A Diet Fad You Might Forget

Tree trunk legs, ham arms, love handles, tyres... I have never been particularly pleased with my body shape and doubt I ever will. One of the earliest memories I have of a photograph being taken I still unfortunately have in my possession is my first day at my second school. In the picture I am standing in a classic photographer's pose stance with hands beside my hips and gargantuan legs slightly apart. It is an exceedingly unflattering photograph, from the pre-brace days when I had rather distinctive rabbit teeth with a gap between them more than accommodating enough for a two pence piece to slot between.

Over the years I've lived off both the Atkins and The Cabbage Soup Diet and contemplated the Thatcher Diet but been too disturbed by the vast quantity of boiled eggs you're required to eat. I've more recently settled on a more successful but an unhealthy mixture of daily pilates style stretches and calorie control interspersed with binge style meals out.

This week, I discovered the first diet that has appealed to me in some time. A tiny little NIB in Metro alerted me to the Schroth Cure in Oberstaufen Retreat, Germany. Dating back to 1949, this diet involves consuming a mere few hundred calories a day (vegetables, cooked fruit and salt-free crackers), a spot of exercise broken up with rest and most importantly alternate dry and "drink" days. The non-dry days and exercise aim to take your mind off the hunger, help you forget and “spur on [the] immune system”

Although apparently hugely successful, the diet does have one drawback – dieters are risen at 4am in order to be wrapped in freezing cold sheets covered in hot water bottles and blankets. First reading the Metro Nib, I honestly believed they'd published this bizarre news item preposterously late or far too early for April Fool's: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20120918-45041.html.

Bizarrely, since discovering it involves early rises, the diet now seems more credible. After all “no pain, no gain” eh? Or perhaps “loss” would be more appropriate? Either way, if work permitted, I'd be more than happy to sample this Schnapps heavy highly efficient “life-changer”.