It's a completely unsustainable method to attempt to get down to an arbitrary "race weight" when, well: train, eat a variety of things, and worry a whole lot less about the numbers on the scale and instead worry about executing a race plan.

But basically -- you eat nothing but cabbage soup and water for a week and voila, you "lose" weight. It's dumb. It's very 90s. I remember my parents doing this and trying to force us as kids through it, too.

Unless you have covered the 99.9% of training / fueling and are looking for that last 0.1% when, you know, being a triathlete is your job, don't do dumb shit like this.

(Note: post is solely my opinion, not an official position of ST, etc.)

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Oh my God.

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

Oh yeah. Lots of eating disorder boot camp disguised as “for your health…”

Why I get pretty grouchy around this stuff…race weight is the number you wake up on race day with. Don’t try to manipulate it. You’ll be way faster properly fueled and a couple kilos heavier anyways…

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

haha Amazing! I thought these was a thing of the 80s along with TV preachers and Cyndi Lauper :)

other diet hacks from the 90s/early 2000s

grapefruit

cool whip - Halo Top has nothing on eating an entire container of cool whip. [a pint of Halo Top and a container of cool whip each have about 400 calories.]

special K diet

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

Do NOT do it.

My wife tried using it after having our second kid. She dropped the weight all right. And the weight kept coming off after she stopped the diet. It messes with the thyroid.
So I will say she "coincidentally" got Graves' disease exactly with the timing of her diet. She had to get her thyroid ablated, her weight has doubled and, needless to say, she can no longer do the ultras she loved to do.

Something that worked for my parents from the '70s, with permanent weight loss of 20 and 30 lbs:
The "Eating Man's Diet" which roughly speaking is this:
Alternate days:
(1) 90-100% of the calories needed for your ideal weight (you must NOT go under)
(2) 900 calories (you can go under)
I think it helps lose the weight because the "eating" days keep the metabolism from going into starvation mode (and you only have to diet "one day at a time"), and it helps keep the weight off because you become more attuned to the calories in the stuff you eat.
This is helpful especially when one is injured or on "old fart mode"; I unfortunately suffer from both.

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Tri or tri not; this is no du. (--- with apologies to Yoda.) Slow triathlete who survived Huntsville, Lelystadt, Colmar, Fontanil, and
Szekesfehervar/Lake Velence. Arbor hydration specialist in a kid's park in Monterrey 4 times in the 1990s (and in the pits in 1994).

But did Macca infact use this - or is that an urban legend?

Especially if you have covered the 99.9%, don't do dumb shit like this. It'll just undo much of the hard work you've put in.

In fact, whether you've done the work or not, don't do dumb shit.

Did you ever seen Macca at Ironman 201? I have a picture with him and I look like a beached whale at 160lbs next to him. Had an extremely gauntish look that day. Had to do something for prep for that race.

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Typical Slowtwitch posts. Truth is somewhere in-between.

Who Counts Grams for Cycling? (Page 2): Triathlon Forum: Slowtwitch Forums

I am fat right now, but at one point I was 270lbs. I did the grapefruit diet for awhile in high school and it helped me shed 50lbs.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I remember back in the day it was rumored that Dave Scott would rinse his cottage cheese. I asked him one time if it was true. He said he couldn't remember, maybe.

cool whip full of hyderogenated oils to clog your artieries. unfortunately halo top is also using them now, disguised as 'monoglycerides' . I go with the 'keto' or 'rebel' brands to avoid this

TG - What year are you actually talking about???

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Oh yeah, Ironman 201 sucked. I remember that year, when everyone got cholera from the aid station at mile 18. My race weight dropped to 110 lbs.

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What's your CdA?

 

I thought that was a Lance Armstrong thing. (I suppose others could've picked it up)

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

It’s a diet from before they invented Ozempic.

I think it is an urban legend, but each time Rob Gray (Ultraman 2017 world champion) and I feel overweight (and that is most of the time), we make jokes about the urban legend of Macca going on the cabbage and water diet for his Kona 2010 win (but he was still heavier than Ralaert for the Alii drive downhill sprint haha)

it wouldn't surprise me if there was some truth to the core of it. Macca went through pretty big weight swings in and out of season. I was basically 158 +/- 5lbs all the time. But Macca - and this *seemed* to be generally more true of the Aussies - was like +/- 20lbs. I remember one time he came to a FIST camp in the winter and I was like, "who's that fat guy that looks kind of like Chris McCormack?" Hard to know if it's causation or correlation, but I think I probably could have done well to gain a bit more weight in the offseason. Though, admittedly, I think a fair bit in Macca's case came from him being a rather heavy drinker, which I am not. But regardless, Macca always had the ability to both put on - and take off - quite a bit of weight, and - based on results - that approach certainly seemed to work for him. He was always very good and being able to peak for the races that mattered and to be more laissez faire in other cases, which I certainly think was a factor in both the degree of his success and his pretty remarkable longevity.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

I think the last part in bold speaks volumes. I think his ITU worlds win was in 1997, first Kona win in 2007 and second in 2010. That's a pretty wide time span at the top of his selected target events. And he was unbeatable at the likes of Roth, IMOz and a massive lineup of races in between.

Often wondered if contestants on Survivor developed eating disorders. But when previous contestants return for a later season they seem to be fine.