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As y’all should know by now, I don’t endorse any diets, and I don’t go on diets. The very idea of severely restricting myself inspires me to grab for the nearest cake and swallow without chewing. However, once I read this article in the Sac Bee, I realized I’ve been a fool. There are diets that can work for me. And apparently I’ve even been on diets before, and just didn’t know it. Check it out:

10 unusual fad diets

Caveman diet: Dine like Fred and Wilma Flintstone. A Paleolithic-inspired menu of nuts, berries, fruits, vegetables and meat are recommended. Sometimes referred to as “early” or “prehistoric” Atkins because of its emphasis on protein and fat.

Sleeping Beauty diet: Elvis Presley’s idea of dieting: zonk out on sedatives for a few days to lose weight. Can’t binge while you’re unconscious, right?

Cigarette diet: Cigarettes as dieting aids boosted Lucky Strike sales more than 200 percent in the 1920s with the catchy slogan, “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet.”

Drinking man’s diet: William the Conqueror is credited with popularizing this alcohol-based diet when he tackled his bulk by drinking his meals. A thousand years later, Robert Cameron, described by Forbes magazine as a “jaunty San Francisco bon vivant” updated and popularized the martini-heavy diet. Bottoms up. Hic.

Cabbage soup diet: Eat all you want, as long as it’s water and cabbage. ‘Nuff said.

Grapefruit diet: First, you need to love grapefruit. Then, you have to stick to the diet for 21 days. Finally, you lose weight and learn to hate grapefruit.

Fletcherizing diet: Chew food 32 times but no swallowing. Spit it out, buster. The idea, hatched in 1903 by San Francisco art dealer Horace Fletcher, was to absorb fewer calories while still enjoying the food’s flavor. Not many dinner invitations for his followers.

The last chance diet: Basically, starving yourself into thinness by drinking the protein concoction Prolinn made from slaughterhouse leftovers that had been ground and flavored. It proved a dangerous diet in the 1970s.

Vinegar diet: The poet Lord Byron doused food with vinegar (gasp!) to quell his appetite. He lost more than 60 pounds.

Cheater’s diet: Diet during the week, pig out on ice cream, burgers and beer on weekends. It has to do with metabolic rate and human nature. And, it sounds much more appetizing than boiled potatoes doused with vinegar.

The idea of grapefruit every dang day makes the lining of my stomach start to melt away. Ditto the big fat ulcer for the vinegar diet, even if four out of five poets recommend it. I think anyone on the cabbage diet, aka the orphanage diet, would find themselves so gassy that any weight loss would have to be appreciated by others from a distance. I could never do the Caveman, because I only eat free-range, organic sabertooth tiger, and that’s just too expensive for regular consumption. And Fletcherizing? Sorry, I don’t believe in spitting, you should swallow to do it right.

Guess which ones I like? Well, as fond as I am of slaughterhouse leftovers, I’d have to say the Drinking Man’s diet has some serious appeal. I hope it works for drinking women, too. And all this time I called it college! Though I would sub straight scotch alternated with absinth for the martinis, because all that shaking can give you “martini elbow”.

I really, really love the Sleeping Beauty diet. Mmmm, I like sleep almost as much as I like cake. Sedated sleep is the BEST. Okay, so I’m now going to do a nice combo of these two, and call it the “Drinking Beauty diet”.

Make that the “Drinking Cigarette Beauty diet”. I’m on a roll. It’s the (old school) Robert Downey Jr. weight loss plan!

Um, wait: Cheater’s diet? I was so the kid who stole from the bank every time I played Monopoly. Okay, so it’s Drinking Cigarette Beauty diet throughout the week, then I’ll do the binge part of the Cheater’s on the weekend. Now everyone stand back, and watch the pounds melt off me. Thank god I finally found a diet I can stick to!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 10:48 am and is filed under news and research, nutrition, weight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.