You Can Be Thin: The Ultimate Programme to End Dieting... Forever (21 page)

Always have a box of organic eggs to hand and some frozen prawns so you can make a prawn omelette in minutes, you can add frozen spinach or sweet corn too. Have some precooked frozen dishes like chicken casserole or a stew in the freezer so you can make a meal very quickly when you are hungry. Sometimes I just open a tin of tuna or salmon and eat it with an avocado and some tomatoes and sweet corn. It takes seconds to put together and is filling and nutritious. If your weakness is reaching for food when you come home and not being able to wait to eat, then have a bowl of hard-boiled eggs shelled and ready so that you can snack on two hard boiled eggs, some tomatoes, lettuce and a little dressing. It is delicious, will cut your hunger within twenty minutes and takes only two minutes more than it does to reach for the biscuits (you don’t have biscuits in your house anymore, right?)

In place of biscuits buy some nut and seed bars (you must check they are free of flour and sugar). My favourites are by the Food Doctor and Gillian McKeith. You can make your own mixture of nuts and seeds but do not buy ready-made trail mix since it’s full of sugar.

You don’t need to exclude fat; good fats are healthy and vital for our wellbeing. Essential fatty acids found in nuts, fish and avocado actually cleanse the body of the saturated fats that make the blood sticky. Avocado is one of the healthiest foods in the world. Lean meat is not bad for you. Oily fish is an excellent food. Fats have more calories than carbohydrates but are
not
more fattening. When we eat healthy fats we become satisfied quickly, whereas when we eat refined carbohydrates we are actually stimulated to overeat because their effect on our blood sugar leaves us constantly hungry. We have been taught to see fat as a baddie, the cause of obesity and heart attacks, yet Mediterranean people eat diets rich in olive oil. Olive oil is a good fat, as are fish oils, nut oils, vegetable oils and seed oils such as sunflower, pumpkin and hemp, which are full of essential fatty acids. Even animal fat (saturated) is not bad as long as it is eaten in moderation.

Nuts are one of nature’s wonder foods; buy raw almonds, pistachios, walnuts, hazelnuts. Brazil nuts are an excellent source of selenium which is a cancer preventative food. Selenium reduces the amount of mercury the body absorbs and is recommended if you eat a lot of fish. Nuts are not especially fattening since the oil in them is not fully absorbed by the body. Not all the fat and therefore not all the calories of nuts are absorbed as some of the fat is bound up with fibre and passes out of the body. Nuts are very filling and help build strong bones and they contain good healthy oils rich in mono and polyunsaturated fats that help prevent heart attacks. Always keep your nuts and seeds in containers in the fridge to stop the oils going rancid.

I have always believed eggs are a wonder food and new research is backing this up. Free-range organic eggs are very good for you as they contain vitamin A, B, D and E and lutein which protects against age-related eye diseases. Furthermore, eggs are less chemically altered than most other foods. Eggs are rich in lecithin and although the yolks contain cholesterol they will not raise cholesterol levels in the blood unless you have an inherited cholesterol problem. It is the saturated fats in food not natural dietary cholesterol that raises blood cholesterol levels. As long as the eggs you eat form part of a balanced diet you can eat far more than the previous guideline of five a week.

People get very confused about good and bad foods I call good foods ‘growing foods’ i.e. vegetables, salads, nuts, seeds and fruits. Foods that can be picked and eaten exactly as they are without anything needing to be done to them can be eaten freely. Fruit juice is not in this category as it has to be juiced, pressed or concentrated. Primitive man may have eaten a few oranges or apples but drinking juice allows us to eat the equivalent of ten oranges in one go without the healthy fibre and pulp so we get a huge sugar rush and then crave more sugar in any form throughout the day. Eat fruit rather than drinking juice.

Food that has to be milled and cooked like grains (including rice) are not in this category. These can be eaten in limited amounts but you need to choose brown rice, wholewheat granary or rye bread and wholewheat pasta. Orgran is pasta made from vegetables that you can buy in all large supermarkets and it is delicious. Rye, millet and barley are all cereals and while they are better for us than wheat they still need to be eaten moderately by those of us with a weight problem.

