Diet Don'ts

In my life I have seen the birth and death of some pretty strange dieting fads. There was South Beach, Atkins, Master Cleanse, the Grapefruit Diet, i'm pretty sure there was even one in SkyMall that promoted loosing weight by only eating cookies. Now, these fads have been under attack recently with professionals calling them dangerous, unhealthy and ineffective. I'm here to say, give them a break. Whatever their respective problems, at least they're not as weird as this one.

I was first made aware of the following diet during the third week of my soon to be doomed community aerobics class. Suddenly, some of my most loyal members were missing the class. Tracking one down to ask what the problem was, they told me joyfully that they no longer had to worry about loosing weight. Then they showed me a piece of paper. On the paper was printed what can only be described as a chain letter diet. Now we've all seen some weird fads, but i'd like to nominate this for a special place on the mantel based on the fact that it includes all the must haves of any great diet:

-Don't change what you're eating! Thats too much work, just include this one new ingredient

-Whatever you do, don't exercise. Thats too much work, your body wont need it anymore

-Things have to be done at very specific times of day/days of the week or it wont work

-This diet is guaranteed to work in exactly the way its presented

-Huge amounts of weight will be lost in just a few short days

-Huge amounts of weight can be lost without diet or exercise

but….it also includes this special crazy bonus:

-The diet will only work for you if you make copies of it (the same amount of copies as pounds you want to loose) and pass them out to your friends

Keep in mind, the women following this diet are grown, educated women. Women who believed so wholly in this diet, they followed it to the letter including dropping all the exercise they had been coming to because it said so. Below i've translated the diet as it was presented to me (as a copy by a woman looking to loose 20lbs)

Rice Water Diet

Wednesday:

1. In the morning, take a half cup of water and add the same number of grains of rice as pounds you want to loose

2. Don't put more grains than necessary because you will never gain these pounds back

3. At night drink the water, leaving the grains in the cup so you can refill it the next day

Thursday:

1. In the morning, refill the cup and drink the water, leaving the grains again. Once you're done, fill the cup with water and leave it.

Friday:

1. In the morning, drink everything including the grains of rice

Important:

1. Keep the cup covered during the whole process

2. Make copies of this diet, the same number as pounds you want to loose

3. Start the Diet on a wednesday, but not before having passed out all the copies

4. You can pass the copies of the diet out to any person

5. Don't exercise during this process, the diet is infallible…

Even though the results seem incredible, this does work!

-Addendum: None of the women doing the diet ended up loosing any weight-