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The old-fashioned diets that stand the test of time

While the modern approach to weight loss has moved on, there are still things we can learn from the past

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We’re a nation of dieters. Four in 10 of us claim that we’re trying to lose weight by trying every new diet fad, often without paying much attention to whether they really make scientific sense. In the old days we might have picked up tips from magazines, following step-by-step guides that explained the virtues of everything from cottage cheese to cabbage soup. While weight-loss drugs promise a fast track to losing weight today, the fact remains that for anyone trying to lose just a little bit of weight, there are basic principles that will never change. 
Here, experts explain the origins of popular diets – and how we can use them today to help shift the scales.
“In the 1960s, calorie counting became really quite fashionable,” Dr Wilks-Heeg says. “It went hand in hand with concerns over obesity, a growing consumer culture around foods and mostly women’s magazines picking up on dieting fads,” she says. The result was Woman’s Own publishing a 1,000-calorie-a-day diet in 1966, she says.
Diets involving calorie restriction remain among the most popular today. They include the 5:2 diet – created by the late Dr Michael Mosley in 2012 – which involves eating just 500 to 600 calories for two days each week and eating normally for the rest of the week.
It’s a fact that you need to burn more calories than you’re taking in to lose weight. So, cutting calorie intake to lose weight is one of the most popular approaches.
“Low-calorie diets will lead to weight loss by creating an energy deficit, meaning the body burns more calories than it consumes,” says Kim Pearson, a weight loss nutritionist. “The less you consume, the more your body is required to tap into stored fat reserves for its energy needs.”
Less dramatic calorie cutting is recommended for a healthier and more sustainable weight loss. For example, UK guidelines recommend cutting 600 calories per day, which means eating, on average, 1,400 calories for women and 1,900 calories for men.
Eating too few calories can lead to nutritional deficiencies, which can affect bone density, immune function and skin health, as it becomes difficult to consume all the essential vitamins, minerals and protein that the body needs, Pearson warns.
Additionally, very-low-calorie diets trigger fatigue, mood swings and low energy. They can also raise the risk of binge-eating and make it harder to shift weight for good, Pearson notes.
However, when supervised by a clinician, very-low-calorie diets can work. For example, the NHS offers a three-month soup-and-shake diet to patients with type 2 diabetes who are overweight or obese, which involves consuming just 800 calories daily. Research has shown it can help with weight loss and put diabetes into remission in half of patients. However, these patients are carefully monitored to ensure they are getting all the nutrients they need.
Beyond weight loss, calorie restriction has been shown to slow ageing by decreasing the production of harmful molecules called free radicals, which damage cells and promote ageing, Pearson notes. Additionally, calorie restriction can enhance the body’s repair mechanisms and improve the longevity of cells, she adds.
The one-ingredient diet is a fad diet that has endured in one form or another for decades. It involves restricting what you eat to a single food or food group.
The meat-only and fruit-only diets, recommended in the pages of Woman’s Own in the late 1960s, were some of the earliest examples of this trend, says Dr Wilks-Heeg. The latter has now been rebranded as the carnivore diet (which involves eating animal products only) and has gained a devout online following.
Other iterations include the cottage cheese diet, which involves eating just cottage cheese, explains Dr Wilks-Heeg. While this has fallen out of fashion, the low-calorie cheese has remained popular among dieters and has recently seen a resurgence among Gen Z, with sales soaring 40 per cent this year, according to some dairy producers.
“There was also the tin opener diet, which involved restricting yourself to tinned fruit and tinned meat and eating absolutely no carbohydrates,” she says.
There’s also the dreaded cabbage soup diet, which involves eating solely cabbage food for 10 days, though some interpretations allow a few other foods, such as fruit and dairy. The origins of this diet are unclear but it gained popularity in the 1980s and has resurfaced on TikTok more recently.
Restricting food intake to a single item or food group is likely to result in short-term weight loss, as people are limited in what they can eat and typically consume less, says Pearson.
“Diets like this become popular because, in theory, they’re easy to stick to,” she says. “The idea of simply eating one type of food is easier than learning the rules of a more complex diet plan.”
