I’ve been thinking a lot recently about all the things I’ve tried over the last 18 years, in vain attempts to lose weight.
This morning I turned to my bookshelves and took a long hard look at them. Every new diet or eating plan had glossy books, which I devoured, and apps to tell me exactly what to do. It wasn’t until I wrote a list of the books, and the diets that I could remember, that I realised how many times I’d failed.
Before I launch into the list, I should say that quite a lot of these are very good. I am NOT listing them to knock any of them (apart from Atkins which is crazy). This is a reflection of the extent of my diet/health book collection. And it doesn’t include the multitude of long since forgotten diet books that I have donated to charity shops over the years.
| Atkins | Mental. It was the 1990s – what can I say?! |
| Body for Life | I liked this. It was sensible but I got stuck in the rut of doing the same exercises and got bored Also, protein shakes make me feel queasy. |
| Bright Lines | This seemed sensible. The guided program was expensive but I found a group doing something similar. The rules were no sugar, no flour, carbs only in the morning, three meals a day, 9oz veg and 4oz protein at lunch and dinner. I did this for several months and lost a stone. It was sensible and good but I still needed to sort my exercise. I put all the weight back on. |
| Cooking the Wholefood Way | Nice recipe book, lots of pulses and grains, low protein. |
| Couch to 5k | Buggered up my back in week 3 and gave myself 18 months of sciatica. |
| Deliciously Ella | Very beautiful, sensible stuff in there but date based energy balls etc aren’t my bag. |
| Dukan | I lost 10lbs in 14 days and then gave up because I couldn’t do it. Although it had a nice salad dressing recipe which I have made ever since. |
| Eat Clean | I have a book but no recollection of it whatsoever! |
| Eat right for your type | I don’t even know why I bought this book. I gave it to a charity shop without even really reading it. |
| Eat to Live | Really sensible food and some nice recipes. |
| Eat. Nourish. Glow. | Beautiful book and nice recipes. |
| Food Combining for Vegetarians | No idea! |
| Honestly Healthy for Life | Another beautiful book. |
| I Quit Sugar | Lots and lots of sensible stuff in here, It put me on a path to lower sugar which I maintain. |
| Insanity | Yes it was. What was I thinking?! I simply wasn’t fit enough to do this. |
| Joe Cross and Jason Vale | Juicing. I did it for 3 weeks and felt amazing. I love Joe Cross’ film Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. I have urticaria too and have been hospitalised with it. I love smoothies and still make them when I don’t feel like eating. Likewise with Jason Vale – great film and books and app. However, not a long term solution for me. |
| Lean for life (Louise Parker) | Beautiful books, nice recipes amazing app. I just couldn’t stick with it. |
| Macrobiotics | I really liked macrobiotics. I didn’t buy into the whole upward and downward energy of veg. I lost a lot of weight and felt really well. It was really difficult to live like that due to the amount of planning and prep. There are lots of aspects that I incorporate into ‘normal’ eating now. |
| Matt Roberts younger fitter stronger | When it comes to fitness there is no doubt that Matt Roberts knows what he is doing. The programme was too advanced for me from the start. I felt lost, befuddled and scared of getting injured. |
| Paleo | Why? I’ve no doubt that it works but who wants to be that constipated. |
| Rosemary Conley Amazing Inch Loss Plan | Was ok – just boring. |
| Rosemary Conley Slim to Win | As above. |
| Slimming World | Kill me now. I hated it. You could have a processed low calorie bar as a syn but had to avoid fats like the plague. Personally I’d rather have healthy fats than sugar and processed rubbish. Also, I didn’t like getting weighed in a dismal village hall and listen to others think that they’d had a good week because they didn’t have a RollaCola for breakfast “like they used to”. Several of my friends have done Slimming World very successfully. There is no doubt that it works for some people but it wasn’t for me. |
| Sweat | January 2020. Lovely, lovely app. Great exercises. Depressingly aimed at 16-25 year olds. There were a few older women who’d had amazing transformations. I did the post-pregnancy exercises religiously for 4 weeks and gave myself a deep patella bursitis (housemaid’s knee – yes really). I still can’t kneel down. If I was half my age I’d love this. I would certainly encourage my daughters to do the exercises. |
| The 8 week blood sugar diet | Lasted a day but nice recipes. |
| The Doctors Kitchen | Love this book, the podcast and the recipes. At last a GP who thinks that what you eat affects your health. Amazing. Hippocrates understood the link between nutrition and pharmacology more than 2000 years ago yet modern doctors barely get any training on nutrition. If it was up to me Dr Rupi Aujla would be knighted. |
| The Four Pillar Plan | As above – love the idea. Simple and sensible. |
| The Medicinal Chef | Lovely recipes. |
| The Plant Paradox | Leptins. Who knew? You really lose weight on this for a couple of weeks but it is unsustainable. By the middle of week three I felt very, very faint and stopped. |
| Vegan | I have been vegan (well actually plant based rather than junk food vegan) at various times in my life. I lost weight but always worried that I was losing muscle not fat. |
| The Vertue Method | I bought this on the back of an article in the Sunday papers and I don’t think I’ve ever opened it. |
| You are what you eat | I love Gillian McKeith’s cookbook. She knows about healthy eating and her recipes are great. However, I found it hard to do 20 minutes exercise before every meal and eventually gave up. |
| 21 Day Fix | I seem to recall that this is part of Beach Body. I think that I have the portion cups in the drawer. It was relatively sensible in terms of food and exercise, but I was never going to be fixed in 21 days. The exercise dvds were too hard for me and like everything else I gave up after a while. |
| 21 Day Vegan | I love this app. It’s from the Physician’s Committee for Responsible and it’s free. It’s got great vegan recipes and is very sensible. Lovely Girl #1 is vegan and I get recipe ideas from this app. The problem for me was that going vegan was never going to get me fit. |
Looking at this list, I’m really shocked and suddenly aware of a nagging feeling that I’ve been getting it wrong – for years. What’s more, it occurred to me that I’ve done more diets than I’ve had lovers!
Quite why I’ve never stuck to anything I don’t know – I’m disciplined and organised – I just couldn’t seem to get the right balance of food intake and exercise. I set myself extreme rules that were never going to last in the long term. I did exercise that I wasn’t fit enough to do and hurt myself.
So it was against this background that, on my friend’s recommendation, I contacted Luke, a fitness coach. I was a little apprehensive. I’d had gym based ‘personal trainers’ before – the ones capable of little more than printing out a generic list of exercises; the ones who couldn’t give a rat’s arse that I’d had about 11 rounds of surgery for chronic endometriosis, was hypermobile and had suffered a serious head injury that affected my neck, and the ones who only cared about selling me their supplements.
But then I met Luke.