A Blast from the Past: Retro Dieting with Metrecal

I love hanging out on retro recipe blogs and in my travels I've come across a few vintage ads for "Metrecal".   Metrecal was a diet drink marketed in the 1960s through 1977, first as a powder, then as a canned "shake" type beverage.  The Slim Fast of the sixties, I suppose, except for a few differences.  One difference is, Metrecal was a "liquid protein" whereas Slim Fast isn't really all that high in protein.  Wait, I just researched this and now Slim-Fast does make a high protein version, with 20g of protein.  The original Slim - Fast was mostly sugar with milk and fiber that filled you up.

Two, the recommended Metrecal diet daily calorie intake was 900 calories!  And, one was supposed to subsist strictly on Metrecal and not eat anything else.  Or, was that just what people actually did?  It seems to be gently suggested to do that in the ad below, with the disclaimer to "ask your doctor first" of course. 

I suspect the real plan actually was to subsist on 900 calories a day, because Borden came out with a competing product, and it was 900 calories worth of  diet drink in one container.  I guess one was supposed to sip on it all day?  Easier to carry home than 90 cans, right?

This ad I found on Ebay as much as tells us, the container of Ready Diet "supplies a complete 900 calorie daily diet".

I am amazed at the contrast between these concepts and today's mass-media advertised diet plans.


Slim-Fast tells us on their website to eat 3 - 100 calorie snacks, 2 shakes or bars at about 180-200 each, and a 500 calorie dinner.  That's 1160 to 1200 calories per day. That's about the basline for "low calorie" diets.  There is no popular diet telling anyone to eat less than 1200 calories today.

Your total allotment of Weight Watchers points would be between 1400 to 1800 points depending on your starting weight!  And then they allow you to "earn" Activity Points, which means, I walked around the block so I can have a bag of these:

Uh, why?   And then you have the extra "reward yourself" / don't change your habits points that you can spread over a week or some such thing.   So, the base points measure out to about 1100 - 1800 per day based on your weight, but with all those extras added in too - it puts you way over the 900 calories that Metrecal-drinkers in the sixties were adhering to.

I just know, a fat person who has been living a sedentary lifestyle will not lose weight on 1800 calories per day!  I won't lose weight on 1800 calories and I won't lose weight fast enough on 1500.

1200 and under is a necessity for fast weight loss.  And fast weight loss is a necessity for me to stick with this.  I am seeing results, I am happy with what I am doing and I am eating WELL!  We Americans with our national average BMI in the overweight range and our obesity epidemic are just sooooo afraid to admit that we eat too much and that we have become so unwilling to undergo even the smallest of discomforts.   No pain, no gain, remember?  No loss without a cost.  Actually, doing without a bunch of junk food or an overabundance of good food that makes you sick?   Not really pain.  Just common sense.

As I said in my last post, I am raising my calorie intake for the next 2 days to around 800 and we'll see how that feels.  I am doing what works for me!  As they say in the diet ads, "consult your doctor" before doing what I am doing.  Additionally, I am not a nutritionist, physician, nurse or any kind of health professional!  I am keeping this blog to keep myself honest and to share with anyone who might find some of my tips, recipes and 500 calorie diet musings helpful.   I am not advising anyone else only sharing my own journey.