This year, brides-to-be took the pre-wedding slim-down to a whole new level. In order to shimmy into their gowns, many women took part in the feed-tube diet craze, also known as the K-E diet. The diet gained popularity when Florida physician Oliver Di Pietro started offering to hook-up women to feeding tubes in his clinic. The fad, which was popular in Europe before making its way to the U.S., involves a doctor placing a nasogastric tube through the nose and into the stomach; the tube is attached to a protein pack that dispenses drops of liquid nutrients for 800 calories a day–significantly less than the recommended 2,000 to 2,4000 for the average woman. If the tubes seem familiar, they are: they’re the same ones used to keep patients who struggle to eat after a stroke or coma fed. Ads for the procedure boast double digit weight loss, and it isn’t cheap at $1,000. There’s a pretty hefty physical price tag too. The weight loss comes from the essentially starving body’s response, which is to slip into a state of ketosis and start to burn stored fat. Taken too far, the tubes can potentially cause the body to eat away at muscle.
TREND TRIGGER: Shedding pounds before the Big Day.
CLAIM: Double-digit weight loss.
IS IT FOR YOU? No, the diet restricts calories too severely and going overboard could damage your muscles.