Some days the internet makes me happy, like yesterday, when I got two sweaters on sale from Target.com for $15 each.
Other days the internet makes me sad, like today, when I stumbled across the Slate article I Did a Crazy Fad Diet From the Internet. And it worked. I didn’t even stumble across it. It’s right smack on the front page of MSN.com.
In the article, the author, frustrated with those last 10 unwanted pounds, writes about her success with a diet she found on the internet: the hCG diet — short for human chorionic gonadotropin, a type of hormone produced during pregnancy. The online diet works like this: you buy drops of the stuff and then only eat 500 calories a day. The author, who knows a sham when she sees one, didn’t fall the drops, which the FDA calls fraudulent. Instead, she found a doctor who agreed to inject her with the juice at a cost of $450.00. The doctor-prescibed plan: three weeks of injections and a very low-calorie diet.
Guess what? It worked! In three weeks she lost 18 pounds. She’s a different person! Her self-confidence is back. Those pesky, self-destructive ways are gone (minus the Mojito and nachos vacation binge).
Will it last? According to the Mayo Clinic, probably not. Here’s their response to the question, Does the hCG diet work — and is it safe? The short answer? No. Chances are, once you stop the diet and start consuming more calories, you’ll regain the weight.
We at The Diet Joke could have told you that, but nobody ever listens to us. Still, that won’t stop hundreds, maybe thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of men and women willing to give it a go. Google hCG diet and some 38,000,000 results come up.
Like I said, some days the internet makes me sad.
