How's that New Year's resolution working out for you?
We're now at the point in the year when the weakest-willed of us are giving up on our resolutions, if we even bothered to make any at all.
Which brings us to Fred Durst, who is blogging his epic struggle to live solely off of juice until March to lose weight.
The Limp Bizkit frontman began his 60-day juice diet on January 2nd, when he set up a soul-baring Tumblr and pointed his million-plus Twitter followers to an account called FredChallenge.
It was clear early on that Mr. Durst would be suffering: "Here goes day 1," he Tweeted on Jan. 2. "Just read I'm supposed to prepare a few days before with light foods. Crap. Definitely had Stout burger last night."
A few hours later came the first hurdle, a massive headache that typically accompanies detox. "Geez. This blows," wrote Mr. Durst.
Day 3 saw signs of minimal weight loss, but also the first breakdown: some M&M's. Day 4 had Mr. Durst wolfing down an oatmeal cookie in desperation.
And then the blog updates started getting slim, nothing for six days except "Hard getting adjusted to this juicing thing."
On Day 11, the screaming rapper emerged, despondent about how little a fridge full of kale had done for his body.
Two pounds lighter, he acknowledged he was "feeling better internally."
"My thoughts are clear and inspired, but I'm discouraged in some ways. I guess it's my own personal baggage that's lugging around behind me. All comes to the forefront on a diet like this. Bullocks."
While embarking on 60 days of any discipline is admirable, the fallacy of aggressively using cleanses -- originally intended for clarity and detoxification -- for the explicit purpose of losing weight is a painfully Western habit.
Over at Gawker, Adrian Chen mocked Mr. Durst's very public journey. "Given that he's essentially become too weak to update his blog after just ten days this will either end in him calling it off in the next few days, or death. This is a cautionary tale for all dieters who for some reason think it's a good idea to a) start a 60-day juice fast and b) blog about it. Your blog will inevitably falter, taper off and disappear—just like you as you weaken from caloric deficit, leaving nothing but a shriveled monument to the human body's need for non-juice sustenance."
Beyoncé Knowles was tongue-in-cheek about her fast, a 14-day Master cleanse that saw her shed 20 pounds ahead of a role in the 2006 film Dreamgirls. The Master cleanse, a blend of maple syrup, lemon juice, water and cayenne pepper, was punishing.
"It was tough. Everyone was eating and I was dying," Ms. Knowles said then.
After the film wrapped, the star binged, gaining all the weight back: "I ate waffles, fried chicken, cheeseburgers, french fries, everything I could find. That was the best time of my life."
Have you ever failed a diet you'd told many in your circle about, or witnessed someone else give up on a very publicly announced resolution?
Zosia Bielski