How far would you go to lose weight? Would you let a 15-foot tapeworm live in your stomach in order to shed those unwanted pounds? The Tyra Show recently featured two women who would.

Click on the video above to see what a tapeworm looks like.

Chalk it up to shock TV, but it's true that some people become so desperate when traditional diets fail that they are willing to swallow a parasite to consume their extra calories. While this is arguably one of the most extreme methods of losing weight, it's actually nothing new. Ads dating back to the late 1800's feature a woman promoting the "easy to swallow, sanitized" tapeworms in order to lose weight without diet or exercise. Sounds like a magic diet pill -- eat whatever you want and still lose weight. Except this is no pill. It's the same parasite found in undercooked meat and seafood that can make people extremely ill.

In case you're not totally grossed out yet, here is how the tapeworm diet works: People ingest a tapeworm cyst from a cow (some come from pigs and fish too, but those are considered more dangerous). The tapeworm then grows inside the digestive tract absorbing calories from your body, which can result in losing one to two pounds a week. Once the target weight is lost, an antibiotic is taken to get rid of the tapeworm.

Here's an appalling example of how far people are willing to go for weight-loss: The sanitized tapeworm as a weight-loss tool. You know how you used to quip that your cousin must have a tapeworm because they ate so much and yet never gained an ounce? Well, someone decided to capitalize on that, and started offering a baby tapeworm to people to swallow -- then tapeworm then eats your food. This first became a fad in the 1800s and luckily hasn't come back with much attention (that I can see) but there are people out there willing to try it!

Here's the problem with the tapeworm diet -- a tapeworm is a harmful medical condition. Doing so would be like injecting yourself with a severe stomach virus in order to lose 10 pounds in a couple of days. Tapeworms don't just eat your food -- they eat your nutrients, making you malnourished ... and with a grotesque, fluid-filled belly!

I'm sorry to say but there's just no way to lose weight and maintain your weight loss without cutting out or really reducing your intake of junk food. So the sooner you accept that weight loss is hard work, the sooner you'll shed the pounds.

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