In decades past, Americans looking to lose weight in the new year had a few simple options: join a gym, sign up for a 5k, start a diet. But we’re now in the era of Instagram, where celebrities can shamelessly hawk unproven health and fitness fads to unsuspecting consumers in the name of #sponcon.
To be sure, not everything you see on Instagram is bad for you. But scientists and researchers warn that some of 2018’s most Insta-famous and celebrity-backed wellness trends won’t do much to help you slim down—and that some are downright dangerous.
No one should ever feel obligated to lose weight, at any time of the year. But if you do want to drop a few pounds for 2019, it’s worth avoiding these five fads.
Pulsing Away Your Fat
The Claim: PremFit, a $69 spidery black pad that promises to use “electrical muscle stimulation” technology to “tone, strengthen and firm,” “flatten [the] stomach” and “reduce waistline[s],” has taken Instagram by storm in the weeks leading up to the new year. The Instagram page shows the product plastered on fitness models’ taut stomachs, with celebrity endorsements from MTV stars like Jenni “JWoww” Farley (Jersey Shore), Chloe Ferry (Geordie Shore) and Geles Rodriguez (Are You The One?) as a surefire way to tone muscles and lose weight.
“Adding @premfit to my mornings,” Rodriguez wrote. “Love helping me tone and tighten my tummy and it makes it easy even during the holidays.”
The supposed logic behind the tool? “PremFit produces slow electrical pulses causing your muscles to contract and relax,” the company claims on its website. “This (sic) impulses mimic the actions that comes (sic) from the central nervous system when you are exercising your muscles naturally. This means that PremFit is strengthening the bodies (sic) own natural stimulation but from the outside, set directly on the specific muscles.”
The Reality: The logic behind PremFit’s system is sound in theory—but it’s unlikely to work in practice, experts say. Electrical muscle stimulation during weight training can work wonders for people with serious spinal cord injuries, explained Kevin McCully, the director of the University of Georgia’s Exercise Muscle Physiology Laboratory, but that’s because they’re paralyzed and can’t feel the electrical pulses. For the electrical current to effectively strengthen muscle, McCully said, the pulses would hurt about as much as doing a regular sit-up.
And even if you could stand the constant pain of the pulses, you’re not likely to lose weight because of it. “No matter how many crunches you do, the fat on your belly is not going to change,” McCully said. A study from the American Council on Exercise also showed that after eight weeks of EMS training, participants didn’t experience any significant changes in strength, weight, or body fat percentage. PremFit did not respond to a request for comment.
The FDA backs McCully’s claims: in a statement on electrical muscle stimulation products, the agency wrote that the “FDA has received reports of shocks, burns, bruising, skin irritation, and pain associated with the use of some of these devices.” The organization added that, “While an EMS device may be able to temporarily strengthen, tone or firm a muscle, no EMS devices have been cleared at this time for weight loss, girth reduction, or for obtaining ‘rock hard’ abs.”
Detox Teas
The Claim: One of 2018’s most popular trends was the detox tea. Various iterations of the product, which promise to “detox” your body, eliminate bloating, and yield a flatter stomach, have popped up on the Instagrams of celebrities like Cardi B—who told viewers that “you need this fuckin detox”—Amber Rose, and Angela Simmons, and have been pushed by every single member of the Kardashian daughter clan. It might as well have been in their Christmas card.
The Reality: As The Good Place’s Jameela Jamil pointed out in a scathing tweet, detox teas won’t do much to keep you healthy.
“GOD I hope all these celebrities all shit their pants in public, the way the poor women who buy this nonsense upon their recommendation do,” Jamil wrote. “Not that they actually take this shit. They just flog it because they need MORE MONEY.”
Chair of the medical nutrition counsel of the American Society for Nutrition David Seres agreed with Jamil. As Seres told The Daily Beast for a previous article on the subject, speeding up bowel movements won’t help you lose weight. Most calories are “absorbed in the first 100 centimeters of the intestine,” Seres explained, and the entire organ is remarkably good at absorbing nutrients—so promoting diarrhea will only lead to dehydration.
“It’s highly unlikely you will lose actual weight,” Seres added. “If you do lose weight it’s because you’re becoming so sick you get dehydrated or because you’re so sick you can’t eat.”
The Blood Type Diet
The Claim: Celebrities are no stranger to unorthodox diets. But the blood type diet is perhaps one of the weirdest. The diet itself isn’t anything new—it’s based on a '90s book by naturopathic physician Peter D’Adamo—but it reached celebrity status this year when newlywed model Hailey Baldwin told Women’s Health magazine that she swears by the plan.
“I think it makes a lot of sense and a difference when you really stick to it,” Baldwin told the magazine.
