Today, it reads like parody – something dreamt up to shock rather than follow.
A three-day plan promising rapid weight loss with a menu of eggs, steak, black coffee and white wine. No vegetables. No fruit. No bread. Just protein, caffeine – and a bottle of Chablis a day.
And yet, once upon a time, this was a perfectly serious diet promoted by the most powerful and well-read women’s magazines in the world.
Published in 1977 by no less an institution than Vogue, it also appeared in the 1962 bestselling book Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Gurley Brown, for 32 years the formidable editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan.
The message was clear: discipline, deprivation and a touch of glamour could deliver fast results – an astonishing 5lb in just 72 hours, or that was the claim.
Now people are re-discovering it. Scroll through TikTok or Instagram and you’ll find the #VogueDiet is back in, well, vogue.
It’s not hard to see why. Who doesn’t like the sound of eating steak and drinking wine and still losing weight? I certainly do. But can it possibly work? It’s the opposite, surely, of everything we’re told.
I lost 8lb earlier this year by cutting out midweek drinking for two months (and snacking: I have a sweet tooth and can easily get through two chocolate bars a day). But at least half of that has gone back on since I’ve returned to normal habits.
Sybilla Hart was curious not just about how much weight she could lose, but also about the effects such a diet would have on her body
Helen Gurley Brown devised the ‘Vogue Diet’ in 1962 before it was published in Vogue in 1977
At 45, and after five children – now aged between six and 19 – I have the sort of relationship with my body that many women will recognise: not miserable, not obsessive, but occasionally frustrated.
Clothes fit differently. Weight gathers in places it once didn’t. Energy can feel harder won. I am almost 10.5st and at 5ft 4in would much rather be lighter.
My husband Charlie, 44, insists I look absolutely fine, but husbands are not reliable judges in these matters. So when I too stumbled across the re-booted Vogue diet, I was tempted enough to try it.
But my experiment wasn’t only about weight loss. I also wanted to know what such an extreme eating plan, no matter how short-lived, would do to the body.
So before I started, I had a series of blood tests at the Wellbeing Clinic in Colchester, Essex, and then repeated them the day after I finished. The final results came as a shock… almost as much of a shock as actually doing the diet itself.
Day 1
Weight: 10st 8lb (67.1 kg)
My first day on this insane-sounding diet, and I am fully prepared. The fridge is stocked with eggs and steak, a bottle of Chablis is chilling, and there is no backing out.
In all, I have spent £65 on provisions for the three days, and most of that is on wine.
I feel confident – bullish, almost.
I should point out that I’m no heavy drinker. In a normal week I might have a glass or two of wine with dinner once or twice, plus a little more if we’re out at the weekend.
While a three-day diet won’t do much harm, the Vogue Diet lacks key vitamins as well as fibre
But part of me imagines this could be a decadent kind of fun. Breakfast, for example, has to be: one boiled egg, black coffee… and a glass of dry white wine. All before 9am.
It feels faintly ridiculous, but not unpleasant. There is an undeniable blurring around the edges, which isn’t going to help with work, but I also feel rather pleased with myself, like I’m getting away with something.
My husband is less convinced. He warns me that I will feel emotional, that diets like this tend to unravel people.
He also points out, reasonably, that drinking a bottle of wine a day means I can’t ferry children around like I normally do. Well, for three days, that’s his job – and when he can’t do it, I sort lifts from friends.
As for the unravelling worries, I consider myself fairly resilient. Missing a few carbs for a couple of days doesn’t feel like much of a test.
Lunch – two eggs, more coffee, more wine – is repetitive but manageable.
By mid-afternoon I’m sipping Chablis while the children eat pasta, and I feel oddly smug. And lightly fuzzy.
Before I started, I’d asked the expert view of Professor Gunter Kuhnle, professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Reading. Was this going to do me any harm?
‘It’s a three-day diet, so it is unlikely to cause long-lasting damage,’ he said. ‘But there are some causes for concern. It’s very restrictive and the large amount of alcohol is very likely to exceed any recommendations for alcohol intake. The diet is also very likely deficient in some vitamins and in particular in fibre.’
Low fibre can, of course, bind you up a bit.
