I was reminicing with a friend (yes we are THAT old!).

I liked the Limmits custard creams and the cheesey biscuits. Looking back what a daft way to try to lose weight! Also those Ayds toffees that were supposed to fill you up. I also remember some rolls mum got from the bakery for me - when you ate them they were like polystyrene and disappeared in your mouth. One of the ingredients was ash.....

I was quite surprised that my personal nemesis The Cambridge Diet is still with us.

I did Limmits when I was a teenager. I was just thinking about that the other day. It was the only daft diet that I ever did. I think what appealed to me was they Limmits came in chocolate flavour!

OMG - YES! Can you imagine calling any kind of product 'Ayds' nowadays? I used to like Limmits as well. Those great big bikkies - I used to have 3 for a meal with a glass of water. Highly nutritious... not! About as healthy as eating half a dozen normal bikkies and taking a multi vit tablet. My personal hate was those grey fibre pessarie shaped tablets we were supposed to eat half an hour before a meal - they used to make me so windy!

I also remember buying some nice little pink tablets from the health food shop - they were supposed to kill the appetite. Well, they certainly worked - they also had me still wide awake and cleaning the house at 3 in the morning. Heavens only know what they were, probably amphetamines!

These products come and go - I'm surprised that Slimfast is still with us, that stuff is disgusting.

Sorry to keep invading your little corner over here...it's just you guys always have such interesting topics...

My mom used to have Ayds in the cupboard and it was always the closest thing to candy in the house, so I'd, of course, sneak one from time to time. She'd get so mad...'That's MINE...paws off!!' You know, don't worry that your 10-year-old is getting into something that may or may not be healthy for her... More worried that I was depleting her 'stash'.

SarahAnn: I was remembering that a while ago, too, with my mom...that she used to take Ayds for weight loss and now it's like the name of this generation's typhoid! Almost ironic. Kind of like, once upon a time, it you said you were gay, it meant you were happy!

Never heard of Limmits. Must be a UK thing.

Yeah Limmits were a UK thing I believe. There were soups I think but I especially remember the crinkle cut lemon puff biscuits and the cheese ones. I think you were to have 2 biscuits for a meal - yeah, great! The things I put myself through. I mean eating things I liked but only allowed 2 or 3 at a time - not a whole packet. Well, I could not cheat on them because my mum was watching then!

Hmm Wonder what those pink tablets were, Sarah Ann - I definately need more energy!

Anyone remember Boots did a chocolate bar "diet"?

I used to LOVE that! I was a kiddie winkie when I did that - chocolate 3 times a day? YES PLEASE... Hmmm wonder why they don't do that any more!

A friend of mine did a chocie bar diet that worked well for her. She used to eat an average size chocie bar (Mars, Milky Way, Aero that kind of thing) plus a multi vit for breakfast, lunch and supper and then had a 300 cal 'dinner' which usually consisted of veg and cottage cheese. She lost a huge amount of weight and quite a few teeth.

I was ill a few years back with some mystery virus - never found out what it was (maybe summat to do with the fact I never bothered going to the doctor's...) but all I could face eating for about a month was chocolate and scrambled egg on toast. By the end of it I was a size 10!

Also with my 2nd baby I got the wonderful hyperemesis gravidarum - basically, you puke day and night for months on end, every time you try to move or get out of bed! Even though pregnant, I lost a couple of stone (which was almost all I needed to lose anyway) and all I could eat for over 20 weeks was... chocolate. Had to stay in bed most of the time too. It was great. Baby was born unaffected and 2lb heavier than any other baby I had before or since, so it did him no harm.

Sadly I don't remember any diet foods from the 70s as I was sickeningly skinny til 1989 and motherhood struck...

I was skinny, too, I just didn't think that I was. (Distorted body image) I remember weighing 9st (at 5ft 6ins) and being desperate to lose 7lbs. I managed to lose a stone in a couple of weeks by eating between 500 and 1000 cals a day and doing good ol' Jane Fonda workouts.

Sadly I didn't get the preggy pukes - all I got was a craving for jam doughnuts sliced in two sideways then topped with a mound of Mattesons pink Prawn Coleslaw. It lasted the full 9 months and I gained 4st in actual body weight. I was still eating it when I went in to labour but haven't touched it since.

Gross!

Energen Rolls! Weren't those the polystyrene rolls? My dad used to take them for lunch - I remember trying one once when I was a kid and they were disgusting! Alas I remember Ayds and Limmits too...tried the Cambridge diet in my early 20's and I remember being at work and making the choc one with hot water and shaking it in the container like I was supposed to....it exploded and hit the ceiling of the tea room! and me...and everywhere else...

Sarah

The thought of those lemon biscuit things is making me gag ..yak yak they were vile, so were those mm thick crispbreads and Nimble (saved on the butter as it fell through the holes).

I did have an immense liking for that Green 1Cal fizzy pop stuff, drank it by the bucket full

I'm proud to say I've never done a daft diet, and never intend to... although the chocolate diet might tempt me I don't think I've even heard of these, maybe they were before my time or maybe I was just so uninterested in losing weight I never looked at what was available.

I was an Ayds girl. But it looked just like fudge. I think that was the only reason I bought it.