In 1977 Vogue published this “crash diet” for women:
The recipe originally appeared in 1962, in the New York Times best selling book, Sex and the Single Girl: The Unmarried Woman’s Guide to Men, by American writer (and later the editor of Cosmopolitan) Helen Gurley Brown. It offered advice on dating, “sexual friendships,” affairs, work-life balance, economising, styling, eating, and drinking. It was then republished in the Vogue Body and Beauty Book in 1977, before resurfacing as a meme splashed around on Facebook. And this is where I found it.
Gurley Brown’s diet was for just two days, which she recommended for a weekend as it makes you “fuzzy.” But on the upside, she promised that if you consume nothing but eggs, wine, steak, and black coffee, you’ll shed 2.5 kilograms.And that’s why I decided to try living like a 1970s socialite. For three days.
Day One, Sunday: 60.9 kilograms
Nick ate avocado, goat’s cheese and prosciutto on sourdough, the asshole. I choked down slippery quarters of egg like a performing seal performing. “Don’t rush it, remember that’s all you’re getting,” said Alex my housemate.The wine? I was necking cat bile, but at least my hangover was cured. Tipsy on a Sunday morning, life was alright.
2:00 PMFor lunch I ate more egg and it turned out that more egg was the last thing I wanted. The problem became not how hungry I was, but how the eggs were the only things to soak up a stomach of acid. I was drawing out the torture too by sipping my two glasses of wine painfully slowly. Buzz gone, energy gone. I was feeling the full depressant effects of the alcohol.
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7:00 PMWho knew steak with lemon was so tasty? By this point I wasn’t actually that hungry and it was a bit of a struggle to eat it all. Did that mean I was in starvation mode? As soon as I finished, however, I felt amazing. My body rejoiced. After being totally drained all day I got a sudden burst of energy, which I used up drunkenly giggling before crashing at 10 PM.
Day 2, Monday (working from home). 60.3 kilograms
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Later that day I found an online archive of US Vogue magazine covers from 1977, the year they published their version of the diet. While most of the cover text for the year was about make-up, July’s subheading was “How to look great, feel alive!” I was pretty convinced that this diet was neither making me look great nor feel alive, yet the beautiful Vogue women smiling at me looked so effortlessly sexy. “How can I look like that?” asked every American woman in 1977.2 PMEggs in quarters was definitely the way to go. Plain eggs with no other padding are kind of gross and I held my nose and chewed through them. Maybe this is how the diet works: it makes you rather eat nothing for three days. My biochemist friend told me that a water-only diet would probably be better for me. “Wine and eggs just don’t make sense,” she said.I didn’t get the same kick from my lunch wines as I did from my morning wines. I spiralled very rapidly after lunch.
4:30 PMI couldn’t work anymore. I’m was in bed with a throbbing headache. But “Being in bed [alone] is sexy,” writes Gurley Brown. Was this sexy?7 PM“Don’t look at me with those dead eyes” said Nick, pounding an entire bag of cheese corn chips.After dinner I was tipsy, but it was a new and not particularly fun tipsy. I felt dazed and disconnected from my physical self, like I was just getting used to a second-hand body from a donor with liver problems. My guts were bubbling away and I was burping a lot. My eyes were heavy and I went to bed at 9 PM.
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Day 3, Tuesday (office day). 59.7 kilograms.
9:10 AMSome work friends knew what I was doing, but I didn’t tell my superiors so that I wouldn’t have to explain my drinking at work. So I drank my breakfast wine at my desk from a thermos flask.As I drank wine, starved, and tried to concentrate, the letters on my keyboard danced around à la magic mushrooms. “Feeling tipsy?” quipped one of my in-the-know co-workers. I was so tired I didn’t know anymore. I didn’t know if I was drunk or just in limbo. The nice Riesling I treated myself to for my last day tasted like pure vinegar. My tastebuds were only picking up the acidic flavours to warn me to: Stop. Eating. Acid.12:00 PM
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I was finding it very hard to breathe normally. My stomach, guts and kidneys hurt, I had a headache, my teeth and jaw ached, and I wobbled when I walked. I could hear Gurley Brown’s voice: “Being able to sit very still is sexy.”This diet was originally advised for the weekend. But I wasn’t swanning about at home smoking cigarettes and reading Vogue, I was trying to work.“Good health is sexy. Tired girls are tiring!” writes Gurley Brown. “I know a man who says he married his wife because she had so much vitality.”WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME, HELEN?! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME, MEN?!1:30 PMEach sip of wine made my stomach seize and finally I lost it. I went to the bathroom to make myself vomit, but nothing but a dribble came out. Trying to force yourself to vomit at work? That’s not normal, nor OK.
I told Nick about what happened through tears and he told me to eat the avocado on my desk. I did. I broke the diet before the end because a) yes, I’d felt its full effects, and b) I didn’t want to cause myself pain anymore.“You literally already look so much better,” says my colleague, after two mouthfuls of avocado. I was drowning in relief.