Mmm. Worms (spysiu/Instagram).

Dieting sucks. Take it from someone trying to stave off the seemingly imminent Freshman 15.

Choosing the raw kale salad over the cheesy pizza is hard (unless you geniunely enjoy kale more than pizza… if so, props), so people often resort to diets to drop unwanted pounds.

Throughout American history, diets have been spread, popularized and have had their time in the spotlight. Then, they die a sudden death when people realize they just don’t work.

Sometimes, these diets can be wacky - really wacky; injecting-yourself-with-a-pregnant-woman’s-pee wacky.

I give you some of America’s wackiest fad diets, in order of wackiness.

1. The Tapeworm Diet

Dieters swallow a pill containing a tapeworm egg, which grows inside the digestive tract and consumes part of the food in the stomach.

This diet does cause weight loss, on account of the fact that there’s a massive worm camping out in your intestines eating your food. Ate that giant brownie sundae? Don’t worry, the tapeworm will take care of that.

The worm can grow up to 30 feet in length.

So many complications can arise from growing a tapeworm in your gut that the US has banned the sale of tapeworms in America. Sorry, folks. 

2. The hCG Diet

This diet promotes weight loss through a restricted intake of 500 calories a day, plus daily injections of hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin), which is a hormone derived from the urine of pregnant women.

Consuming 500 calories will certainly put your body into starvation mode, and cause it to use muscle mass to survive. So yes, you’ll lose weight. Running on 500 calories, even if you were injected with liquid chocolate, you’d probably still lose weight.   

Bottom's up (motorcycle.diva/Instagram).

Especially popular amoung younger girls and some models, this diet requires that dieters feast on four to five juice-soaked cotton balls as a meal, or right before a meal to make themselves feel full. You might as well just take off your cotton t-shirt and start eating it now, people.

There are so many complications with this diet. Sometimes, cotton balls are full of synthetic chemicals. They have no nutritional content, so basing a diet off cotton balls certainly will lead to malnutrition- sure they're full of fiber, but humans don't need the white, fluffy kind.

Also, swallowing cotton fibers can cause blockage - the cotton balls can build up and cause a mass called a bezoar, which blocks all bowel movements. That would just suck. 

4. Lemonade Diet/Master Cleanse

Used by celebrity Beyoncé Knowles, the Master Cleanse is supposed to detoxify your digestive tract, leaving you energetic, happy and decreasing your cravings.

All of that sounds wonderful and dandy, but the catch is that you can only drink a “lemonade” concoction that contains water, lemon or lime juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper. The lemonade is consumed 6-12 times a day, for 10 days. Then, at night, laxatives are taken.

Sure you’ll shed water weight, but since you’re starving yourself, your body will start to use up your muscle mass. Plus this diet isn’t sustainable so you’ll gain it all back once you start eating solid foods... unless you'd like to live on lemonade. Forever. 

5. The Twinkie Diet

Losing weight is all about expending more calories than you consume, right? So what if you ate 10 150-calorie Twinkies every day, for a total of 1,500 calories? Yes, this so called "diet" has worked, but not without negative health impacts.

On this diet, you’re not only lacking virtually every vitamin and mineral, but you’re also consuming large amounts of processed sugars and fats. Overconsumption of processed sugars and fats lead to a ton of problems: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity... the list goes on. Not to mention, with the amount of preservatives in a Twinkie, the shelf life seems infinite. Along with cockroaches, they’ll probably survive a nuclear attack.

Twinkies, on Twinkies, on Twinkies (cocoyococ/Instagram).

6. The Hollywood Cookie Diet

If you were told that if you ate cookies for two meals a day, you’d lose weight, wouldn’t you do it? Who doesn’t love cookies? Well these aren’t your soft, chocolately bakery cookies ladies and gentlemen. These are specially formulated, high protein, high fiber imposters called “cookies.”

On this diet, you eat a cookie for breakfast, mid morning snack, lunch and an afternoon snack. Then you eat a small dinner. If I had to do that, I'd be so sick of cookies that they would just start coming out of my eyeballs.

For everyone's sanity, let's not ruin cookies.

7. The Paleo Diet

The Paleo diet, one of the newest and upcoming diets, asks dieters to eat like cavemen. Only foods they would have eaten, like vegetables, fruits, nuts and meat, and no grains, processed sugars, dairy, legumes, caffeine or alcohol.

I applaud Paleo dieters for cutting the refined carbs and sugars - us non-dieters can learn a thing or two from that. In fact, some of the Paleo desserts out there are better than picking up a processed cupcake. Paleo Chocolate pie, anyone? Sure, these desserts aren’t low calorie, but they’re made of healthy, natural ingredients.

The big issue with the Paleo diet is that a diet too high in saturated fats, and low in calcium can lead to trouble. 

The Bottom Line

The problem with any fad diet, or short-term diet, is that it is finite. Once you go back to your old habits, you’ll just regain the weight. So why not make your own diet a healthy lifestyle?

When asked which of the wackiest diets she’d prefer to follow if she had to choose one, USC freshman Emily Schultz noted that, “I would rather not lose weight at that point.” Well, there you have it.

Reach Staff Reporter Sara Lev here.