Interestingly, we start to like what we eat the most of and want what our bodies get used to. Hence third generation Polish, Portuguese or Spaniards living in England still eat the diet they were primarily raised on, while vegetarians crave vegetables and people who live on fast food crave fast food. Since you will adapt to whatever you eat and find that eventually you only desire that type of food you might as well make your body love and crave healthy food. If you love sugar or full-fat milk in your tea and then give it up, after some time you will find that if you try it again it tastes horrible. When you abstain from fatty food it really does taste too greasy if you have it again after a long absence. After abstaining from sugary food it really does become far too sweet to enjoy except in small amounts. I eat chips with my daughter occasionally but only a few as I don’t have any desire to eat more, and although I enjoy chips I wouldn’t eat them regularly. I would always have mince pies at Christmas but I don’t crave them and I’m happy to eat far fewer of them than I used to.

I was a vegetarian while I lived in California (and I still think being a vegetarian is a noble thing to do) and I thought I was so healthy. My diet included masses of vegetables, rice, potatoes and bread but I was always tired and very pale. By the end of the day my stomach was always bloated and I was hungry again shortly after eating. I would have bread and honey for breakfast, vegetables and rice for lunch and in the evening a huge plate of vegetables and potatoes. I snacked on muesli bars or crackers and I would want to eat every few hours. It was a huge revelation for me when one day after doing lots of research on protein and hunger I had chicken and vegetables for dinner and felt full and satisfied until the next day. As I put more protein in my diet and took out a lot of the cereals I felt so much more energetic, my whole shape changed dramatically and I shed a stone without even trying to.

Protein foods, like chicken, fish, lean meat, tofu and eggs stimulate the get-up-and-go brain chemicals called catecholamines that give you energy and leave you feeling satisfied and slim, not bloated, sleepy and still hungry. Protein is the only food that cuts hunger very quickly by sending a message of fullness to the brain. Just a small amount of protein will give you drive, energy and mental focus. The amino acids in protein tell our brain that we are full and affect appetite regulation in the brain in a way that carbohydrate foods don’t.

Protein-rich foods encourage the production of the hormone peptide YY which is known to suppress appetite. You do not need to eat a lot of protein, a small amount at every meal is enough. For instance ten almonds added to fruit at breakfast is enough protein, a handful of nuts and seeds added to a salad at lunch, or a palm-sized amount of chicken or fish is all the protein you need, and you do need protein if you want to be slimmer. Of course you can have more than that amount if you find it doesn’t satisfy you.

So here you are at step ten having learned so much and come so far. By now I hope you agree that the small amount of time you have taken to read this book and do the exercises has been absolutely worthwhile. In this last chapter I am going to show you fifteen ways to speed up your metabolism. Again you don’t have to do all fifteen, this is a pick and mix that makes you thinner, it’s up to you which of them you choose, though of course the more of them you use the more impact you’ll have in shifting excess weight and keeping it off. By incorporating these small changes into your life you can create big changes in your weight and shape.

You are also going to learn a new kind of takeaway – one that has no calories. These new takeaways summarise everything you have learned and show you how to make them a part of your daily life. There is no jargon, no deprivation and no gimmicks just practical step-by-step solutions that give you lasting results. These final few steps make it easy for you to put everything into practice. By embracing these new takeaways you will find it straightforward and simple to implement these powerful, beneficial and workable changes into your life and to change your shape forever.

Your metabolism determines the rate at which you burn calories and fat. The faster your metabolism the more fuel you will burn off.

Since every thought you think causes a physical reaction in your body, if you frequently visualise your metabolism going up you can increase it. You need to constantly imagine your metabolism as a dial you are turning up to maximum and leaving it on maximum all the time. Imagine an internal furnace or heat within you burning off any excess fuel. Tell yourself your metabolism is super efficient and working at maximum efficiency all the time.

