The world's first liquid diet appeared around 1066 A.D. William the Conquerer grew so fat that he had problems mounting his horse. When he fell off and landed head first, he had to pretend he was kissing the ground in joy. He gave up food and went on a drinking man's diet -- all he consumed was alcohol.
The first actual diet book came out in 1558 and is still in print. Luigi Cornaro was an extremely overweight Italian who had an ephiphany when he was around 40 years old. Tired of being overweight, feeling out of control, and unable to have sex, he limited himself to 12 ounces of food a day and 14 ounces of wine.
Americans spend over $61 billion a year on diet products. Why do they spend so much money on diet pills, diet books, diet sodas, meal replacement products, diet foods, and fads designed to help them lose weight yet continue to struggle? Fitness and health have often taken a back seat to an all-consuming need to look a certain way or weigh a certain amount. The truth is that 78% of us Americans are either overweight or obese, and those percentages keep increasing even though we jump from one new diet fad to another. In fact, the average woman tries 61 diets by the time she is 45 years old, according to the UK Daily Mail.
your body was as healthy and beautiful as a Greek god, that meant your mind was healthy too. Being fat was not only ugly, it was also a sign of mental unbalance.
One of the weirdest diet fads in the whole history of dieting was Fletcherism, a craze in the United States and England around 1905 through the mid-1930s. Many famous and intelligent people were "Fletchers," including John D. Rockefeller, Franz Kafta, John Kellogg (cereals), and Henry James.
In the first few centuries after Christ, many Christians believed that the physical body was the enemy of the soul. St. Anthony, St. Augustine, the early Desert Fathers, St. Jerome and St. Basil all struggled with food issues, sometimes starving themselves to be more holy. Their hallucinations and other bizarre mental states may have been a result of "anorexia mirabilis," in slang terms, "holy anorexia."
Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters , who once weighed 220 pounds herself, was probably the first person to count calories and to advise others to do the same. Her 1918 book, "Dieting and Health: With Key to the Calories," sold over two million copies in 55 editions. Declaring that "being fat is sinful, and self-control is the key to slimness," Dr. Peters suggested a diet of 1200 calories a day for women to be eaten in 100-calorie units. To find your ideal weight, she advised taking the number of inches you are above five feet in height, and multiplying it by 5.5.