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Vongai Mbara Lifestyle Reporter
They say, “No pain, no gain,” but some of the latest weight-loss methods that people are using turns that old saying on its head.

Beauty standards, largely proliferated through the media, have drastic impacts on many people and their body images and it is no joke that a lot of people are in a desperate struggle to lose weight.

Today, people are going through dieting extremes to lose weight and to keep up with society’s image of beauty, which is thinness.

Though there are various healthy ways people can do to be able to lose weight, ranging from reducing the size of the meal, opting for healthy food and exercising, people are desperately going to the extremes, injecting themselves with toxic chemicals, taking pills and trying various alternatives which are horrific and insane.

One of the weight loss methods that makes it to the top list of crazy diets is the consumption of laxatives which people are experimenting with to lose weight quickly.

Laxatives contain chemicals that help increase stool motility, bulk, and frequency, thus relieving temporary constipation.

These are meant to unstop you when you are constipated, but taking them when they are not necessary will guarantee you a couple extra trips to the bathroom giving you an illusion that you have lost weight.

There is also a good chance you will experience diarrhoea, stomach cramps, nausea, rectal bleeding and more after taking them but people who really want to lose weight are not bothered by that.

Special occasions call for quick slimming results, especially if you need to wear an outfit that is too snug.

Brides or bridal attendants that fit perfectly into their gowns during fittings, but have since put on weight might find themselves in this quandary.

Superstar Beyoncé Knowles is one of Hollywood’s celebrity who took extreme measures to lose weight fast for a movie role.

She went on a crazy master cleanse where she only drank lemon juice with maple syrup and cayenne pepper for two weeks to lose 20 pounds.

“I would never recommend it to anyone unless you are doing a movie and it is necessary, and you have proper help. There are ways to lose weight healthily if you want to lose weight, but this was for a film.” Beyoncé said in an interview with Essence magazine.

Another diet that sounds like it is straight out of a horror movie, the tapeworm diet takes the cake in the craziest weight methods of all time.

This diet propagates eating tapeworms, thereby letting the worms chew on the carb or excess food content, making you lose weight.

This crazy method came to public attention when the Tyra Banks show did a “gross-out” spot about the diet.

After you consume the worm egg pill, it hatches in your digestive tract, latches onto your intestinal wall and feeds off the energy and nutrients from the food you eat, growing larger and larger.

After a few months, you return to the clinic for anti-parasitic medication that kills the worm.

The dead creepy crawler then passes out your body, however, introducing this parasite into your system can disrupt the function of your organs.

This can also cause brain damage, hurt your nervous system and could lead to death if not treated.

Aside from that fact that it is vile and disgusting, on the mild end, the tapeworm can lead to pain, nausea and a bloated stomach. It can also compete with you for vital nutrients, leading to deficiencies or anemia.

At the severe end, the hermaphroditic tapeworm can lay eggs inside you and infestation of certain species can travel beyond the digestive tract into the circulation and can also lead to cysts in the liver, lungs, eyes and spinal cord or brain.

If you are still not grossed out by the creepy, wiggly, ribbon-shaped creatures living inside you and laying millions of eggs, then do note that tapeworms can lead to loss of nutrients and vitamins in your body.

Meanwhile, social media is going crazy again with another method “guaranteed” to shrink the waist area, the main problem area for many people.

The use of waist trainers which consist of bands of latex material and a flex-boned corset to trim the waistline has become very popular among people undergoing a weight loss journey.

The ultimate goal of a waist trainer is to target unwanted fat and reduce the size of your midriff in order to give you a “nice” figure.

Proponents of this device claim that the results are permanent, and celebrity mothers like Jessica Alba have insisted that it is thanks to their waist trainer that they were able to regain their pre-baby bodies.

The primary element of the waist trainer is that it enforces excellent posture, which, in turn, helps strengthen the core.

The compression is believed to reduce food volume intake, so users are encouraged to consume smaller meals, rather than a full-on breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Many health experts claim that there are several risks associated with this new phenomenon, for instance, many new users often cinch the waist trainers too tightly, which can lead to discomfort, difficulty breathing, heartburn.

When it comes to working out, even more issues arise and women often have trouble breathing deeply or maintaining proper form, which can lead to severe injuries.

While some people still take the “no pain, no gain” slogan to the gym, it takes a certain type of bravery and insanity to take the theory all the way into the doctor’s chair as he stitches a prolene patch to your tongue.

It is a small square patch of plastic that gets sewn onto your tongue, as a result, eating solid food is extremely painful, causing you to take on a liquid diet.

American cosmetic surgeon Dr Nikolas Chugay introduced the procedure in the United States four years ago after seeing it in Latin America and he says it is a temporary way to lose “£20 to £40”.

Costing around $2 000 one can be the proud new owner of a tongue patch.

“If you make it painful to eat, maybe people will not eat so much in the short-term. Some people however still manage to eat solid foods despite of the patch, but it is a good way of helping people not to cheat,” said Chugay in an interview with ABC news in February.

After a month-long liquid diet, the doctor will snip off the patch, releasing the patient into the world of solid food again.

Asked if sewing a foreign object into somebody’s mouth was healthy, Chugay replied, “Well, it is not unhealthy. It is a pattern interrupt that when patients want to swallow food, they realise, ‘Hey, I cannot do that.’ And that is how it works.”

Slimming down without exercising or eating healthy proves nearly impossible however some are attempting temporary weight loss around the waist by using a sauna slim belt.

A sauna slim belt is believed to help you shed excess water weight, at least briefly, by causing you to sweat around the middle.

These popular belts run on batteries, and one can set the belt at different strengths.

Slim sauna belts generally sold for about $80 as portable, easy-to-use solutions to weight loss, do nothing but give its users an illusion of weight loss.

They are in no way going to pass an electrical current that will melt the fat within minutes however, some users claim to have lost weight by using it.

Until Now, buying “miracle” slimming creams has always seemed a triumph of hope over experience.

While it is estimated that British women spend up to £30 million a year on such products, some health experts have suggested that the promises on the packaging are too good to be true.

What most of these products do is give people illusions of tighter and smoother skin, and to some extent appear to reduce cellulite.

There is also a common belief that people who smoke reduce the desire to eat and smokers are usually much more slender than non-smokers.

In addition to cutting the appetite, nicotine is also considered to increase the rate of metabolism and when metabolism increases, more energy is used to perform bodily functions.

However, research has not proven that smoking can increase the metabolic rate in significant and in any case, smoking has been associated with various malignancies, such as cancer, heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Sometimes, people who say their products “melt away” fat usually mean it figuratively, but not the doctors who are trying the vaser technology for liposuction.

With vaser, a doctor inserts a metal probe into a patient’s stomach and uses sonic waves to dissolve a layer of fat, which is then sucked out through a vacuum.

Doctors are marketing the procedure as “sculpture” liposuction meant for the relatively fit, rather than the more genuinely overweight who are trying to take off many pounds at once.

These procedures are quite pricey ranging from a price of $8000 up to $30 000.

In our weight-obsessed culture, it is easy to understand the temptation to gamble on a quick weight loss fix, but is losing inches and pounds worth risking your health.

Losing weight healthily may take a little more time and patience, clean eating and exercising but you will be guaranteed to lose the weight permanently and safely.