Lottie Storey - The Mount Athos Diet: The Mediterranean Plan to Lose Weight, Feel Younger, and Live Longer

For centuries, the monks of Mount Athos have enjoyed long lives, healthy bodies and calm minds thanks to their unique diet and lifestyle. Now you too can discover the secrets of good nutrition from this ancient community in a remarkable new diet book.

In The Mount Athos Diet, youll follow the intermittent diet that keeps the monks slim, youthful and largely free from disease. The diet is made up of three easy-to-follow patterns throughout the week:

• Three fasting days full of delicious fruits and vegetables from natures larder
• Three moderation days to enjoy the best of the Mediterranean, including olive oil, fish and even red wine
• One feast day to completely indulge in whichever foods you like

With a simple diet plan, recipes, menu planners and tips on how to adapt the diet, plus guidance on exercise, meditation and emotional wellbeing, The Mount Athos Diet promises to transform your body and mind to help you lose weight, feel fitter and live longer.

Richard Storey is a writer, photographer and a strong advocate of the life-changing potential of the Mount Athos Diet. He has personal knowledge of the Orthodox monastic life having for the past 15 years visited Mount Athos annually, both as a pilgrim and a voluntary worker. His photographic essay, Images of Mount Athos, was exhibited at Bridgewater House, London and at Highgrove House, Gloucestershire. Richard is an accomplished cook, trained in Classic French, Spanish, Indonesian, Thai and Modern British cookery. This is his fourth book.

Sue Todd is an editor who trained in nutrition, and through her career in food always aimed to help make healthy eating easier and more enjoyable. She has a degree in nutrition and worked as a State Registered Dietitian in the NHS in London for five years, before becoming the nutritionist at the consumer magazine, Which?. She then edited food websites for the BBC, UKTV and Carlton Food Network, and was Producer on BBC Radio 4s Food Programme. She was a trustee of the Caroline Walker Trust for over 10 years.

Lottie Storey is a writer who lives in Bristol with her husband and two young sons. Her work on the BBC Food website recipe development, writing and proofing contributed to the team winning the Best Interactive Media Glenfiddich Food & Drink Award 2003 and an EMMA Award in 2002. In 2008 she founded a new branch of the Womens Institute. She has worked in publishing, digital marketing, PR, film, television, and the arts, and now writes full time, developing recipes and content for a range of clients, and writes her own blog oysterandpearl.co.uk

This book is dedicated to

The Holy Fathers of Mount Athos, with gratitude for their inspiration.

Richard Storey

Eddy and Fenwick Big love to you both.

Sue Todd

Ben, Arthur and Ted Thank you for being so patient and kind, and for overlooking the mess in the kitchen. You are my world.

Lottie Storey

The Mount Athos Diet is a safe and easy-to-follow way to help you lose weight and look and feel a lot healthier. It does not involve any severe deprivation, or counting of calories. Nor will you have to buy special diet meals or drinks. All you will need to do is follow some straightforward principles and cook from a selection of delicious recipes. When you have reached your target weight, you should find it easy to maintain your new way of eating as well as your new weight and body shape.

This book is structured in such a way that you can dip in and out of sections as you wish. You dont have to read it from cover to cover. Most readers will want to know what do I have to do? and will turn immediately to the chapters concerned with the diet plan, recipes and ingredients. Whether you are vegetarian, a meat eater or vegan, there are plenty of recipes and advice to suit your lifestyle. Others will have questions about the background to the Mount Athos Diet: where does it come from, who else has tried it and what are their stories? There are further chapters devoted to exercise, drinking alcohol and meditation for readers who are interested in developing further aspects of their journey to a long-term way of eating and living a healthy life.

For further support and information, including beautiful images and more recipes, visit The Mount Athos Diet website: www.themountathosdiet.co.uk; find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/themountathosdiet, or follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mountathosdiet

A Word About Health

The Mount Athos Diet has been co-designed by a professional dietitian and its nutritionally balanced recipes will deliver a controlled and healthy weight loss. However, if you have any medical condition, are taking medication or are pregnant, breastfeeding or have an eating disorder, you should seek advice from your GP before starting any diet or exercise programme.

A Note On Ingredients

Unless specified, vegetables are peeled, and all ingredients should be the best quality available. Where possible, use organic or free-range eggs, dairy, meat and sustainable seafood.

I enjoy my food and drink.

I have always been a gourmet (gourmand, some would say). My mother was a professional caterer, then a cook, then a cookery teacher. From the age of five I was a regular in her professional kitchen, helping prepare vegetables or stirring a pot. My fathers first career was a farmer, then a market gardener. He fished or shot almost every day so my pocket money was earned from the preparation of fish or game for the family table. My father also grew his own fruit and vegetables and so I was weaned on organic produce long before it became modish.

It is no surprise that, since leaving school and home, I have been the cook for fellow flatmates, girlfriends, wife and family catering, purchasing, preparing ingredients and cooking meals. Cooking for others can be a delight, but the rewards carry with them some major temptations. To cook properly, from scratch using raw ingredients, it is important that everything should be tasted throughout the process. This and the gourmand in me has meant that like many of us in the Western world I seem to be forever watching my weight.

Over the years I have fallen for many improbable but tempting diet plans, my bathroom scales fluctuating by as much as 13 kg (28 lb) from any one time to another. Up to a point the diets I followed did work in the short term. I lost some weight, felt smug when friends and colleagues remarked on my success, and then felt depressed as the weight soon bounced back to where I first started usually plus some.

Two years ago all this changed.

My wife and I had arranged a four-week holiday in Cape Town, South Africa. This was to be my first visit and I had no real idea of the culinary treats that awaited me. I also had no idea how life changing this visit would become.

South Africa is famous for its seductive and indulgent rainbow cuisine an eclectic mix of styles and content, inspired by colonisation, immigration and of course, indigenous products. In Cape Town, everybody who can eats out and food is plentiful and inexpensive. A bring your own policy in most restaurants helps sensible diners save even more money on their wine. The combination of large portions and inexpensive wine immediately signalled to me the onset of yet another ballooning waistline. The prospect of a gourmet four-week stay in this beautiful country started to ring alarm bells.