The diet’s Instagram page highlights famously trim devotees like Victoria’s Secret model Shanina Shaik (although the accompanying photo appears to be of a different model—ditto for Miranda Kerr.)
The idea behind the blood type diet is simple: your body’s response to food is allegedly different based on your blood type, so you should eat accordingly to lose weight and improve digestive health. Type O’s should stick to lean meat, poultry, fish, and vegetables, the diet’s website advises, but Type A’s should go meat-free. Type AB’s (this author included) are advised to cut out caffeine (no), alcohol (definitely not), and smoked meats (are you kidding me) and stick to tofu, seafood, and dairy.
The Reality: Unlike many of the items on this list, the Blood Type diet isn’t likely to hurt you. Following the prescribed diets could even help you lose weight, because all of the recommended meal plans center on lean protein or vegetables and cut out processed foods.
But the idea that our blood type significantly influences our response to food hasn’t yet been borne out in any large-scale studies. A 2013 review of the existing research, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that, “No evidence currently exists to validate the purported health benefits of blood type diets.”
D’Adamo acknowledges that the evidence doesn’t yet back the efficacy of his diet. But he noted that many other popular diets don’t have rigorous scientific backing, either, because it’s difficult to adapt randomized controlled trials to nutritional studies.
“Most dieters try a bunch of different theories and systems before hopefully settling on one that works best for them,” D’Adamo told The Daily Beast via email. “The ABO [Blood Type] food plans are balanced, and knowing one’s blood type may simply add an element of discretion as to which of all those healthy plans is more likely the healthiest in that person.”
Waist Trainers
The Claim: Working out is already tough—but exercising in a corset takes it to the next level.
That’s the premise behind waist training, which has been touted by celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Nicki Minaj, and Blac Chyna as a contributor to their signature hourglass figures.
And it’s caught on. While celebrities have been hawking this fad for years, it has maintained popularity—and as of New Year’s Eve, the hashtag #waisttrainer had been used on Instagram more than 780,000 times. The alleged logic? The corset keeps your core extra-warm while you’re working out, which reportedly yields a better workout and a better posture.
The Reality: When asked if waist trainers would yield an hourglass figure, director of the Duke Diet and Fitness Center William Yancy simply responded with an emphatic “No!” Working out with a waist trainer could help you sweat a bit more and lose a tiny bit of weight, Yancy explained, but it would just be water weight—which would come back the next time you take a drink.
And there’s no guarantee that even that minuscule amount of weight loss would come from the waist. “We’re not able to choose where we lose fat from when we lose weight,” Yancy said. “So putting a corset over the area and hoping you lose fat in that location is not going to work.”
What’s worse, the corsets could be dangerous. If they’re too tightly wrapped, Yancy said, corsets could bruise a rib or make it harder to breathe. And they could also provide a “false sense of security,” leading a gym-goer to lift heavier weights than they should without focusing on their form.
Coffee Enemas
The Claim: Gwyneth Paltrow is no stranger to dubious health claims. But this year, she might have bested herself with coffee enemas. The $135 recommendation for the “Implant O-Rama System At-Home Coffee Enema” appeared in Paltrow’s 2018 “Beauty and Wellness Detox Guide” (alongside a charcoal facial puff and a $4,099 sauna). The list implies that the enema—which, for the blissfully unaware, means the deeply uncomfortable process of shooting fluid up your rectum—will somehow help with detoxification that has allegedly built up in the colon.
The idea has clearly caught on. The hashtag #coffeeenema has been used nearly 3,500 times on Instagram, with some users even posting pictures mid-enema (yikes).
The Reality: The idea that a coffee enema should be used for detoxification is, for lack of a better phrase, full of shit. First and foremost, the body is already perfectly capable of detoxing itself. But even as detoxes go, as Forbes explained in a thorough takedown, this one is pretty terrible.
Enemas do have legitimate medical purposes, Forbes notes. They can be useful for those who are having trouble moving their bowels, or for those unlucky individuals preparing for a colonoscopy. But that’s about it—and doing an enema without medical supervision, as the product’s “at home” title suggests, is extremely risky. Enemas can cause dehydration, electrolyte imbalances, and organ damage even in the best of circumstances, Forbes notes. And a cup of coffee definitely isn’t the best of circumstances.
Even the website for the product Paltrow pushed, Implant-O-Rama, doesn’t want anything to do with her detoxification claims. Although the company did not respond to a request for comment, the product page cautions that “NO CLAIMS ARE MADE ABOUT THIS PRODUCT or anything we sell on this website.” It also provides advice that could, and should, apply to any of the fads on this list: “When using any new procedure that you do not understand, always check with a competent medical doctor or health care practitioner.”
