When a healthy diet and exercise just aren’t enough, people turn to the latest, greatest (and often strangest) weight-loss plans.

11th century: Consume Nothing But Booze
William the Conqueror was King of England and just a generally conquer-y kind of fellow. After years of conquering whole roast hogs, William figured it was time for a diet. His solution? Get freaking wasted and don’t leave bed for days. Keep in mind he was also supposed to be, like, in charge of the country during this bender. The pounds shed away, and William soon found he could ride his horse again, which he soon drunkenly fell off of and died.

1727: Avoiding Swamps
In 1727, Thomas Short wrote a treatise called “The Causes and Effects of Corpulence,” in which he observed that heavier people tended to live near swamps.

1800s: Starvation or Hysteria
During the second half of the 19th century, a form of “Victorian anorexia” was all the rage among the middle class and aristocracy of Western Europe. People would literally starve themselves in order to live up to the Victorian notion of frailty, which was associated with spiritual purity and femininity.

1820: The Vinegar Diet
The anorexic and bulimic poet Lord Byron popularized the vinegar diet in the 1820s. In order to cleanse his body he would drink plenty of vinegar and water daily.

1857: Zander Rooms
Dr. Gustav Zander of Sweden helped usher in an age of mechanized exercise equipment with the first belt-driven fat massager — a device that would wrap around your body and giggle you to perfection. For decades to come, health spas offered “Zander Rooms.”

1903: Fletcherizing
San Francisco art dealer Horace Fletcher became known as “The Great Masticator” after he attributed a 40-pound weight loss to chewing his food…and not swallowing it. After being declined health insurance due to his size, he turned to chewing each morsel of food 32 times (one for each tooth) and spitting out the remains. By his logic, his body would absorb the nutrients it needed without packing on the pounds.

1925: The Cigarette Diet
It’s hard to imagine that smoking cigarettes could’ve ever been seen as promoting good health, but in the age before Surgeon General warnings, they did just that. Several cigarette companies boasted the appetite-suppressing qualities of their products. One ad for Lucky Strikes eloquently urged smokers to “Light a Lucky and you’ll never miss sweets that make you fat.

1928: The Inuit Meat-and-Fat Diet
Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson proposed a weight-loss plan that’s like an extreme version of the Atkins diet. After living in the northern tundra, Stefansson was amazed at how healthy the Inuit people were despite living off caribou, raw fish and whale blubber, and consuming hardly any fruits or vegetables. Stefansson was so intrigued by this diet—and claimed he had lived on it himself––that to prove its effectiveness he checked into New York’s Bellevue Hospital, where doctors monitored his health for several months. After observations, he was declared healthy.

Early 1930s: Slimming Soap
Wash away fat in the shower? Though it sounds too good to be true, slimming soaps had women rushing for the bathtub in the 1930s. Products like “Fatoff,” “Fat-O-NO” and “La-Mar Reducing Soap” urged users to lather up to slim down.

1954: The Tapeworm Diet
When people learned that tapeworms—parasitic worms that live in a person’s intestines and consume their nutrients––cause weight-loss in their hosts, not everyone had the same, disgusted reaction. Some people jumped on the tapeworm train and started ingesting cysts (baby tapeworms) in order to eat without gaining a pound. Even proponents of this fad would be grossed out to learn that, in addition to the fact that they can grow up to 25 feet long in the intestine, tapeworms can cause seizures, meningitis or dementia.

1960s: The Sleeping Beauty Diet
It’s hard to eat while you sleep, so catching some zzz’s must be a good way to lose weight, right? That’s the idea behind The Sleeping Beauty Diet, which was popularized in the 1960s. Followers (like Elvis) would heavily sedate themselves and sleep for days.

1961: The Calories Don’t Count Diet
Herman Taller, MD, claimed there was no need to count calories as long as you avoided carbohydrates and chowed down on foods high in fat and protein.

1970s: The Prolinn Diet or The Last Chance Diet
In the 1970s, Roger Linn, MD, advocated eating nothing at all—except, of course, his “miracle” liquid, called Prolinn. Prolinn consisted of ground animal horns, hooves, hides, tendons, bones and other slaughterhouse byproducts that were treated with artificial flavors, colors and enzymes to break them down.

1980s-2000s: Breatharian Diet
Most diets require the dieter to eschew a certain type of food—be it meat, carbs or sugars. But one diet requires you give up everything. That’s right—you’re supposed to subsist on air alone. Breatharians believe that when humans find the purest sense of harmony with the world, they no longer require food, water or sleep.

2000s: The Vision Diet
Ever notice how fast-food chains use red and yellow in their logos and restaurants? Those hues are said to stimulate the appetite. Conversely, the color blue is said to suppress the appetite. A Japanese company used this information to create a pair of diet glasses with blue-tinted lenses that are said to make food look unappetizing, thus reducing your desire to eat.

2000s: Ear Stapling
The practice of stapling the cartilage of your inner ear to suppress your appetite is loosely based on auricular acupuncture, a form of Chinese healing therapy in which needles are left in the ear for up to one week. With ear stapling, you leave the staple in for six weeks to three months, after which your body will get used to it and it loses its effectiveness.

2000s: The Cotton Ball Diet
Who needs real food when you can fill up on low-calorie cotton balls? That’s what fans of this peculiar diet say. Some eat them dry, while others soak them in gelatin. Because they’re so filling, they’re said to satiate you so you won’t want to eat fattening foods.