Milkfake diet

Day 6 of 'dumb diets' week: the milkshake diet.

There are many many versions of this diet. I've done two versions and lost weight both times. The second time was especially dumb. So I'll focus on that one.

It was a 'medically supervised fast'. You had to go to a sort of support-group/ weigh-in/ purchase-your-products meeting once a week. At a hospital. Most of the people there had hundreds of pounds to lose. My dad and I went together. I think we each had about 50 pounds we wanted to lose at the time.

While my dad and I never really talked about it, I think we stuck to it for two reasons.

A) We were the thinnest people in the room. Who doesn't like that?

2) We bonded over making smart alleck comments during the group meeting. For example, the leader would ask: "Did anyone find a new good way to cope with temptation to snack this week?" My dad would say "I smoked about a carton and a half of cigarrettes." I'd say "I prank called everyone who ever called me fat."

In case you've never done it, a medically supervised fast is where you drink 'milkshakes' made out of 50 calorie packets of powder and eat nothing.

Some people do these fasts for months and months. So naturally, they go crazy. My milkshake amigos were always coming up with creative/revolting ways to choke down the powder packets.

One big fat gal never shut up about making 'crackers' in the microwave with a tablespoon of water, a vanilla shake packet, and a damp paper towel.

Another favorite was the same recipe but with the chocolate powder. That's if you wanted a cookie, though, not a cracker.

You could make 'ice cream' by freezing a shake. Pudding was made by using half the normal amount of water. If you wanted tapioca pudding or rice pudding, you just didn't beat all the lumps out of it.

Even ten years later, the smell of any powdered food product still makes me gag. At least cake mix is no longer tempting.