As for the promised rapid slimming effect, he was blunt. ‘Consuming this little will likely leave you in a calorie deficit, which will lead to some weight loss. In some ways, it is similar to a low-carb diet – except for the wine – which will deplete glycogen stores.’
Indeed, when it comes to sugar, the wine is your only source on this diet. Overall, we calculate that I’m consuming 1,100 to 1,200 calories a day.
‘The large amount of coffee is likely also dehydrating and will act as a diuretic. Losing water is an easy way to lose weight, though not a sustainable or healthy one.’
So none of this is recommended by doctors – at all – but it’s not going to make me ill. I hope.
Dinner is grilled steak with pepper and lemon juice (and literally nothing else), plus the remainder of the bottle of wine. By bedtime I have followed the instructions to the letter.
I feel relaxed, full enough, and entirely fine as I drift off to sleep. This is going to be easy!
I am not drunk, by the way. The booze is spread out over so many hours, I have simply been topping up my tipsiness all day.
Day 2
Weight: 10st 5lb (65.7kg)
By the second morning, however, the cracks are beginning to show.
I sleep perfectly well and don’t wake up hungover exactly. But I do feel slightly off and rather sluggish.
As I make the kids blueberry jam on toast – a little later than normal – I feel a surge of envy that is completely out of proportion. Not for anything extravagant – just a bite.
Normally, I would now have two cups of milky, sugary tea without thinking. Instead, it is another black coffee with my solitary egg.
Then comes the part that now feels faintly grim: a glass of wine.
Usually, a chilled glass of Chablis during daylight hours suggests lunch on a lovely sun-drenched holiday. Barely out of my dressing gown, it feels – for want of a better word – seedy.
But if I want to follow the diet exactly, there’s no getting away from it: wine has to be had with every meal.
Steak is the main source of protein during the diet, along with eggs. While red meat can be fatty, some cuts can be as low as 5 per cent fat
I feel flat and unsatisfied. My body already seems to be asking where everything else has gone – fibre, fruit, anything remotely fresh.
More absurd, because of a fashion diet from the 1970s I am effectively housebound. I can’t drive and I don’t want to go for a walk looking like I’ve had a glass of wine for breakfast.
I get through the day, but by the evening – around 32 hours into the Vogue Diet, after my steak and wine – something shifts.
It starts in the back of my mind, then becomes impossible to ignore. I am utterly desperate for a sweet treat – just a square of chocolate or a single biscuit.
Like a parent refusing one more Haribo, I have to keep saying no to myself.
Knowing I still have another day to go, I run a bath and drop in one of the children’s bath bombs. If I can’t eat anything sugary, at least I can smell sweetness.
But when I get out, my legs begin to tingle and I feel nauseous. I have to lie down almost immediately. I go to bed feeling low, flat and unexpectedly emotional.
Day 3
Weight: 10st 4lb (65.3kg)
I wake up feeling sick, constipated and distinctly unwell. My heart sinks when I remember – again – that I can’t have my usual sugary, milky tea.
Instead, it is black coffee, a boiled egg and that glass of Chablis, which now tastes awful. I force it down but feel shaky and depleted.
The prospect of even one more day on this regime feels like a huge effort of will.
The only small upside is cosmetic: my hands look noticeably less puffy, a trait that I have never been able to explain but has always slightly bothered me.
Later, Sue Porter, the managing director of the Wellbeing Clinic, tells me ‘The two main reasons for less puffy hands would be glycogen loss [from less sugar in the diet] and lower sodium [from less salt].’
Despite forcing myself to drink water, I still feel dehydrated.
It’s a Saturday, but it drags. I spend most of it sitting down, trying to conserve energy – not easy with five children at home. I have very little patience and can’t be bothered to play Top Trumps or even wander round the garden.
Making their lunch feels like a huge test. Routines have gone a bit haywire but the children – lucky things – are still eating their usual ham salad sandwiches.
I feel a surge of longing before dutifully pouring another glass of wine I don’t want. By now, the Chablis has lost all appeal. I never want to see another bottle again.
My legs are still tingling and I feel horribly constipated.
In the end, I pay the older children to put the younger ones to bed around 9pm and I go upstairs early too, clutching a hot water bottle.
People on TikTok advise you to do this diet over a weekend, and I can see why. By the end, you’re so spaced out and unfocused, working is impossible. I also feel inexplicably sad.
