Nutritionists working in the United States claim a new diet plan will allow followers to lose 100% of their unsightly body weight. “Never before has a diet system been able to promise so much,” said Dr Janine Smyth of Die-t. “Notice we’re not offering ‘up to’ 100% weight loss. We’re saying follow our plan to the letter, and we guarantee you will experience total weight loss. Or your money back.”
However, the plan has not been without its critics. “My husband Mike was, I’ll admit it, morbidly overweight,” said Jean Smithers of Oakhampton. “He jumped at the chance to buy into Die-t. Well he didn’t jump because he was so fat. Jumping was out of the equation. But you know what I mean. He kind of wobbled at the chance. Had he been able to jump, he would have." Asked to get on with it and cut the crap about wobbling and jumping, Mrs Smithers continued: “Sorry. You’re right. Anyway, the thing about the plan is that it’s totally secret. When you hand over your cash, and it’s a lot, you sign a form saying…well I can’t tell you what it says. One because it’s secret, but the other reason I can’t tell you what it says is because I can’t find it. But that’s not the most worrying thing. The plan worked so well, I can’t find Mike, either. He went to one session of Die-t and never came back. Instead I got a call from the Die-t team saying Mike had succeeded.”
Mike Smithers is in fact one of the estimated 1 dieters who achieved their target weight of zero kilos, zero grammes by sticking religiously to the secret programme. And despite being invited onto a number of ITV-style morning sofa programmes, all of them offering lucrative fees and unlimited hairspray, he has not agreed to appear in any of them. Neither is he answering his mobile phone.
“I know that he’d be thrilled to have achieved his target so quickly, but the plan does seem to have a built in snag,” said Jean Smithers. “I rang Die-t to ask for my money back, but they said Mike’s apparent disappearance (if a disappearance can be apparent) was proof that the Die-t plan had worked 100%. I could only have my money back if Mike –or a proportion of Mike however small – came back."