"A return to mid-Victorian eating habits is not feasible, given their high calorie intake and our low-energy lifestyles. This would exacerbate our already alarming rates of overweight and obesity, problems which were uncommon and mostly confined to the urban upper middle classes in the mid-Victorian period but which have become major public health concerns today. Instead, we recommend that the modern diet be re-engineered, integrating the micro- and phytonutritional elements of the mid-Victorian 3500–4000 calorie/day diet into the modern 2200 calorie/day diet. [...] The realities of a need to promote an intake of nutrients at a level not naturally available in today's 2200 calorie/day diet does require the vexed issue of food fortification and supplements to be included in strategic public health policy formation. Inevitably, this also means that it will have to be reflected in the regulatory sphere."[1]

Possible translation: If you're going to follow a Victorian diet, you need to get lower- and middle-class Victorian amounts of exercise: enough to support a 3500-4000 calorie/day diet.

Me, I'm personally wondering if the true bottom-line here is that you could skip the whole diet thing and get the health benefits purely from a high-exercise lifestyle? (A very high-exercise lifestyle.)

[1] "An unsuitable and degraded diet? Part three: Victorian consumption patterns and their health benefits". [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2587384/].