Magazine Madness and/or Mania: “A Woman Doctor’s Crash Diet For Teenagers” (Woman’s Day, January 15, 1980)

Well, that’s a headline you’re not going to see on any of WD’s contemporary covers.

I was kind of hoping that said diet would include some of those groovy earth-tone cookies. Also the ones at the top and left of the picture look like lumps of igneous rock.

Dr. Barbara Edelstein assures the nervous mothers of chubby teenage girls (go ahead, try to imagine a teenage boy that would allow himself to be subjected to the indignity of this scheme) that

Crash diets are OK as as long as you understand why you are losing weight. There is nothing magical about them; they are a fast, healthy way for normally thin and healthy people to lose weight in an emergency.

I think we’re playing fast-and-loose with the word “emergency”, there, Dr. Edelstein.

Diet plans of this era really seemed to go out of their way to make the food as disgusting and/or encased in gelatin as possible (anyone for Weight Watchers “Cinnamon Squares”?) and Dr. Edelstein fesses up that this is kind of the point:

Don’t use any of the things that make food a little tastier- no ketchup, salad dressings, spices and very little salt. Eat no favorite fruits like apples or bananas.

Yeah, I’m totally sure it was all of that cumin that got me into this weight loss EMERGENCY in the first place.

Dr. Edelstein prescribes something called The Sunshine Diet, the origin of which she describes for the reader:

I made this up one day when a girl came into my office and demanded something “different.” She didn’t want anything complicated, but wanted to lose ten pounds in two weeks. It was a beautiful sunny day outside, so I looked out the window and said, “I have just the diet for you- the Sunshine Diet!”

She lost ten pounds and felt wonderful.

“Here is this thing that I just made up!”

This actually kind of explains how the “Jar Full of Tongue Depressors Diet” and the “Powder-Free Latex Gloves, Medium, 100 Count Diet” got their names (obvs, my doctor didn’t have a window in her office).

Ladies and gentlemen, The Sunshine Diet:

Breakfast
One orange
8 ounces skim milk

Lunch
8 ounces skim milk
3 ounce hamburger patty 

Ok, let’s hold up a minute right there. Never mind that by 8th period I’d be chewing up my Problems In Democracy textbook for nourishment, but that also doesn’t sound like the most portable lunch.

Cook it at home and take it to school cold. If you don’t like cold hamburger, too bad- I still want you to eat it.

Um, thanks Evil Mom.

After-School Snack
1 hard-cooked egg OR
1 ounce American cheese OR
4 ounces skim milk

Supper
1 orange
8 ounces skim milk
2 hamburger patties (3 ounces each)

Late-Evening Snack
4 ounces skim milk OR
8 ounces tomato juice OR
1 hard-cooked egg

So, milk, hamburger patties (I guess that is what makes it “for Teenagers”) and the occasional cheese cube. And don’t forget:

Snack
Celery

You repeat this every day for TWO WEEKS.

Despite the good doctor’s insistence that “you won’t believe how much you’ll ‘go’ on this diet!”, it all kind of sounds like a formula for never pooping again.

And finally

One of the biggest problems in crash dieting is that after about two or three days, the dieter begins to feel weak or light-headed and may interpret this feeling as a need for food.

No, no- you’re fine. You just had a cheese cube, remember? Only 6 more hours until your next demitasse of skim milk!

(Oh, apparently the tan lumps on the cover are called “Wasp Nests“, which sounds like the perfect thing to bring to Todd and Muffy’s housewarming party out on The Vineyard.)