some fun facts for you: Ascaris worms can grow up to 40 centimeters in length and lay up to 200,000 eggs a day inside a person’s intestine.

Lovely.

The good news (?): the worms are making women thinner.

Duh, there’s a 40 centimeter parasite living in their intestines!

The bad news: they’re also making them very sick. The worms cause all kinds of problems like abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea and malnutrition. Beyond that, they can cause pancreatic duct obstruction and lung invasion, which can kill you.

*dramatic pause*

Here’s a diet craze that will make you feel younger…like really, really younger: It’s called The Baby Food Diet, and we can thank celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson (aka, Madonna’s former trainer) for its popularity.

Tracy tells Hollyscoop.com that she’s anti liquid fasts but pro eating like a toddler: “I wanted something where you can eliminate toxicity, break bad habits but still have your digestive system going. That is when the baby food cleanse was born.”

Basically, you eat 14 servings of baby food throughout the day, with one big-girl meal for dinner. For exercise, you cruise the furniture, pee-pee in your pants and take a three-hour nap.

No, I totally made that last part up.

Jennifer Aniston—who, at the age of 41, seems to defy all typical aging processes—reportedly lost 7 lbs on this diet. Her publicist adamantly denies this. She’s not on this diet, he says, and is absolutely is NOT going pee-pee in her pants.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to believe all the reputable Internet sources over her publicist. Jennifer is naturally beautiful in so many ways, it helps me to think she just might be peeing her pants. Is it just me?

And finally,
• Do you care more about the virtue of what you eat than the pleasure you receive from eating it?

• Does your diet socially isolate you?

• Do you spend more than 3 hours a day thinking about healthy foods?

• When you eat the way you’re supposed to, do you feel in total control?

• Are you planning tomorrow’s menu today?

• Has the quality of your life decreased as the quality of your diet increased?

• Have you become stricter with yourself and adopted a long list of “food rules?”

• Does your self-esteem get a boost from eating healthy?

• Do you look down on others who don’t eat this way?

• Do you skip foods you once enjoyed in order to eat the “right” foods?

• Does your diet make it difficult for you to eat anywhere but at home?

• Do you feel guilt or self-loathing when you stray from your diet?

If you answered yes to two or more of these questions, I would call you my twin. But others may call you orthoexic.
The term, coined in 1997, literally means “correct appetite.” Though it is not an official medical diagnosis, it refers to an eating disorder where the patient is so fixated on eating pure or eating clean, she limits herself and becomes obsessed.

I, Fitness Friday Girl, cannot relate to this…AT ALL.

(on a personal note, denial is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence. )

According to Registered Dietitian Jill Brown of The Hull Institute, health professionals are seeing more orthoexics who take it to the extreme, partly because of increasing popularity of organic and all natural foods.

“It takes over and it interferes with relationships and they obsess about it. There’s a certain righteousness that goes along with it and they judge how others eat,” Jill says.

Despite seemingly healthy diets, orthorexics are often malnourished and borderline on obsessive-compulsive disorder. The Hull Institute is now treating about a half a dozen orthorexics.

Whoa! Hold the phone. SIX people have this? In a country where almost half the people are overweight, Jill has her panties in a knot over SIX people who eat TOO HEALTHY and get a little judgmental???? Seriously?!?!

Jill Brown says it is possible to eat a healthy diet but when a person becomes obsessed with it and spends an unreasonable amount of time thinking about, it may be time to get help.

Yes, thank you, Jill and all you fabulous folks at the Hull Institute. Finally, an excuse to give up healthy eating altogether. Or at least an excuse not to think about. Or blog about it. Whatever.

Now that I’m all stressed out, I’m going to eat some lunch. Perhaps a baby food and Ascaris Worm smoothie.

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