PHAD DIET: Three week Update

                      Cork's PHAD Diet Weight Loss Attempt 

(May 15-July 26, 2017)

Diet Start Weight: 240 lbs.

Goal weight: 220

Week Two Weight : 230.5

Current Weight:  227

Week Two Loss/Gain: 3.5 

Total loss to date:  13 lbs

To go:               7 lbs

UPDATE: I’m delighted with my start. I credit the committment to the PHAD principles and an unaccustomed outburst of self-discipline. Week three is a traditional diet-killer in my world, especially if little or no weight comes off.  But 3.5 pounds is great news. Now week four presents challenges.

A reader was kind enough to write and ask, “why would anyone care about” my diet experiences because, afterall, “…we’ve all been through it.”

Good point. There is no reason why many of you would know I worked most of my professional life as a writer. And as Billy Crystal noted in Throw Mama from the Train,  “A writer writes, always.” So that’s one reason why I’m writing about my diet.  Also, it’s the best way to keep me on this diet.

Dieters know there are hundreds of tricks out there to keep them on the straight and narrower waist.   But it’s easy to quit a diet—I’ve done it hundreds of times before. I hate dieting. I’m a lousy dieter. The trick, I think, is to find the one thing that can prevent  failure. And for some of us, myself included, that’s the fear of embarrassment.

I need to go public about it. I did, once before notably. The result of the diet was a 46 pound weight loss. I’d love to claim credit for the diet idea, but that belongs to Paul Dickson. Paul writes too. A lot. He is one of if not the most prolific authors in the country.  He has almost seventy non-fiction books to his credit already, including his current one “Durocher: Baseball’s Prodigal Son”, and just announced he’s already starting his next one.

Decades ago Paul, myself and a number of editors, writers and employees of The Washingtonian in Washington, DC, were at a Christmas party thrown by the magazine.  Along with guzzling fine liquor, downing superb food, several of us ended up bumping bellies and talking about how we should really lose some weight when the holidays were over.  Paul had a better idea.

He suggested we start immediately, and that four of us compete for three months on what he called “The Public Humiliation Approach to Dieting” (PHAD) weight loss competition. As writers we all were blessed with hefty egos and hated to be embarrassed.  His devilish plan including convincing The Washingtonian into sponsoring the competition with the “winner” of the diet writing the final piece and thinking up an apt humiliation for the losers.

The great editor of the publication then, Jack Limpert—himself skinny as a rail—loved the idea. He especially liked the suggestion that the diet would include dirty tricks (remember Washington gave us the dirty Tricks of Richard Nixon.)

I don’ t want to call myself a genius, but the shoe fits in that instance. I conjured up one of the best dirty tricks of all to get the diet off to a devious start. After that, it was a struggle to hold onto my early lead. Did I succeed? Check out in upcoming weeks. I have no sponsor, no competitiors for this latest PHAD attempt, just the threat of embarrassing myself.