Guest View: The Low-Cal Diet of DOS May Have Caused Some Women to Have Numerous, Lasting Problems

The right weight?

Keith Raniere often suggested to women in his orbit that they maintain a slender figure. He reportedly said that fat disturbs transference of spiritual energy from him to a too plump woman. Allison Mack was reportedly on an 800 calorie per day diet.

Ivy Nevares went on a calorie restricted diet of less than 500 calories per day. Catherine Oxenberg told me that India was on such a low calorie diet she stopped menstruating and her hair was falling out. Another witness at the time said her bones were sticking out from her skin.  Sylvie testified that she had to report to Raniere daily her weight, which was some 20 pounds less than what she thought was healthy.

It is not clear why Raniere insisted on super-slender women but he definitely insisted that they be slender.

It was curious because Raniere himself was not always slender.

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Keith Raniere strolling in the Clifton Park area. Photo courtesy of The Albany Times Union. Raniere was known to like chocolate, pizza with hot sauce, and waffles. He also has a fondness for flour-less chocolate cakes, macaroni-and-cheese, and omelets.

642x361-Slide_5-500-calorie-diet

The 500 calorie diet might consist of a small quantity of plain low-fat yogurt and a small quantity of fruit in the morning.  Lunch and dinner consist of foods such as plain squash, kale, cucumber, zucchini, fermented cabbage and radish [Kimchi], and shirataki noodles [10 calories per 4-ounce serving.] Beverages consist of lemon water with stevia, probiotics and Zevias, a calorie-free sparkling water.

Sugar-free gum can be taken after every meal for dessert.

They naturally don’t contain any calories because the glucomannan starch they’re made of is an indigestible dietary fiber and also contains no carbohydrates.

The 500 calorie diet prescribed for women is less than half the calories prisoners at Auschwitz Concentration Camp received daily.

aushwitz diet
Auschwitz concentration camp

An anonymous commenter wrote the following under the heading:

The Skinny on DOS Diet!

By Not a Fan of Food-Deprivation

Frank Parlato has previously reported that not all of the DOS women were forced to adopt the extremely restricted diet contingent on being already naturally very thin. If I remember correctly.

That one factor alone would greatly influence both the mental state and individual experience of a woman in DOS.

Not many people in America or Canada have truly starved. Long term. Especially by choice. It really, really affects you.

Not just physically. Mentally. When you are that hungry, it is all you can think about. You fantasize about eating out of the garbage. You cannot sleep. Your emotions are on the surface. You will cry. Rage. There is no numbing those feelings with food. All of your willpower is exhausted just battling this deep primal self-preservation instinct driving you to eat. And live.

Children who skip breakfast do poorly in school. Adults who skip almost all meals can barely think at all.

Physically, You are very cold. You will grow fur on your body. Your heart will skip beats (arrhythmia) your ears will roar. You black out. There are hunger headaches. You can have periods of euphoria. You may lose your appetite at times. Because as the French expression goes, ” food brings appetite”.

Allison Mack may be smiling but she is awfully thin.

You know how your stomach reacts when it’s empty? Imagine that all the time. Now add crazy bad Acid Reflux. Horrible “hunger breath”. Bowels a mess. Tooth decay from lack of saliva production. Tooth enamel destroyed from vomiting regularly.

No more period. Hormones messed up. Possibly permanently. The list of medical and mental consequences are from the roots of your hair falling out down to your feet that stripped of all fat lose their padding. Walking on bones is painful. So is sitting on a fat-free butt.

When the body starves, it eats itself. It will try to eat the ” less important parts” but it will eat muscle. Your heart is a muscle. It will affect your brain. Severely.

So many of these DOS women developed eating disorders. Purging is a very intense experience. It can create almost a drug-like response afterward.

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Allison Mack after joining DOS appears to have a pencil thin neck.

Once starved, the body will rapidly store not burn calories when you return to “normal” eating habits. Now you have to battle a weight gain problem that you did not have prior to starvation. This can push a person back to binging and purging and/or anorexia. It will be a life-long problem. Like drug addiction. Or alcoholism.

But worse.

You can go without booze. Or drugs. Just abstain completely.

But you have to eat to live. It can be a constant bite by bite battle. For life.

Skinny Allison Mack succeeded in following the diet, but Lauren Salzman [r], had ups and downs in maintaining the diet.

