ABC Diet

There is more than one possibility for the ABC Diet. The less popular version (and much harder to find information) is that one would only eat foods that begin with A, B, or C. The lists that I was able to find included rare and hard to find foods like Antelope and Beluga Caviar, but was truly limiting by its very nature. After all, just how many artichoke and banana croissants can one eat? One also has to wonder what happens to all of the French, Norwegian, or Japanese speaking people who are trying this one on for size.

The second version of the ABC Diet is actually an acronym for “Ana’s Boot Camp” and is a hugely intense 50-day calorie reduced mix it up. It includes several days of fasting and no two days in a row have the same number of calories. The theory is that you are tricking your body into not knowing what to expect. Each of the 50 days ranges from zero (yes I said zero) calories to a maximum of 500. The target group for this diet is people already experiencing eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. From where I sit, this “diet” is simply a diary of an anorexic. With so many healthier, lifestyle based diets out there, why anyone would choose to lose weight in this fashion remains a bit of a mystery.

My personal favorite version of the ABC Diet is posted on the Happy Woman Magazine website. It contains a complex arrangement of letters of the alphabet as a “pairing” and only foods starting with those letters should be eaten together. By the way, if you like milk or mayonnaise you are out of luck. NO M FOODS AT ALL! They even made up words to describe the chemical reaction your body will go through to become a “fat burning furnace”. Did I mention that this particular site is a parody on Women’s Magazines? Well it is, and their version of the A-B-C-Diet is a J-O-K-E! There is an actual disclaimer at the bottom of their home page that reads, “don\'t come crying to us if you starved to death on one of our diets.”

I did find it more than a little disconcerting that of the three versions, the parody made the most sense...