Well, the Israeli Army Diet is finally over. These truly were our salad days. No, I don’t mean that in the idiomatic sense of a time of youthful enthusiasm. I mean it quite literally in the sense that I spent the last couple days eating salad. This was not as bad as I was expecting it to be. In fact, it was easily the most painless of the days.

You see, I went to the dictionary to get the definition of “salad.” If the Israeli Army Diet wasn’t going to define the term then the dictionary was.

Salad: a usually cold dish consisting of vegetables, as lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, covered with a dressing and sometimes containing seafood, meat, or eggs.

Dressing and meat. Okay, I can do that. I was afraid I was going to have to eat straight lettuce for two days, which would have been rough. But by that definition I could have chicken caesar salad (sans croutons) which is something that I find perfectly satisfying. So that’s what I did

So does it work? Has the Israeli Army vanquished fat in a way they never could the Palestinians. Well, as is true with most of these types of diets, yes and no. I finished this diet a couple days ago and over the course of the 8 days I lost 11 pounds. Those are great numbers. But when I went back to eating a “normal” diet (2000 calories a day of a variety of foods) I gained back 6 pounds over the course of two days. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I put on another pound after today is over. I want to stress the point that it’s not because I’m overeating now, it’s because the weight that’s lost on these types of diets is not real. The way all of these types of diets work is that they try to come up with different combinations that will make you shit and piss as much as possible over the course of the length of the diet (two days of apple, remember?). So when you weigh yourself at the end, you’re weighing yourself at a very artificial state.

So why bother? Well, I certainly don’t do the most moronic diets to lose weight. The first site I wrote, Revival of the Faddist, was about using fad diets to lose weight. And what I realized is that while it’s possible to do so, that is not the best thing to be gained from fad diets. I call this “stunt eating” not because it’s incredibly dangerous, but because it’s pointless and semi-difficult. Eating only apples for two days is going to have a minor effect on your weight, but the larger effect is that you’re training yourself to follow your mind’s directive on what to eat. And that is essentially the only lifetime skill you need to gain to control your weight in the long-term.

I don’t know where the Israeli Army Diet originated. Unsurprisingly, this diet has nothing to do with The Israeli Army, that was just the name that was slapped on it in the 70s to give it some credibility. (Much like the Mayo Clinic Diet, the Sacred Heart Diet (named after a hospital in Canada that had nothing to do with it), and others.) How dumb are we as a species? If we saw this diet:

Breakfast: A meatball
Lunch: Huckleberry cobbler
Dinner: A rock

We’d be like, “That’s absurd.” But if we saw this diet:

The Salvation Army Marching Band Diet
Breakfast: A meatball
Lunch: Huckleberry cobbler
Dinner: A rock

We’d be like, “Well, that seems worth a shot.”

But since I don’t know the origin of the diet, I don’t really know what it means when it says that for the fifth and sixth day I can have “chicken.” Can I fry it? Can I stuff it with swiss cheese and ham? Can I bread it and parm it and put it in a sandwich? I’m guessing no. I know how these types of diets work, so I know it means chicken cooked in only the most boring, undelicious ways possible. Well, I picked up a roast chicken at the grocery store yesterday and have been living off that for these two days. To be honest, it’s not that bad. It’s a significant step up from the apples and cheese days, at least. I think I’m going to be overwhelmed when I go back to having more than a single option as far as what to eat each day. But I’m looking forward to it.

So, I just ate Cheese for two days. I love cheese. It makes everything better, as far as I’m concerned. When I worked in a restaurant during college, the other line-cooks and I would take some shredded cheddar and jack cheese, roll it into a ball the size of a large marble, dip it in beer batter, then deep fry it, and then dip the finished product in ranch dressing. That’s some serious cheese love, or at the very least a distinct disdain for your arteries. But that’s the thing, you need to have cheese in addition to other things. At least I do. Give me some bread, or a cracker, or a hunk of meat, or even a “doodle” and some cheese and I’m all set.  But by itself, that’s just not my style.

The only cheese I ever had by itself is string cheese. And that was when I was eight. But I loaded up on some the other day and it’s all I ate for a full 48 hours. I feel ashamed eating this stuff. Peeling of these fibrous lengths of low-grade mozzarella. It’s fun when you’re a kid, but no adults eat string cheese. No one’s ever like, “This year’s profits have increased by 75% over the last fiscal year,” then rips off a big strand of string cheese.

Overall it hasn’t been that bad. But that’s how these long-term super-restrictive diets are. If you can get past the first few days it becomes kind of easy.

I have to admit though that I haven’t found the pizzerias of New York City as accommodating when I try to pull this maneuver:

Bellisimo!

So, I’ve been eating apples for two days now. Fuji apples, to be specific. I had considered going to Whole Foods or something and getting a variety of apples, but then I thought that the slight variety would end up being more depressing than no variety at all. So I just went to the fruit and vegetable store near my apartment and loaded up on fuji apples.

If you’ve never subsisted on one  thing for a couple days, here is the general pattern it takes. Before you start, you’re kind of excited. The novelty of the thing seems interesting. On the beginning of the first day you have your first apple and — if you like apples like I do — you think, this is going to be easy. Then, a little after lunch on that first day the novelty has worn off. By dinner you’re thinking, What else can be done with these things? So you’re baking them in the oven and stuff.

Now, by the time day two rolls around, there is no enthusiasm left and you’ll eat them just to have something in your stomach. On day one I had 10 apples. On day two I had two. That’s how it works. People often fall into the trap of looking at a diet and getting excited — “I can only eat pita bread, but I can have as much of it as I want!” Well, guess what, 8 hours into eat you’re like, “man, fuck pita bread.” People seem to think there is something magic about the food that causes you to lose weight. But really it’s just human nature to not eat much of one particular thing days on end.

The effect an all-apple diet has on your physiology is about what you’d expect. The best part is the spectacular noises your stomach makes. Combine  semi-starvation with your stomach working through that fibrous pulp and you get some of the loudest stomach noises ever. Rumbles, gurgles, and squeals. I had to inform my co-workers, “That’s just my stomach.” Lest they think I suddenly decided it was socially acceptable to audibly fart at work (but what a utopia that would be).

Up next: two days of cheese.

It’s time again to dip into the Every Diet site to see what bad ideas they have to offer the dieting community. For the next 8 days I will be taking on the Israeli Army, or at least their diet. When I first saw the name of this I thought it sounded pretty great. The Israeli Army? What do they eat? Like matzoh-ball soup, bagels, and those chocolate coins? Look, I ‘m not a cultured man, I don’t know much about the Jewish faith. But I’ll eat potato latkes for a week, no problem.

Sadly, the Israeli Army Diet is nothing of the sort (and, unsurprisingly, has nothing to do with the Israeli Army). It’s an 8-day diet where you can eat one type of food every two days. Every Diet calls it “one of most nutritionally unbalanced diets around.” Sounds right up my alley.

Here it is:

Days 1 – 2: Apples

Days 3 – 4: Cheese

Days 5 – 6: Chicken

Days 7 – 8: Salad

I guess the theory is that nothing prepares you more for battle with the Palestinians than the apple-shits.

I’ve started today and will provide updates along the way.