Day 4 – The aftermath
Weight: 10st 3lb (64.8kg)
I have never been so happy to drink a cup of tea in my life.
I overdo it almost immediately – a bowl of granola, buttery blueberry toast – and can almost feel the sugar fizzing in my system. I feel a bit jittery, if I’m honest.
Then comes the moment of truth.
I step on the scales and see that I’ve dropped just over 5 lb.
It is hard not to feel pleased. And that, of course, is the hook.
For all the misery of the past three days, the undeniable result is there.
‘This diet is effective because it’s high in protein and lower in carbohydrate than a ‘normal diet’,’ says Sue Porter. ‘Caffeine is a stimulant so it boosts metabolism too.’
But what about my health? The day before embarking on the diet and the day after sinking my final sip of Chablis, I had a blood test to see how eating only fat, protein and alcohol had affected my body.
To my surprise, the results revealed that, despite all the wine, my blood glucose levels were reduced. And, even more astonishing, my overall cholesterol had dropped from 5.15 – slightly above the high threshold – to 4.22, putting me in the healthy range.
It was a ‘significant reduction’ according to Sue. ‘Your cholesterol dropped because you were eating fewer processed fats – no sandwiches, cakes, biscuits or crisps,’ she said.
‘There’s a belief that red meat – like steak – is fatty, but lean cuts can be as low as 5 per cent fat or less.
‘And it’s a myth that eggs are full of “bad cholesterol” that can cause heart attacks.
‘Eggs don’t have a huge influence on cholesterol levels in the same way that food cooked in oils and fats do.’
The blood tests also revealed that my ferritin levels – the measurement of how much iron is stored in the body – increased by 52 per cent over the course of the experiment, bumping me up from ‘nearly anaemic’ to healthy.
Sue told me that this was because of the high iron content of the steak and egg yolks.
‘Whenever you eat anything that’s really high in iron, your ferritin will increase that quickly,’ she said.
‘One in four women have iron deficiency anaemia, and that’s because of periods, childbirth and not eating enough red meat.’
As for my HbA1c level, a glucose measurement doctors use to assess if someone is pre-diabetic or has developed type 2 diabetes, that too showed positive change.
At the start, my score was 32.35 – below the pre-diabetes marker of 42 and happily within the normal range – but afterwards it was even better, at 30.27.
That might seem a minor shift, but Sue explained that for people hovering closer to pre-diabetes – or even to the full type 2 diabetes threshold of 48 – the drop could signal an important improvement.
In that sense, Sue says a diet such as this can represent a window of opportunity – a chance to reset habits before longer-term damage sets in.
But three days is just that: three days.
As a way of eating long-term, it is another matter entirely.
Sue says: ‘In the long term this is a very unbalanced diet, with no fibre, which is crucial for gut health, and high alcohol intake, which can cause damage to the liver and even cirrhosis. It will also increase cancer risk, especially for women.
‘High protein intake can also put pressure on the kidneys and in the long term lead to gout or kidney damage.
‘It also lacks sufficient vitamin C, which is vital for immunity – in the long term vitamin C deficiency can also lead to scurvy!’
What I take from it is simpler. I could certainly do with less processed sugar in my diet – in fact, I am probably a sugar addict – but a daily plate of red meat and eggs, plus a bottle of Chablis, isn’t really the solution.
And there are other lessons. My first chocolate bar afterwards – a Picnic, since you asked – instantly sorted out my cravings but also felt synthetic and unhealthy. An orange would obviously have been better.
I also know that if I want to lose a few pounds before my next holiday (and I do) I’ll swap my breakfast granola for boiled eggs and stick to dark chocolate in the evenings, as boring as I find it.
A coffee instead of at least one of my sugary, milky teas would also cut calories.
But also, it has to be said, I am shocked to discover that three days of wine and meat has left me not just slightly slimmer but also healthier than before. That seems totally counterintuitive and, despite how awful I felt on the diet, rather cheering.
Today’s wellness gurus, with their green juices, plant-based eating and ‘fibremaxxing’, would surely be horrified by the Vogue diet, but perhaps those bohemian 1970s fashionistas were on to something after all.
Please consult your GP before embarking on a weight-loss regime or making drastic changes to your diet.
