how women kept their weight down in the sixties

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

In the late Sixties there were bizarre ways of dieting and according to Today.com, a diet of shakes based on baby formula was a popular means of dropping pounds, as was a bestselling low-carb regime called 'Calories Don't Count' that required one to do 3oz safflower oil shots before each meal.

'Reducing' - Sixties-style: Though she may no longer be quite so 'Fat Betty', Mad Men's Betty/Mrs Francis is still trying to cut back on calories in the newest episodes

Other diets required dieters to drink nothing but buttermilk or only eat a half-pound of meat a day - both were part of a series of diets by Brooklyn-based doctor Irwin Maxwell Stillman.
 Equally extreme was Dr Stillman's 'semi-starvation diet', which is much as it sounds with a daily intake of one hard-boiled egg, 8oz milk, 3.5oz salad without dressing and eight glasses of water 'for as long as you could take it.'

The 'baby formula diet', was by far the most popular. The Slim Fast of its day, Metrecal was originally developed as baby formula, though when dieters started drinking it to drop pounds, it was repackaged as a weight-loss formula in 300-calorie cans.

Eat your heart out, Don: A Sixties ad for Metrecal - a diet of shakes based on baby formula that became a hugely popular means of dropping pounds

Steak substitute: Metrecal, seen in a 1969 ad, was so popular, even the White House lunch room served it

'It caught on tremendously. It became one of the biggest diet crazes of all time,' Susan Yager, author of The Hundred Year Diet, told Today.

'What's interesting about the Sixties is dieting was a solution without a problem, because Americans weren't very heavy'

'The White House lunch room served it, and Trader Vic's offered a 325-calorie "lunch," which was 1.5 ounces of rum mixed with nutmeg, and Metrecal.'
One Sixties diet certainly would have appealed to real-life Don Drapers with a title like The Drinking Man's Diet - it was hugely popular and sold 2.4million copies when it was released in 1964.
'The deal with the Drinking Man's Diet is as long as you have no carbs, you can have all the alcohol you want,' Ms Yager said. 'Alcohol has calories, but, he said, they're not bad calories, they're good calories. And that was wildly popular. I wouldn't be surprised if Betty did start that.'

 

Extreme: The Drinking Man's Diet would have appealed to real-life Don Drapers (above). Doctor Irwin Maxwell Stillman wrote the Quick Weight Loss Diet (below), as well as the 'semi-starvation diet' and the buttermilk diet

Other diets were more familiar. Groups such as Weight Watchers and its ilk (one was called Overeaters Anonymous) became more popular. Indeed, in Mad Men we see Betty attend a Weight Watchers meeting after realizing her eating habits were spiraling out of control when she ate whipped cream from the can.

One weight-loss trend experiencing a dip in the Sixties was amphetamine-based diet pills. Ms Yaeger explains that they had been prescribed by doctors since the Thirties, but due to a number of related deaths, popularity had waned.

Guilty pleasure: In Mad Men season five we see Betty attend a Weight Watchers meeting after realizing her overeating was spiraling out of control when she squirted a can of whipped cream into her mouth

America's obesity rate was about 13per cent (compared with today's 37.5per cent), and the Sixties diet plan had a limited market.

'What's interesting about the '60s is dieting was kind of a solution without a problem, because Americans weren't very heavy,' Ms Yaeger said.
'Poor "fat Betty" . . . she didn't have a lot of company. Someone like Betty, especially this beautiful former model . . . would've been very unusual in suburban America.'

Read more:

'The Drinking Man's Diet' and more ways to lose weight in the 'Mad Men' era