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Closer magazine has this week featured a review of ‘100 Ways to Fight the Flab’ under the heading of ‘The world’s wackiest weight loss tips – that work!’ The article reads as follows:
You’ve starved yourself on the 5:2, survived on cabbage soup and detoxed on maple syrup, but a new (slightly bonkers) book may have the answer to the weight loss conundrum
There’s a whole host of different ways to shift pounds these days, and we’ve tried them all. But a new no-nonsense book, 100 Ways to Fight The Flab (Accent Press, £7.99), is packed with everything from commonsense strategies to downright bonkers-sounding tips to help you stay slim for good. Here are our favourites from author Jane Wenham-Jones, rated and slated by nutritionist Amanda Ursell (twitter @AmandaUrsell)…
Fill one fridge shelf with exactly 1,000 calories of food each day – no more, no less. Then eat it. Temptation is removed because it’s all planned and calculated. Make sure it’s beautifully balanced, is filled with foods you wantto eat and includes three meals and two snacks so you’re not left with two boiled eggs, a Mars bar and some spinach by dinner time.
This is great…if you’re near the fridge all day! Successful dieting is about planning, so portioning out what you’ll eat is perfect. Depending how big you are and how much you need to lose 1000 calories may be too low, though, so be sensible.
Lots of people who, by rights, should be far fatter manage to stay slim with toned legs and bums thanks to regular brisk walks with their pooches. If you find dogs too time-consuming, needy and fond of licking their testicles, borrow your friends’!
Walking is fantastic – it’s free, everyone’s can do it, and you won’t risk injury – unlike high impact activities like running, but you don’t need a dog to do it.
Not the whole supermarket shelf, but a few squares of 70% – 85% cocoa dark chocolate is full of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals and letting a couple of squares melt on your tongue with a cup of black coffee takes the edge off your appetite. It’s low carb, low sugar and low calorie and it’s also a mood enhancer, so it fills you up and cheers you up.
I’m 100% behind this. Dark chocolate contains a fatty acid that’s hard to digest, making your tummy feel full. Also, in a recent study where dieters ate the same number of calories but either had chocolate cake or a ‘healthy’ breakfast, the cake eaters lost more weight and kept it off because they didn’t feel deprived.
It sounds bonkers, but often we eat because we’re bored. Find your favourite mag in the fridge and you can flick through that instead of gobbling a chocolate mousse. Keep nail polish in there too – it stops it going goopy and gives you something else to do. Genius!
It’s quirky, but I love it. Many of us eat not because our stomach is asking for food, but because our bored brain is – and this is an ingenious distraction!
Chillies – the hotter the better – raise your metabolism, so you can burn 15% more calories for the two hours after eating your fiery fat burning friend. Infuse olive oil with the seeds, and chuck chopped chilli in omelettes, sauces and your scrambled eggs at breakfast.
Chillies will boost your metabolism, but that can lull you into a false sense of security. You can’t eat a big fatty dinner, cover it in tabasco and think you’ve undone the damage.
Belting out your favourite Beyonce track can burn up to 150 calories an hour, as well as exercising muscles in your upper body and reducing stress levels. Plus it’s almost impossible to sing and eat at the same time.
Another great distraction, but dancing to your favourite song would be better – you’d burn more calories and no-one would have to listen.
There may not be any scientific evidence to back this up, but going up and down the stairs on your bottom certainly feels like it tones you up – it’s exhausting! Do it without your arms and it’s even more strenuous.
You’d be better off running up and down the stairs four times in the time it takes to bum shuffle, but packing our day with ‘incidental movement’ is great – take the stairs, stand when you’re chatting on the phone and do heel lifts at your desk. It all adds up.
Put all the yummy food in very high cupboards. It won’t be at eye-level to tempt you and when you remember it’s there all the stretching up will work wonders.
Better still – don’t buy it in the first place. A chocolate bar in your trolley is as good as in your tummy – it’ll call your name from the cupboard and you’ll gobble it in a flash. Have treats, but when you’re out and about – you’re more likely to take your time or even share (sometimes).
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Closer readers can order a copy of 100 Ways to Fight The Flab by Jane Wenham-Jones at the special 25% discount price of £5.99 instead of £7.99 (with free P+P within UK). Just visit www.accentpress.co.uk and enter the code CL25.
You can view the original article, see http://www.closeronline.co.uk/2014/06/the-world-s-wackiest-weight-loss-tips-that-work#.U6FmtL-dL0c.
Television puts ten pounds on you. So get yourself on screen, see it all hang out, and I guarantee you won’t eat for a week 🙂
May I refer you to www.wannabeawritertvshow.com where you can get a chance to do just that….
We could do with the hits…
This idea came from my friend Irene who swears by this unlikely-sounding regime which has one simple rule – you can eat as much as you like of absolutely anything as long as it is plain yoghurt or banana. You are supposed to do it for three days. Since banana is a diuretic and yoghurt an evacuant (let’s not go there) it does work, but I don’t suggest you do it for that long. By dawn of the second day you will be out of your head with the tedium of it and hallucinating about toast and marmite or anything that isn’t bloody yogurt or banana.
It does, however work, as a quick fix to get into a tight dress. (On the other hand, you could just wear a bigger one.) (Or a decorated tent.)
Studies have shown that if you eat eggs for breakfast you will consume, on average, 400 calories less during the rest of the day than if you have a carbohydrate-only start to the morning.
Research carried out over eight years, by dietician Dr Carrie Ruxton, showed that those eating eggs, as opposed to cereal, felt fuller for longer and therefore ate less later on. This is presumably because eggs are high in protein, which stops you feeling hungry, but they also, apparently, contain quite a specific sort of protein at that, which works well on feelings of satiety. More research is required, but eggs may also possibly affect some appetite-related gut hormones aiding feelings of fullness. In the meantime, they certainly contain Vitamin D which regulates the amount of calcium and phosphate in the body and promotes strong bones and teeth. Hurrah!
(NB Eggs are also excellent as a hangover remedy and, together with cress and mayonnaise, make the very best sort of sandwich.)
Having to climbing up and down the ladder every time you fancy some cheese & onion will tone your thighs in no time…
(especially if you allow yourself only one mouthful per trip!)
Have lots of great sex
(NB if you’re married, best not to let your spouse find out.)
A good shag burns up to 400 calories and increases the endorphins in your body leaving you feeling naturally high without resorting to chocolate.
Points in favour: you spend all your eating time bonking, and when you do come up for air, you don’t want to look unalluring by ramming food down your throat.
Points against: if you’re single, you might fall in love, decide to get married and that will be your sex life gone for ever.
Footnote 1
I am including a nice picture of a sunset because when I tried google images for a suitable illustration I got more than I’d bargained for. It is a Sunday after all…
Sunset taken leaving St Maarten when I was a speaker on P&0’s cruise ship, Arcadia. An experience to test one’s flab-fighting to the limit. Never seen so much food in my life…
If you’re on a diet and can’t keep to it, make sure you’re getting the right vitamins and minerals. Sometimes cravings are your body’s way of saying what it needs. If you’re mainlining chocolate brazil nuts for example, perhaps you need selenium.
If you’re just sucking the chocolate off, you might want iron. If you’ve eaten three doughnuts, four cookies and an apple pie and it’s only 11 a.m., you want to get a grip before you’re the size of Dorset.
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