Where dieting trends started

Editor's note: Charleston freelance writer Sally Watts is enrolled in the Focus program at the Medical University of South Carolina's Weight Management Center. This is the 12th in a series of weekly columns about her journey and progress.

This past week at weigh-in, I had lost 2.2 pounds. Another week, another 2 pounds. It's getting monotonous, but as long as the trend keeps up, I'm not complaining.

So where did dieting originate, anyway? It's been around for a while, although as modern societies turn more and more to processed foods, the diet plans and schemes multiply as quickly as the calories.

In the 1820s, Sylvester Graham emerged as one of the earliest American advocates of proper diet.

He encouraged vegetarianism and a restricted food intake, which he said would cure physical and, more importantly, moral ills. He invented a flatbread made with unsifted flour and no chemical additives, which would later become known as the graham cracker.

By the early 1900s, according to Newsday magazine, corsets and exaggerated curves fell out of favor and a more slim physique became desirable. Extra weight was ceasing to be associated with wealth as public transportation and more available food sources leveled the field between wealthy and middle-class lifestyles. In 1903, the proud Fat Man's Club of Connecticut closed its doors.

The Web site www.thehistory of.net says that the concept of calories was pioneered at the turn of the century, and a Californian, Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters, wrote a weight-loss best-seller in 1918 that centered around counting calories. Apparently, that era marked the beginning of the American obsession with the fad diet, as people were perhaps motivated to improve their physical appearance by images they saw on the silver screen.

The 1930s ushered in the popular Hollywood diet, in which adherents ate all the grapefruit they could stand. Seaweed and kelp also were touted as miracle diet foods, as were foods such as apples and celery that supposedly used up more calories in the digestion process than they actually contained.

In the 1940s and '50s, ideal-weight charts came on the scene. Also in the '50s, amphetamines flamed and quickly burned as a mainstream diet pill of choice, and the "godfather of fitness" Jack LaLanne brought exercise to television.

The '60s ushered in the beginnings of the modern-day Weight Watchers program. Dr. Atkins also promoted his high-protein, no-carb approach to dieting, which made as many waves back then as it does today.

In the '70s, the Food and Drug Administration recommended banning saccharin for health reasons, but it was the only artificial sweetener available, and the popular uproar prevented Congress from pushing the ban through. The Pritikin Diet, based on high-fiber, low-fat nutrition, was developed for heart patients and caught on with the public.

In the '80s, people followed the Beverly Hills Diet by eating nothing but fruit for the first 10 days. The Glycemic Index also was invented. Diet-book authors jumped on board and begin applying the index principles to their own weight-loss plans. We either loved or hated Richard Simmons, but it was hard to argue with the fact the guy had lost more than 100 pounds and knew his stuff.

In the '90s, Susan Powter made waves with her unorthodox look and approach to weight loss. She was big on exercising more, and drinking enough water each day to satiate a horse. Oprah lost 70 pounds on a liquid meal replacement diet. Remember that wagon of fat she pulled out onto the stage? Also in the 1990s, the FDA began to insist on greater disclosure and information on nutrition labels.

I wonder how we'll commemorate the post-millennium diet culture?

Progress report

Here's how it went for me this week:

--Exercise: Jogging in place is great. It's portable, requires no equipment or special clothing, and can be done any time of day. I highly recommend it.

--Meals: Did you know how many cherry tomatoes you can eat in one sitting without ingesting a lot of calories? A lot. A whole lot.

--Motivation: "I recently had my annual physical examination, which I get once every seven years, and when the nurse weighed me, I was shocked to discover how much stronger the Earth's gravitational pull has become since 1990." — humor columnist Dave Barry.

--Progress: On day 84, I had lost a total of 33.8 pounds.

Next week: Taking it minute by minute.

E-mail Sally Watts at sidlesup@yahoo.com.