If you’re one of many trying to slim down in a last-minute dash before summer is in full swing, you might be tempted to try a fad or crash diet. Thing is, most of these wacky ways to eat aren’t sustainable and many of them are downright dangerous.

Here are two diets currently experiencing a surge in popularity that you really DON’T want to try:

The Master Cleanse AKA the Lemonade diet

The Master Cleanse, created and published by a naturopath called Stanley Burroughs, has been knocking around since the 40s. It involves living on a liquid diet of lemon juice, water, cayenne pepper and a dash of maple syrup and nothing else. This in a bid to “detoxify” and lose weight. It recently experienced a surge of popularity in the 90s when Beyoncé was rumoured to have used it to drop a dress size for her role in Dreamgirls.

While Bey’s lemonade concoction could help you lose water weight in the short term, you’d certainly pile them back on the moment you went back to eating normally. The diet is also completely devoid of vital nutrients. There is also no evidence that it can rid your body of toxins. Worst of all due to its extremely low kilojoule count, you’ll probably end up losing muscle weight. For dieters, losing muscle tissue is a big negative. The reason being, the more muscles you have, the more kilojoules your body burns naturally.

The egg diet

Back in the 70s, Vogue magazine published an egg and wine diet (yes, really) that morphed into another less boozy but just as ridiculous form. The new egg diet essentially requires you to eat nothing more than an egg, cheese and butter for every meal. This is a bid to switch your body into a ketogenic state. This means that, due to a lack of carbohydrates, your body starts burning its own fat for fuel. While ketogenic diets have their merits, living off of just three food sources is the fast track to a nutritional deficiency.

Another problem? The egg diet, when followed as prescribed, doesn’t serve up enough kilojoules to be healthy. However, if you were to double up, you’d be eating six eggs a day. According to a study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, men eating more than 6 eggs a week had a 30 percent higher risk of heart failure. Increasing their risk of stroke hugely too.

Happily, not every diet on the block is crazily restrictively and likely to put you in a hospital bed. There’s a good one you can try that’s not just endorsed by medical doctors, but created by them!

The RID diet

The Renewal Institute Diet also is known as the RID diet. It is a low kilojoule, low glycaemic index (GI) eating plan. It can help you blitz that belly fast and keep it off for good. The diet is enhanced by nutritious supplements and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) injections. These are self- administered and, if you adhere to it strictly, can lose as much as 8kg a month.

Many people struggle to lose weight because their body no longer listens to the message that insulin sends. Insulin is a hormone in your blood, it delivers the message to your body – to use the sugar in your blood as energy. When you’re insulin resistant, your sugar ends up lingering far too long in your blood. Eventually, it is shelved away as fat. Due to the diet being full of no or low sugar foods, you’ll get to retrain your body. This enables you to become more sensitive to insulin once more. You’ll also still get optimum nutrition from the supplements and, thanks to the hCG injections, you’ll experience less hunger cravings. Best of all you get to enjoy a turbo-boosted your metabolism.

Next time you find yourself googling crash diets, rather make a commitment to trying something that’s healthy, sustainable, created by doctors and proven to work. If you stick with the program, you’ll feel body confident in no time at all and ready to hit the beach!