Everyone has had their fair share of experimenting with the latest diet fads. Here, our senior copywriter, Haji Mohamed Dawjee shares her final bow from the fad diet phase after her ridiculous experience with the daftest diet she’s ever heard of.
In the summer of 2012 I was promised that huffing and puffing my way into some latex would give me killer abs. So I did the Six Weeks to OMG diet.
Why? Well, I did it for the story. At the time I worked for a fluff and goss magazine – I won’t mention names but you will know it – and publishing reviews on the latest diets was a must. Atkins. Dukan. Do-can’t. Anything you can think of, we did it.
But for some reason, when it came to the Six Weeks to OMG Diet, my healthy dose of scepticism went out the window and my wisdom failed me. I thought: well this is so crazy it might just work. And so I went on the daftest diet you have ever heard of. I lived on black coffee, cold baths and blowing up balloons.
This was at a time in my life when I cancelled my gym membership for the first time in my adult life, lived on 2 minute noodles on toast or R5 burgers from McDonalds and the only movement I had the time to enjoy was walking to the bathroom and back. So you can imagine the shock and horror when one day, while prepping to have a makeshift braai at Maidens Cove in Cape Town, I did the unthinkable, I looked in the mirror. This was a time before body positivity, so what I saw, did not sit well. I was happy to try anything. Even something as insane as this diet. And I consoled my overwhelming sense of, “you’re a complete idiot” with, “well, I can reuse the balloon and use all the coffee at work, so actually, this fad is killing two birds with one stone. It’s going to definitely make me look like Kate Moss, and save me heaps of cash as well”.
I also consoled myself with the fact that everyone falls for the fake fads.
You would be lying to yourself if you said you haven’t once in your life tried at least one thing. Maybe you upped your protein until you got the meat sweats, or cancelled all citrus fruits from feeding times until you were on the brink of scurvy.
I know someone for example, who went on an intense juice cleanse that caused some serious tummy issues. Let’s just say, she had very little control of… movements. So, in comparison, the OMG diet seemed less severe. Did I struggle to stay on my feet, keep my eyes open and stress about my worrying low blood pressure whilst using the minimal energy I had left to blow up a balloon, absolutely. But, at least I could make it to the bathroom on time, that was at least something right?
#Balloongate lasted all of 3 days before I came to my senses and quit the nonsense. I took a hard look at my reflection in the half-sipped cup of nauseating black coffee and realised that somehow, overnight, I had become the world’s biggest idiot. I quit and immediately made myself some noodles on toast. And as those overprocessed little strings of starch made their way to my belly I promised that I would never fall for fake fads ever again.
That, was happily the last diet trend I tried. And a word of advice – whatever you’re trying now, stop. It’s all fun and games until someone gets latex poisoning, or scurvy, or…severe diarrhoea.