Extreme 7-Day Diets

People of all shapes and sizes feel the need to try out extreme 7-day diets to lose weight quickly for vacations, dances, weddings or other social functions. These programs aren't supervised by medical professionals, since they encourage short-term weight loss, but not healthy or nutritious eating habits. Tread carefully when looking into 7-day diet plans.

Cabbage Soup

Consume low amounts of calories and lots of soup, fruits and vegetables for seven days. A sample menu might include cabbage soup and vegetables on day 1, soup and fruits on day 2, a combination of both on days 3 and 4, and meat in addition to the other foods on days 5-7. This diet shouldn't be carried on beyond seven days. It's easy to follow and counting calories isn't necessary. On the other hand, the taste of cabbage gets old quickly; it's very limiting; and side effects can include gas, constipation, heartburn and weakness.

Detoxification Diet

The low-calorie detoxification diet will help with rapid weight loss, but not encourage lasting results. The meal plan is specific. Day 1 should include fruits and fruit juices. Day 2 is vegetables and vegetable soup. Day 3 is a combination of the previous days. Day 4 is five glasses of milk and five bananas. Days 5-7 are four 3-ounce servings of any meat and green vegetables. The diet is really low in calories and not a nutritionally balanced plan. It can cause dizziness in people with low blood sugar.

Carb Depletion Week

Reset fat-burning triggers and shut off your body's dependence on sugar so it will burn fat instead by following a carbohydrate depletion cycle for seven days that includes no starches and 20 grams or under of carbs a day. Eat foods such as free-range eggs, whey protein powder, full-fat cheese and cottage cheese, chicken and roasted turkey breasts, locally farmed lean red meat and salmon, tuna fish, romaine lettuce, cucumbers, onions, broccoli, spinach, mushrooms, vinegar, and extra virgin olive oil.

The Extremist of Extreme Diets

These diets probably shouldn't be done for seven hours, let alone seven days. Don't actually try these at home. You might die.

Five Bites: Eat five bites of anything three times a day. This exercise in portion control will make you want to punch yourself in the face.

Ear-stapling: Stapling a certain portion of ear cartilage has been said to resist cravings...by crazy people.

Cotton ball diet: Eat cotton balls plain or soaked in gelatin to resist craving other food. Have fun dying of starvation.

Tapeworm diet: Consume a tapeworm, which sits in the stomach and consumes much of the food. Disgusting and dangerous. Complications are digestive tract blockage, organ damage and death.