11 Ridiculous Ways I Tried (and Failed) to Lose Weight

Before I ever learned how weight loss actually works, I tried every ridiculous shortcut the internet or late-night infomercials could throw at me. Looking back, it’s almost impressive how committed I was to doing everything except the thing that actually worked.

I wasn’t completely lazy, but I wasn’t exactly bursting with motivation either. I was confused, chasing shortcuts, and far too quick to believe whatever sounded easiest.

Here’s a walk through my greatest hits (or biggest flops, depending how you look at it).

1. The Electric Ab Belt Era

When I was in secondary school, I bought one of those ab toning belts off eBay. I wore it so often that I burned it out within a few days. I didn’t take it off, even when it started to hurt, because in my head pain meant progress. Spoiler: it didn’t. All it did was zap my skin and make me smell faintly of melted plastic.

2. The Crunch Marathon

Around the same time, I decided I’d do 500 crunches before school and another 500 after. I figured that if I could build enough abs, the fat would just move out of the way. I didn’t understand that you can’t target fat loss. So while I was proudly torturing my abs twice a day, the layer of fat covering them wasn’t going anywhere.

3. Lipotrim: My Expensive Lesson

At 18, I tried the Lipotrim diet for the first time. The idea was simple: two shakes a day, around 520 calories total. The reality? I did one week properly, then started cheating a bit more each week for the next few months. Somehow, I was still losing weight, so I thought I was a genius who had hacked the system.

What I didn’t realise was that I was losing weight because I was labouring on a building site for ten hours a day, burning thousands of calories. The concept of a calorie deficit was completely foreign to me.

I tried Lipotrim two more times after that and failed almost immediately. Each time cost €85 a week for a few sachets of powder. Back in 2007 or 2008, that was a fortune. I might as well have thrown the money into a shredder and licked the dust for the same nutritional benefit.

4. The Pu-erh Tea Phase

After my final Lipotrim disaster, I heard about Pu-erh tea. Apparently, it was a “fat-burning miracle.” I drank litres of it every day like it was some ancient secret the fitness industry didn’t want you to know about. The only thing it burned was my patience, because I was constantly running to the toilet.

5. The Gym Myth

Around this time, I started going to the gym sometimes. I’d heard your metabolism stays “spiked” after exercise, so I took that to mean I could eat whatever I wanted afterward. In my mind, the gym was like a magical debt eraser for calories. Do a workout, then reward myself with a mountain of junk food. Problem solved.

6. The Acai Berry Breakthrough (Or So I Thought)

One day I saw an ad for Acai berry capsules that “melted fat effortlessly.” I didn’t have much in the way of critical thinking skills yet, so of course I bought them. I took them faithfully, ignored every single other part of my diet, and waited for my six-pack to arrive. It didn’t.

7. The Fat Burner Gamble

When the Acai berries didn’t work, I moved on to other fat-burning pills I found online. No research, no idea what was in them, just pure desperation. I convinced myself that if it was sold on the internet, it had to be safe and effective. In hindsight, I’m lucky I didn’t accidentally burn a hole in my stomach or my bank account.

8. The Atkins Diet (Without the Understanding)

Eventually I gave the Atkins diet a go. It sounded easy: cut carbs, eat bacon. What could go wrong? Well, quite a lot actually. I didn’t understand calories, so I just replaced carbs with massive amounts of high-fat foods. I was low-carb, alright, but very much in a calorie surplus.

9. The Eat-Nothing-Every-Second-Day Plan

Then came my “every second day” experiment, where I’d try not to eat one day and then eat normally the next. The only problem was that “normally” became “like someone who hadn’t seen a takeaway menu in weeks.” I’d always cave in and binge because I was starving.

10. The Chilli Metabolism Trick

At some point I read that chillies boost your metabolism, so I added them to everything I ate. Even ate raw ones on their own like an idiot. Yes, technically they do raise metabolism slightly, but by an amount so tiny it might as well be zero. The only thing that burned was my mouth, not my body fat.

11. The “Healthy Food Can’t Make You Fat” Phase

The final belief I held onto for years was that it wasn’t about how much you ate, only what you ate. So as long as it was “healthy,” I assumed I couldn’t gain weight. That lie kept me stuck for a long time. Turns out you can very easily overeat on “clean” foods. I proved it with alarming consistency.

Finally Learning the Truth

Eventually, after years of chasing shortcuts and miracle cures, I stumbled across the truth. Weight loss isn’t about tea, detoxes, or supplements. It’s about energy balance: calories in versus calories out. Once I understood that, everything finally made sense.

When I stopped guessing and started learning, the results came and actually stayed. I lost all the weight, and I’ve kept it off for over a decade now.

After all those years, it turns out the secret wasn’t a detox, a belt, or a berry. It was just finally having a clue what I was doing.