Photo Copyright Brigitte Greenham (c) 2008
Official photographer to the stars...
FAT PHOTO
Okay, here it is the official 'Fat Photo' the only trouble is that it doesn't look fat enough, but believe me, this photo was taken on October 2nd 2008 when I was thirty-six bags of sugar overweight. Each bag represents 2lb in weight. Therefore, I started this weight loss program a whooping seventy-two pounds oversize. The target I have set myself is to lose this excess by Christmas eve! How mad's that?

SERIOUSLY OVERWEIGHT

When I say don’t try this diet at home, I mean it. This quick weight loss method is for seriously overweight people. If you only need to lose a few pounds, I suggest that you watch your portion sizes and join a gym.

GASPERS BEWARE

This method of reducing is so powerful that you often need to force yourself to eat. If you are a gasper, things become potentially more dangerous as you are likely to substitute eating for a cigarette.

HIGH PROTEIN

The way this rapid reduction takes place is by eating high protein foods; the idea is for you to eat as much and as often as you feel the need for food. You won’t put on any more weight, in fact the more high protein you eat, the faster you will reduce.

FAT STORE

The thing is, if you’re seriously overweight, you’re already carrying around tens of pounds of unused energy. The high proteins that you eat start to go to work on this fat store immediately. After only a few days your bowel movements will change and your stomach will shrink and in the process you will lose maybe six to ten pounds of excess weight, perhaps more.

ENERGY LEVEL

Now that’s what I call quick weight loss. On top of these changes, you will notice a boost in your energy level straight away. In my job I need to lift a heavy weight several times a day and I noticed that after losing just eight pounds of flubber that the regular weight I lift seemed a lot lighter. Quite possibly, for every pound you lose, you can lift an extra pound. That’s the way it feels to me anyhow.

TWEAKS

Okay, so just to make things a whole lot more complicated I’m going to add a few twists and turns, tweaks if you like to this already very very successful program. The first thing I’m going to introduce is another rapid reduction method that is also a proven stand alone, time tested and trusted dead cert fail safe system. My name for it is Balls! And yes you can do this in the privacy of your own home, if your Doctor says 'yes'.

FOOD COMBINING

The next little tweak that I’m going to make is to introduce a third method, which is based on the Doctor Hays food combining technique. I first came across the idea in Italy, where they actually had something quite different, that they called the separation of tastes. I liked the way that they served many small courses in the restaurants and that each one was a different food. A meat course, a fish course, a pasta course, etc.

BREAK MY FAST...

Moving on, the next twist I’m adding in to the equation is a little something that I nicked off my Buddhist friends. They tell me that they only eat from sunup till noon each day and then they fast. So I’ve adapted this to suit my lifestyle and the way I use it combined with the other methods I have mentioned. I simply say that if I am going to breakfast at seven am, then I will need to stop eating by seven pm the day before. In effect from seven in the evening till seven am the following morning I am fasting and then at seven am, I break my fast with what people tell me is the most important meal of the day, breakfast. How simple’s that?

PERCENTAGE EATING

The next little turning of the tables in my favour is going to be the compilation of all this knowledge. Everybody I meet tells me that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so not only is it the breaking of a twelve hour fast but also it is the time when you need to take on the fuel to carry you through the day. I haven’t worked out a percentage figure for this one as yet but it is going to be high. Something like forty-five to fifty-five per cent of your daily calorie intake, perhaps. I noticed that when we eat at three pm instead of six pm I don’t feel hungry later on, but when we eat at six pm or later, I just want to keep on snacking till I go to bed. How mad is that? So on top of the high percent breakfast I think that a main meal lunch would suit me best, leaving only a few percent of calories for an evening meal. Just a thought.

TEA-TOTAL

I recently discovered that some sorts of tea can play tricks on the mind to make you not want to eat. Of course the Chinese have known this for centuries and every now and then you'll see an advert for some kind of herbal tea diet. I had never given them much thought before, imagining that they would probably taste foul etc. And anyway, you have to pay for that sort of information and I'm not that daft am I? I'm not really a tea drinker, I think it's the way that it's usually served in England, with milk, that puts me off. When Nicola started drinking herbal teas about a year ago, I steered clear. That is until I ran out of coffee last week. So, I tried one of her mint teas, with two sweeteners in it. Delicious! I liked the taste so much and the effect it has on me, offsetting any hunger pangs, that I decided to include it in my Mad Weight Loss Program!

And finally...
WATER WATER WATER!

Eight hundred million people do not have clean or adequate amounts of drinking water and in the west we literally pour millions of gallons of drinkable water down the drain every day. But even in Britain and America where we have clean water on tap for the most part, millions and millions of people are walking around dehydrated. If you don’t drink at least eight 10oz glasses of water a day, you’re probably one of them. What’s going on?

MORE MAD WEIGHT LOSS NONSENSE NEXT WEEK