what is the most ridiculous diet of all time

My nominees are the Tapeworm Diet, the ever-popular Baby Food Diet, and the Intravenous Diet. But I’m sure someone will invent an even stupider one any second now.

justin beiber is a big fat deal

Okay, to my knowledge we’ve never talked about Justin Beiber on this blog. (Until now.) I have to admit the way he has been a Twitter trending topic off and on for pretty much my entire adult life has been impressive, though.

chub rub causing hole in jeans

Well, it happens to the best of us! Some great ideas for repairing jeans are here, or find a pair of jeans you like and stock up!

how did john goodman lose so much weight

I had no idea he had! But apparently he has. I don’t know how, though!

blog communities for fat girls

HELL YEAH. Step right up!

The diet involves eating 14 servings of baby food a day followed by a healthy adult dinner, and Jen has reportedly lost 7 pounds in the past week.

Yeah, that sounds healthy.

The Baby Food Diet (and the famous people who love it) is a plot point in the young adult novel I just wrote! (Pear and pineapple, which I tasted for research purposes thanks to my friend Aych, makes an appearance.) So I’d better finish editing my novel so I can sell it and become rich and famous on Jennifer Aniston’s coattails while the Baby Food Diet is still making headlines.

1. Improving Aphrodite, a post with a great title and (even greater pictures) about reproductions of classic art that make its subjects, such as Botticelli’s Venus, thinner:

This is hilarious: it’s revisionist art history, as done by the Photoshop-happy editors of Vogue.

2. A fascinating discussion of how, for fat people, every picture (especially an unflattering one) comes across as a “before” picture waiting for an “after” to happen:

This polaroid was to be my “before” picture. The counselor took it with an impressive measure of enthusiasm, with an absolute wide-eyed assurance that someday soon I would look at this picture and shake my head and say “I cannot believe I ever looked like that!

And 3. A side-by-side comparison of ten celebrities who have gotten much thinner in recent years. (Jennifer Aniston would totally qualify for this, but she isn’t included.)

The point I want to make is that these women have ALWAYS been beautiful. They were considered beautiful enough to be stars with their curves, so what made them think they needed to lose them?

Speaking of pictures, back to the Photoshop diet. The idea behind the “diet” is that you take a photo of yourself and manipulate it into an “ideal” state of skinnyness via Photoshop, and are thusly motivated to lose a bunch of weight. If you can’t do it yourself, a website will apparently do it for you!

Within 48 hours of uploading your “before” photograph, [the site] will produce an “after” photograph for you based on your stated weight loss goal of from 5 to 50 pounds — perfect for sticking on the refrigerator door to motivate you not to eat those leftovers.

Fortunately, looking at the “before” photos of all of those celebrities, not to mention the “before” photo of Aphrodite, not to mention thinking about the bullshit concept of the “before” photo in the first place, provides the perfect antidote to the Photoshop diet. Oh, and if anyone wants to see my own personal “before” picture… here it is.

I looked into this a little further and found the text of an article in Marie Claire about this “phenomenon.”

Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Marcia Cross are among the celebrities who are spoon-feeding themselves with toddler tucker. The idea of substituting one, and sometimes two, regular meals a day for the tiny fruit and vegetable meals originated from New York fashion guru Hedi Slimane… [he] is said to have first coined the phrase ‘baby eating’ by sticking to baby food for days on end to maintain his slimline figure.

A-listers are snapping up the vitamin and mineral-rich snacks from organic ‘designer’ labels such as Earth’s Best, which are now being sold in the healthfood sections of high-brow supermarkets. Jennifer Aniston believes the ‘purer, nutrient-packed, gluten-free’ pots help to maintain her trim figure; Reese Witherspoon told a US TV show she’s careful not to crash diet on infant food and makes sure to have one adult meal a day; while Marcia Cross ditched junk food snacks for baby food to keep hunger pangs at bay.

According to one nutritionist (from, where else, L.A.), it’s perfectly okay:

There’s nothing wrong with anyone eating baby food,’ LA-based nutritionist Dr Marty Edwards tells the newspaper. ‘It’s nutritious and delicious as a snack. But adults require a minimum daily calorific intake, so it would be absolute folly to dine only on these little jars. Substituting them for chips, crisps or burgers as a healthy snack alternative does, however, make a lot of sense.’

Here is a page of baby food nutrition information, if you are curious. The peaches have 51 calories. The macaroni and cheese has 83. The prunes have 15.

Is anyone else tempted to go to the Gelson’s in Hollywood and check out the organic baby food line? Maybe run into Jen Aniston while you’re there? I should totally do a taste test. Maybe baby food is not actually as disgusting as I remember.