Eating pushes up your metabolic rate as digestion uses up calories. A lot of energy is consumed in the digestion process, as your gut contracts enzymes are released and extra blood is pumped to your intestines. If you don’t eat regularly your metabolic rate goes down. Missing out on one meal a day will diminish your metabolism by 15 per cent. You will shed more weight eating selectively than you will by fasting.

Five hours or more of unbroken sleep helps your body to maintain balanced hormone levels related to metabolism. Sleep deprivation can produce a hormonal imbalance that can stimulate weight gain.

Exercise will speed up your metabolism. If you are overweight you can still exercise. I am a big fan of rebounding – jumping on a mini trampoline. It takes only ten minutes a day and that time will fly by if you put on some great music. Because it is aerodynamic (low impact) your joints are protected. Skipping is also a quick and very effective exercise and at any weight you can skip for a few minutes and gradually build up the amount of time. I take a skipping rope away with me so I can do just a few minutes in my hotel room to keep my metabolic rate up. A group of inactive women put on a mini trampoline by James White, a Californian exercise physiologist, were monitored and found to have improvement in skin tone, colouring and wrinkles. Even the bags under their eyes decreased because the intense rhythmic pressure and the weightlessness of rebounding stimulate cells to release waste. As you become slimmer and fitter you may feel more ready to join a gym or class. You don’t need me to tell you that you do need to exercise. It’s essential that you find a form of exercise that you like. Play music that you love as you do it, as an extra motivation. Remember to tell your body that you love the exercise and soon enough it will love moving – whether through yoga, walking, trampolining or skipping, etc.

If your home, car and office are all heated your metabolic rate becomes slower. Turning down the heating and wearing a layer less boosts your metabolic rate as more calories are burned keeping you warm from the inside out. Sleeping in a very cool room makes your metabolic rate work harder throughout the night.

Eat fish, chicken, lentils, lean meat, nuts and eggs. Have some protein at every meal. The body works hard to properly digest protein so the longer and the more effort put into digesting protein, the more calories your body uses up and the more your metabolic rate will increase. Lean protein elevates metabolism by up to 10 per cent more than when carbs or fat are eaten.

Calcium has fat-burning properties so a regular intake of calcium stimulates the mechanism in fat cells that break down fat. Get your calcium from soya foods, calcium-enriched rice milk, sheep’s yogurt, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds and tahini paste.

Potassium-rich foods help to regulate both your metabolism and your body’s water balance. Potassium is found in apricots, bananas, carrots, parsley, peas, spinach, salmon, sardines and cod.

This speeds up the metabolism because it contains chemicals called methylxanthines which seem to boost metabolism and burn fat more rapidly. If you don’t like the taste you can buy it in capsule form.

Soy protein slightly increases your metabolism and seems to encourage weight loss from the middle. The isoflavones, glycine and arginine in soya milk seem to accelerate the breakdown of fat, reduce the levels of sugar in the blood and lower the level of insulin in the blood. You can consume your soya in soya flour, soya protein (tofu), soya yogurt, soya cheese and soy beans.
Not soy sauce
. Soya is also a very important anti-cancer food. Many people recognise it as a universal cancer preventative because the genestien and daidzien within it are anti-cancer agents.

The herbs cinnamon, ginger, cayenne, cardamom and ginseng can help to stimulate thermogenesis (heat generated by the body) and promote weight loss.

Hot spices can boost the rate at which calories are burned by up to 15 per cent for a few hours after eating. Chillies speed up the metabolism and reduce hunger. South Americans have known for years that chillies reduce appetite.

Tyrosine-rich foods like pumpkin seeds, almonds and avocados feed the metabolism. Taking a tyrosine supplement (500mg four times daily) and a zinc supplement (50mg daily) will boost your levels of tyrosine and can help to stop compulsive eating. Iodine keeps the metabolism working properly, kelp supplements are full of iodine as are strawberries and seaweed.