Size 13: Two Weeks to OMG

After a despondent midpoint, with no difference made to my midsection since I began Venice A Fulton’s Six Weeks to OMG diet, it has been a better week. I resolved to take Venice more seriously, and the number on the scales has gone down accordingly.

I’ve upped my protein-to-carb ratio to edge my daily total closer (I estimate) to the suggested 120g of carbohydrate. And I’ve done a little better on drinking. It’s evident from the diet’s official forum, though, that a lot of people are taking Venice’s advice very seriously.

Mysixweeks.com  is a great place to spend time, a vision of how the internet used to be. Essentially a discussion forum with topics displayed in a table format, it looks as if it was designed in an American teenager’s bedroom in 1996. If you click on something, a message comes up to tell you that you are being taken to the link you clicked – with a smaller link that reads “Click here if you don't want to wait”. So why are we waiting? Are users supposed to burn calories as we “hunt and wait” for information?

But none of this really matters because the other way My Six Weeks gets me all nostalgic for Internet 1.0 is that everyone on there is just SO LOVELY. I started reading a thread entitled “Unmotivated” (what can I say, it struck a chord), written by a sad-sounding woman whose husband is in Iraq. “I don’t want him to see me like this,” she says, but with weight loss slow can’t even face the cold bath Venice recommends instead of breakfast. I tell her that I have done the cold bath every day – at this point, incidentally, I am so inured to the cold water that I wash my hair in it – and I’ve concluded that it makes zero difference. Low carbs are the key to this diet and that’s the part I can’t stick to. Five helpful and supportive replies appear, offering suggestions and advice. Am I eating too much for my first meal of the day? Could I take a few days of and re-read Venice’s words on carbs and alcohol? Keep it up! It is nine times my RDA of earnestness. It is the internet pre-trolls.

I find myself returning to the forum to post support on other people’s threads (of course they shouldn’t count yoghurt as carbs, unless it’s sugary it’s far higher in protein). But in my heart I know that I am still not taking it seriously.

Taking Venice’s book as gospel, the My Six Weeks crowd debate and interpret the text endlessly, and several of them have seen dramatic results. At this point, laziness and cynicism are keeping me at Size 13 as much as carbohydrates are.

And there’s worse to come. This weekend (“There’s no such thing,” says Venice), I’m going to a wedding. The chances of me observing the ban on liquid carbs there are not so much slim as "skinnier than all my friends".