Stupid Diets

My Facebook status the other day:
"Sunset Coffee Date slash Talkshow with Jessica Belenson. Our episode for today Ladies and Gentlemen: SWIMSUITS, BELLY FATS AND THE FEW REMAINING DAYS DAYS OF SUMMER 2011. Let's skip dinner nalang, yes?"

We were just skimming through our friends' facebook accounts, and feasted on their summer pictures wearing bikinis. Some people are just born to not grow fat. Unfortunately, we dont belong to that group. We had to die at a diet first before we lose at most 5 lbs. Sad, but that's how the world works. And I coin a line in Desiderata: "...for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself".

There was a point back then when dieting was part of my everyday commitments. If you think Mariah's MORSEL DIET is ridiculous, my God, you havent seen mine yet. These, by far, are the weirdest diets I undertook, and how I went about it. Note: These are all based on real-life situations of yours truly: There will be No sugar-coating, No-exaggerations on any parts of these stories.

The Gummy-Bear and Coffee Diet. I always remember my friend Bayette when I talk about this diet. She was there when I passed out after finishing an exam. I had this in college, back in the time when I weighed roughly 200 lbs. I was HUGE. This involves drinking coffee (black) in the morning, and then a pack of gummy bears to be consumed the whole day. I end the day with another cup of coffee.

The Pearl White Diet. Self-explanatory: you just have to take Pearl White pills-- 2 pills a day. This was very effective, I lost about 30lbs, and didnt have the urge to eat ANYTHING. But just like any other diet pills, you cant have it for the rest of your life, and one day I noticed that my eyes were yellowing. I stopped.

The Skyflakes Diet. Self-explanatory. You just eat 3 packs of Skyflakes a day, and lots and lots of water. I didnt want to have this diet, but when my Dad got hospitalized, I ran out of money and was in so much debt that I had to sacrifice my meals to buy him medicine. The rest of the family had the same "diet", too. My ex then got worried because I would go home gaunt, pale and weak. Hello, a pack of Skyflakes is about 120 calories, even Superman would die in a week eating just that. It was effective, the belly fats went away, but my face looked weird--- dark circles around the eyes, and my skin was unusually dark. In short, construction worker look.

The Eat Breakfast Like a King Diet. Blame it on Cosmo and Men's Health. They say the right way to do it is to consume 80% of your daily calorie consumption on breakfast, and the remaining 20% you spread thoughout the day. It didnt last. I'm not a morning person. I ate too much lunch, and too much dinner, I gained like 10 lbs in 2 months.

Brazillian Coffee Diet. This was killer. I had this November-December last year when a lot of shows were lined up and the pressure to get thin was as tangible as a big yellow bus parked in my forehead. My band manager bluntly said, "Keith, you have to scale down or else I'd be forced to look for another male singer". BAD. I recall my friend Camille selling Brazilian Coffee. The boxes had all these Chinese characters, it smelled weird, didnt taste like coffee at all, and I had to drink 2 cups of it everyday. It was effective--- after a day, I lost the urge to eat carbs. But my work was so physically demanding that I started to have panoramic visions. No kidding. And I had migraines. Worst, I lost my sexual urges. After a week, I stopped.

The 10-Day Fat Flush. Yes--- BEYONCE! It was Beyonce who made this all so possible for the common tao when she grazed the screen in almost-skin-and-bones perfection as Deena Jones in Dreamgirls. I tried it after a year, when my friend and I were shopping and we came across a bottle of organic grade A maple syrup and she asked me what it's for and I said "Fat-flush". It was a stupid lightbulb moment coz the next thing we knew, were both scouring the aisles for cayenne pepper and lemons. This diet involves drinking a cayenne pepper, lemon and grade A maple syrup concoction for 10 days and you lose 10lbs. I only went as far as 4 days. It was so hard. On the 4th day, I started to see black-and-white circa 1950s silent-type movie Mickey Mouse images everywhere. I felt drugged.

The GM Diet. Now I think this one's effective. It worked for a lot of my gay friends after the Holiday Season. You are only allowed to eat a certain kind of food for a day. Example, Monday-- fruits only. Tuesday-- vegetables only. Thursday, banana and eggs-something. It didnt work for me. I tried it like 3 times, i would go so hungry on the 2nd day.

The Apple Diet. One of my gay friends told me: "Bakla, everytime gusto ko pumayat, kakain lang ako ng apple--- apple lang from Monday to Friday, at pagdating ng Saturday, payat na ako ulit". It struck me like a thunderbolt so I tried it myself. Nah, didnt work. After a year I found out that he was just kidding. Baklaaaaa! :)


So there. Looking back, I realized I did a lot of bad things to my system. Some of them may have worked for me in the past, but hey, Im not getting any younger. Eating right should just be the simplest solution.

How 'bout you? Any stupid diet stories to share? :)