During her pre-DOS days, Allison Mack appeared voluptuous.
Keith Raniere enjoying having his cake. Fortuitously his own fat did not disturb his spiritual energies.
Keith Raniere watched over the diets of as many as two dozen women and slaves at any given time.

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  • Reminds me of the fact that among the articles noted on my sister’s person at the time of her death by gunshot to the head was a pack of sugar-free chewing gum.

    Gina (Hutchinson) was also anorexically thin and had been following the DOS diet. She was used as guinea pig experiment by KAR and his cohorts [redacted] Critical evidence recorded for the “Lost Women” Series also shows Gina may have recently aborted Keith’s baby and that she was undergoing NXIVM mind-conditioning, had officially taken a EM and Intensive within 6 weeks prior to her death.

    Yep, I’d say the DOS diet is dangerous.

    • I’m so sorry, Heidi. What was done to your sister… It is hard to put into words how horrible it is… Again, I’m sorry.

  • I’m sick of all the body shaming hate on the internet. The models at the top of this post look absolutely gorgeous! Compare that to Allison eats too many Big Macs before she learned so much from Keith.

    • “Peaceful Warrior
      February 16, 2021 at 6:49 am
      I’m sick of all the body shaming hate on the internet. The models at the top of this post look absolutely gorgeous! Compare that to Allison eats too many Big Macs before she learned so much from Keith.”

      Is that why you married her?
      Because she was gorgeously thin?

  • Celebrity women, especially actresses, face pressure to stay thin for the 10lb-adding camera. Mack’s old pal Kristin Kreuk got thin, too thin, even before she joined Nxivm.

  • This apparently is another thing Mack was “misled” about. She was “misled” into believing it was empowering and feminist to be told by a man that she was too fat and that she had to go on a starvation diet so she’d be skinny and pleasing to him.

    She lied to the judge about being misled. She was, in fact, a whole-hearted believer in Raniere and the Nxivm program. She likely still is.

    She devoted her life to her man, Raniere. She willingly starved herself for him and she forced her slave women to do likewise. Her feminism was a lie, a pretense. She and Raniere are very much alike and the DOS horror show was very much their joint project. She deserves a lengthy prison term for her crimes.

  • A sign you might be in a cult – when you are told to do things that you know for a fact are harmful to you and do it anyway.
    We see it today with the Trump cult. For whatever reason the brain just says “but he mah hero! He wouldn’t tell me to do something bad for me!” and uh yeah all cult leaders do. Its part of the joy they get out of having that power and the perfect sign of absolute power is getting people to do things they factually know will harm them.

About the Author

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist.

His work has been cited in hundreds of news outlets, like The New York Times, The Daily Mail, VICE News, CBS News, Fox News, New York Post, New York Daily News, Oxygen, Rolling Stone, People Magazine, The Sun, The Times of London, CBS Inside Edition, among many others in all five continents.

His work to expose and take down NXIVM is featured in books like “Captive” by Catherine Oxenberg, “Scarred” by Sarah Edmonson, “The Program” by Toni Natalie, and “NXIVM. La Secta Que Sedujo al Poder en México” by Juan Alberto Vasquez.

Parlato has been prominently featured on HBO’s docuseries “The Vow” and was the lead investigator and coordinating producer for Investigation Discovery’s “The Lost Women of NXIVM.” Parlato was also credited in the Starz docuseries "Seduced" for saving 'slave' women from being branded and escaping the sex-slave cult known as DOS.

Additionally, Parlato’s coverage of the group OneTaste, starting in 2018, helped spark an FBI investigation, which led to indictments of two of its leaders in 2023.

Parlato appeared on the Nancy Grace Show, Beyond the Headlines with Gretchen Carlson, Dr. Oz, American Greed, Dateline NBC, and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, where Parlato conducted the first-ever interview with Keith Raniere after his arrest. This was ironic, as many credit Parlato as one of the primary architects of his arrest and the cratering of the cult he founded.

Parlato is a consulting producer and appears in TNT's The Heiress and the Sex Cult, which premiered on May 22, 2022. Most recently, he consulted and appeared on Tubi's "Branded and Brainwashed: Inside NXIVM," which aired January, 2023.

IMDb — Frank Parlato

Contact Frank with tips or for help.
Phone / Text: (305) 783-7083
Email: frankparlato@gmail.com

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