Diet plans range from the restrictive to the radical, but it would be hard to eat more wildly than Michel Lotito, who was born in Grenoble, France, in 1950. One day, the glass from which a young Lotito was drinking broke, but rather than spitting out the shards, he chewed and swallowed them. He then began downing glass and metal on a regular basis, showing no signs of harm. From 1966 on, his diet included 18 bicycles, seven television sets, a computer, six chandeliers, skis, two beds, an entire coffin, and even a Cessna aircraft — all in tiny pieces. Doctors X-rayed Lotito’s stomach and found no problems, eventually concluding that an extra-thick gastrointestinal lining was responsible for his ability to devour 2 pounds (.9 kg) of metal every day. It is estimated that he consumed around nine tons of metal between 1959 and 1997. Lotito, who once said that he couldn’t stomach soft foods such as hard-boiled eggs and bananas, died of natural causes in 2007 at the age of 57.
Digging into diets:
Considering himself overweight, England’s William the Conqueror once “dieted” by consuming almost nothing but alcohol for a year; reportedly, it worked.
When Oprah Winfrey bought a 10 percent share in Weight Watchers in 2015, the diet program’s stock price jumped nearly 400 percent.
Only about 1 percent of overweight people can blame their DNA; poor diets and a sedentary lifestyle are almost always the real culprits.