I learned about this diet on the Internet. Said to be the diet widely used by Soviet actors when they needed to quickly lose weight before filming, it appealed to me by its simplicity. There were no special meals to cook, no complicated schedule. Except for being limited to one particular type of food on a given day, there were no restrictions: I could eat as often and as much as I wanted. "I can do that!" I thought. And so I did.

The diet consists of 4 parts, 3 days each.

Days 1-3 you only drink buttermilk. This might sound harsh, and if you hate buttermilk, I am sorry. I can drink it without any problems, so I had a glass, sometimes two, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was not difficult and I did not feel hungry. The buttermilk I bought was Dean's Low Fat, sold in half-gallon plastic bottles. One bottle was enough for a day in my case. I had lost a couple of pounds by the end of Day 3, so I was impressed.

Days 4-6 you eat apples. Any kind - red, yellow, green, and as many as you want. I had bought two bags of Red Delicious, wondering whether it would be enough; it was. On my first apple day, I was ready for a change and I thought I would eat a bunch, but all I could handle was one and a half. I really was not hungry. So that's the way it went: one or two smaller apples for each meal. The apple days were marked by the most steady weight loss.

Days 7-9 you eat boiled chicken, without salt or any other seasonings. Dark meat being my favorite, I bought a bag of chicken drumsticks. Switching to meat was a welcome change. At first I kept wishing I could add some salt, but after a couple of meals I had gotten used to the taste and did not find it too plain anymore. I ate 2-3 drumsticks per meal. By the end of Day 9 I had run out of drumsticks and cooked some white meat; THAT I could not eat. I dislike white chicken meat to begin with, and eating it boiled was more than I could handle. However, it was at the very end of my chicken days, so it did not ruin my diet.

Days 10-12 you eat cheese with red wine. I picked mild cheddar and Mogen David Concord. I bought 3 "bricks" of cheese and 3 bottles of wine, which turned out to be way too much: what I sipped with each meal amounted to only half a bottle a day.

As I have mentioned in the title of this article, I lost 13 pounds during this 12 day diet. I did not exercise and did not take any weight loss pills. During the chicken days, I had added some unsweetened green tea to my ration, just because I wanted something warm to drink. I did not starve or feel any discomfort. Throughout the diet, I kept cooking meals for the rest of my family and sitting down at the table with them; eating "my diet stuff" while they ate their meals was not difficult, I did not crave other food. (*Note: I was and still am taking Vemma, a liquid nutritional supplement that stops food cravings, so perhaps I owe the ease of the diet to Vemma.)