Charlotte Watts - The De-stress Diet

Text Charlotte Watts and Anna Magee, 2012

Illustrations Jackie Coulson, 2012

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise be copied for public or private use, other than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews, without prior written permission of the publisher.

The information given in this book should not be treated as a substitute for professional medical advice; always consult a medical practitioner. Any use of information in this book is at the readers discretion and risk. Neither the authors nor the publisher can be held responsible for any loss, claim or damage arising out of the use, or misuse, or the suggestions made or the failure to take medical advice.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBNs: 978-1-84850-779-1 in print;
978-1-84850-784-5 in Mobipocket format;
978-1-84850-785-2 in epub format

We would first and foremost like to thank the many pioneering and brilliant clinicians and scientists whose ground-breaking work has been quoted in this book, and whose ideas and vision have been instrumental in shaping The De-Stress Diet. Without their work, our research and understanding of nutrition, the nature of stress and the relationships between stress and weight gain and much more would simply not have been possible. To name a few: Professor Carol Shively, Dr Mark Mattson, Dr Matthew Edlund, Dr Loren Cordain, Professor Robert Sapolsky, Dr Bart Hoebel and Professor Leo Pruimboom.

Our special thanks goes to the nurturers and supporters of our vision for how we hope The De-Stress Diet will transform peoples bodies, minds and lives. Most notably, our thanks goes to our excellent Hay House editor, Carolyn Thorne (the picture of slim and calm in the face of stress), who saw the potential in our early and enormous manuscript. Her perseverance has been essential to the making of this book. We would like to thank our text editor, Barbara Vesey, for her intelligent input and sympathetic manuscript changes, as well as Robert Caskie at the PFD Agency, for encouraging us to begin a process that would ultimately take years to nail down and finally complete.

This book would not have been possible without the exceptional input of our trusted consultants. Fitness trainer Charlene Hutsebaut ( All illustrations are by the very talented Jackie Coulson, whose lovely yoga teaching shows in her drawing style.

We would also like to thank the entire team at Hay House, including Jo Burgess, the energetic publicity director, for transferring her obvious enthusiasm and belief in the book to the media, as well as Jessica Crockett, Jo Lal, Julie Oughton, Amy Kiberd and Leigh Fergus for their invaluable contributions to its publishing.

Our writing and brainstorming sessions took place at the British Library and we must thank their canteen staff for the most fantastic fresh steamed sea bass, vegetable and chilli dishes they cooked from scratch for us (always with a smile), and the caf staff downstairs for patiently putting up with our fussy post-lunch coffee orders.

Charlotte would like to thank those who have provided the most applicable and inspirational nutritional, naturopathic and functional medicine knowledge along her continuing educational journey: Marion Kirkham ND, Chris Astill-Smith, Dr Nigel Plummer, Dr Robert Verkerk, Dr Jeffrey Bland, Lyra Heller, Stephen Terass, Jules Cattell and Alessandro Ferretti of Equilibria Health, Nutri-Link Education and the Institute for Optimum Nutrition. Both on a personal and spiritual level, Jim Tarran her yoga teacher of 15 years and founder of the Vajrasati Yoga School and his persistence with authenticity, exploration and finding what we might need rather than want. Also, her great friends and yoga inspirations Khadine Morcom and Leonie Taylor, for their caring and having babies at the same time to provide true empathy. Charlotte would like to thank her partner, Sam, for giving her the time to fit in this book by being the great fun and caring modern dad that he is, her dad, Peter, for always turning up to save the day and provide subversive merriment, and most of all to her daughter, Maisie, for being the loveliest source of good stress and providing fun, cuddles and constant hilarity.

Anna would like to thank her phenomenal inspiration Leslie Kenton, whose health books fuelled her health-writing ambitions at age 14, along with Suzanne Wangmann, Trish Halpin, Frances Power, Helena Lang, Charlotte Moore, Tessa Hilton, Victoria Young, Brian Brennan and Irene Feighan for being visionary editors and encouraging Anna to pursue and research all those health ideas and features over the last 15 years. She would also like to thank her all her yoga mentors, most notably Susannah Hoffmann for her support and intuitive teaching. Annas husband, Kevin, put up with Annas tippety-tapping away for entire weekends and well into many long nights while this book was being written, rendering their social life non-existent. She is also grateful to her father-in-law, Eamon The Guru Magee, for his guidance on all things, to her dad, Peter, and sisters, Tanya, Rea and Penny, for their endless enthusiasm. Most of all, Anna would like to thank her mum, Lina, for reading all her scribbles from age seven onwards and telling her daughter over and over what a great talent for writing shes always had (regardless of whether its true).

Its no secret that stress isnt healthy. This epidemic of the modern world is an underlying cause of low energy, loss of sex drive, depression, tooth-grinding, high blood pressure, skin problems, infertility and insomnia. What is perhaps more staggering is how bad we are at dealing with stress: 12.8 million working days are lost to stress every year Now, mounting evidence has shown that one of the most insidious side effects of chronic stress is weight gain. Excess stress hormones in the body encourage fat storage, especially that hardest-to-shift type weight around the middle. Quite simply, in a stressed body most diets are doomed to fail.

The De-Stress Diet, based on nutritional therapy used successfully with hundreds of stressed, overweight people, as well as a strong body of scientific research, resets this system in your favour. It will show you calming techniques, targeted nutrition and intelligent exercise to alleviate stress and help you release excess weight and keep it off. We like to call it Slim and Calm Living.

• To help you reconnect with your body and release excess weight while enjoying a better quality of life.
• To give you a complete lifestyle plan to cope with stress and lose weight long term.
• To show you how to enjoy eating and preparing fresh, whole food every day.
• To encourage you to let go of feeling that you should constantly be doing something to achieve what you want.
• To teach you to ask yourself How will this make me feel? when it comes to food and movement, instead of How will this make me look? The De-Stress Diet makes you feel great and, as a by-product, you can lose weight and see your mood, skin and muscle tone improve.

We have taken meticulous care to ensure that everything in this book is shown to be effective by giving you references and scientific commentary. We have also called on the added expertise of exercise specialist Charlene Hutsebaut and nutritional food consultant Tina Deubert. Thats why throughout this book youll find Lab Chats (like the one right here) and DSD Tips to help you.

Lab Chat:Stress and Weight Gain