allowance of three items a day from a Cambridge counsellor, often an ex-dieter, who offers support and advice. Dr Howard claims that strict adherence to his diet has achieved phenomenal results for many people with life-threatening obesity, but warns that for those with vastly over-efficient metabolisms (one patient could not eat more than 600 calories a day without putting on weight) the diet must become a way of life, substituting at least one meal per day, perpetually. But it appears this is a small price to pay for a new life. It is argued that the diet’s pre-prepared form greatly diminishes the significance of food in a person’s life, and, for many. provides the best nutrition they have everhad. I Lose 7lbs In 7 Days Miriam Stoppard (Headline, £3.50) This is an altogether gentler approach. based on the goal ofestablishing healthy and reduced eating habits for life. Be nice to yourself, says Stoppard, give yourself a manicure as a reward for a hard day’s dieting; and ifyou succumb to temptation and have a binge, it‘s not the end of the world, the body clock is long and forgiving. There are hints on how to cheat your appetite ‘ drink loads of water, eat slowly. chew thoroughly, divert yourself with inedible indulgences ‘ how to deal with social eating, what to avoid, exercises. As for the menus themselves, they sound so delicious that there is not much chance of becoming indifferent to eating‘ particularly as you are obliged to eat six times a day. In fact, there is hardly time for anything but food. I think I’ll try that white fish marinated in lemon jUICC with fennel seeds and red chillies. . . and I wonder where I can get a papaya... I The Green Age Diet Rose Elliot (Fontana, £3.99) Elliot is dedicated to the moral, ecological and nutritional benefits ofvegetarian, and especially vegan. eating. A vigorously argued introduction contends that our most common and dangerous ailments are directly related to consumption of animal products; we not only do not need so many nutrients, taken in excess they are killing us. Contrary to popular opinion, a vegan diet does not need to be fanatically regulated to provide enough for a healthy body -— the fact that it has less protein is precisely its advantage. For the overweight, a cleansing period of a week or so is proposed, food intake being restricted to measured quantities of fruit and rice. Subsequently, the daily seven portions can include given equivalent quantities of a wide variety of vegetables, pulses and grains. There are suggested
combinations for a two-week period.
The second half of the book is devoted to healthy, low calorie, mostly vegan recipes to keep the newly trim Green Age convert straight and narrow.
I The Complete Hlp and man Dlet
FOOD
Rosemary Conley (Arrow, £3.99) The re-issue for this ‘area specific‘ diet is full of ecstatic fan mail: ‘all the jokes about not stepping off high pavements because I’ll bang my bottom are a thing ofthe past’; ‘I had resigned myselfto being pear-shaped, now I am slim and my thighs are smooth’; ‘my husband is delighted ‘ I have stopped snoring!’ The fact that people are willing to say the diet has worked for their most obstinate padding takes precedent over any scientific or physiological explanation. It is very simple to follow because it is basically NO FAT. There is an extensive list of meals, most of which involve ‘unlimited vegetables’, from which to compose your diet initially, and a list of food fat contents to refer to when you are ready to devise your own fat-free recipes. Sadly, you have to buy the video for the exercises. I A Flat Stomach in 15 Days Judith Wills (Sphere £2.99) This one I was really interested in — I have seen myself in a lycra skirt. I was disappointed. Wills is very bossy. ‘If you‘re out of the ‘acceptable‘ range you should slim’, she declares brazenly. Being six feet tall, I am so totally unacceptable as to be off her scales— thankfully. Rosemary Conley get it in the neck too: ‘You cannot (whatever you may have read to the contrary) spot-reduce fat on a particular area of your body by going on a low-calorie diet’, ‘women have a natural tendency to accumulate fat around the hips and thighs (that’s okay for the 9(ls)’ but the stomach is not. It must be unobtrusive. Wills accepts a variety of possible contributory factors to the individual unacceptable turn, but then unfolds a regime which is a general cure-all with an inordinate emphasis on diuretics and gas-free food. The best bit of this book is the exercise
programme, clearly illustrated and
convincing.
I Flt lor Llle Harvey and Marilyn Diamond (Bantam, £4.99) This is the most revolutionary of current alternatives and therefore probably the most difficult to adhere to. Weight loss the Fit for Life way requires acceptance of an involved theory of stoking, all about maximising the body’s ability to utilise its energy reserves and eliminate toxins efficiently. That means some pretty big changes: nothing except fruit before midday; 70 per cent raw fruit and veg; no food less than three hours before bed; no combining of any food types other than vegetables (eg bread and cheese, chicken and pasta OUT); no fruit at the same time ofday as, or in combination with, any other food type. Well that just about rules out the whole of international cuisine to date, not to mention being enough to render me jobless. And all this deprivation was provoked by one thoughtless comment to the author as a teenager: ‘Look, Blimpo, why don’t you just go over there and be fat!’
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The List 11— 24 January 199167