“These single-ingredient diets are generally based on healthy foods,” so the foods they involve eating can be incorporated into a healthy diet, Pearson notes.
For example, “we could recommend eating a bowl of cabbage soup as a starter – it can be an excellent starter for weight management as it’s low in calories but high in fibre, helping you feel fuller before the main meal.”
However, don’t try following a one-ingredient diet, she says. They are so restrictive that they will lead to nutrient deficiencies if followed for weeks or months, as they’re not a source of all of the essential nutrients that the body needs to function, Pearson warns.
Additionally, a one-ingredient diet will lead to muscle loss, as well as fat loss, which slows down the metabolism as the body adapts to consuming less food. “This makes weight loss harder to sustain and increases the risk of weight regain,” she explains.
“Most people would find such diets very challenging to maintain for any length of time,” she says. “Weight loss is healthier, more effective and sustainable when it results from a balanced diet rather than an emphasis on isolated ingredients,” she says.
“In the 1960s, the air hostess job was seen as a glamorous choice for women, and everyone knew that airlines were highly selective regarding body shapes and attractiveness,” Dr Wilks-Heeg explains. “Being an air hostess was believed to provide the opportunity to meet wealthy men who could afford to travel, such as pilots or business travellers.”
As a result, Woman’s Own published the air hostess diet in 1969, for women who were aspiring to achieve a similarly svelte figure.
It involved eating a single hard boiled egg for breakfast, followed by a leafy salad with a glass of milk for lunch. Dinner was a 85g portion of lean meat (around half a chicken breast) with another leafy salad, amounting to a miniscule 354 calories per day.
“Inevitably, eating so few calories will result in weight loss,” Pearson says. “However, this is likely to be muscle loss as well as fat loss, which will compromise health and long-term weight maintenance,” she notes.
Such a low intake can also disrupt hormone balance, which can affect women’s menstrual cycles and reproductive health, Pearson explains. As with other low-calorie diets, it also risks causing nutrient deficiencies and is difficult to maintain.
Eating 350 calories a day is “much too low to maintain for any sustained period of time”, says Pearson. However, the foods in the air hostess diet, when consumed in larger portions, can form the basis of a balanced diet that leads to weight loss, she says.
For example, eggs are nutrient-dense and full of protein, which will help to curb hunger pangs and cravings – though people should eat three to four for breakfast instead of one, she says. Meanwhile, meat contains essential amino acids that support muscle maintenance, she notes.
“Salads made with fresh vegetables add fibre, vitamins and minerals to meals, which support digestion and help stabilise blood sugar levels,” Pearson says. “Along with some healthy fats, like olive oil, these foods create balanced, satisfying meals that support sustainable weight loss.” 
“People are surprised to hear that most diets have been around for more than 50 years,” as dieting and slimming became important during the inter-war period, says Dr Myriam Wilks-Heeg, a lecturer in 20th-century history at the University of Liverpool.
This was, in part, due to the emergence of the concept of the “new woman”, she explains.
This was the idea that women were no longer confined to the traditional role of home-makers and many had jobs and a disposable income. Flapper girls became the embodiment of this social change in Britain, she says. “Obviously, that required a particular slim physique,” which prompted women to want to slim down themselves, Dr Wilks-Heeg says.
“However, it took until the 1960s for commercial slimming to enter the scene on a grand scale,” she says. An explosion of dieting advice came in the form of articles in Woman’s Own, a leading magazine in post-war Britain, clubs such as Silhouette Slimming and diet gurus including exercise instructor Eileen Fowler and nutritionist Prof John Yudkin.
Weight-loss advice for men increased in the 1960s, hooked on the idea that a slim build was key for financial success, while diet information for women was often based on the idea that being slender would keep their husband happy. As concerns rose over the looming obesity crisis, the importance of weight for health became more prominent, according to Dr Wilks-Heeg.
Despite advancements in nutritional science, diet advice was rooted in principles that are still prominent today, such as limiting carbohydrates and eating more protein.
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