I found this 1939 advertisement on eBay:

The Bread Diet — “a safer way to gain alluring slenderness.”  It “cuts down excess weight without starvation, fatigue or nervous strain.”  Imagine enjoying TWO slices of bread with every meal AND losing weight!  Not only that, but look at what you can do with the energy you’ll get from 2 slices of bread:

That’s right — you can wash windows for an hour!  So maybe you can’t shatter the glass ceiling — at least you can clean it!  Know what else you can do on 2 slices of bread?

That’s right — you can iron for an hour! No wonder women started working outside the home — who wants to stay home and eat bread and iron and clean windows?  By the way — how long do you think I could wash windows or iron on a pint of Blue Bell Cookies & Cream?

One more benefit of the Bread Diet is that it apparently helps you grow freakishly long legs:

So how’s that New Year’s diet going?  Have you already abandoned it for the Bread Diet? I’m pleased to say that I have managed to stick with my New Year’s diet.  One of my favorite “diet” foods is shrimp — Gulf coast wild caught shrimp, to be exact.  3 ounces of shrimp has only 76 calories, 15 grams of protein, 1 gram of fat, and 1 gram of carbohydrates.  I don’t know if that provides enough energy to wash windows for an hour, but then again, I don’t really care.

Inspired by the vintage ad and New Year’s diet resolutions, here’s a simple recipe for Shrimp and Avocado Salsa that we really enjoyed.  Pick a ripe, but firm avocado and handle it gently so as not to turn the salsa into guacamole.  This would make a good Super Bowl appetizer.  (I suppose if you’re really trying to watch it, you could scoop it onto a lettuce leaf instead of a tortilla chip, but then it would be Shrimp and Avocado Sadness.)