Knight India - Neris and Indias idiot-proof diet: a weight-loss plan for real women

Neither this diet program nor any other diet program should be followed without first consulting a health care professional. If you have any special conditions requiring attention, you should consult with your health care professional regularly regarding possible modification of the program contained in this book.

Copyright 2007 by India Knight and Neris Thomas

Illustrations copyright 2007 by Neris Thomas

Photographs copyright 2007 by Shaun Webb, Neris Thomas, and India Knight

Additional photographs (pages 77, 90, 97, 108, 122, 125, 128, 134, 136, 157, 182)

copyright 2007 by Lis Parsons

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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First eBook Edition: April 2008

ISBN: 978-0-446-55424-4

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Eggs on legs.

So here we have it: yet another diet book. And none of the usual qualifications for writing one, either were not doctors, were not nutritionists, were not over-the-hill movie stars. Were not unusually obsessed by other peoples poos, happily enough. We have no immediate plans for an exercise DVD.

Ho no. We can do better than that.

Between us, Neris and I have lost 140 pounds, give or take the odd pound. It took us a year, and we have maintained the weight loss. One hundred forty pounds is a lot of weight. Its as much as a whole other person (Lordy, what a thought). And we think its pretty damned impressive. Unusual, too. Show us a diet book written by someone whos actually lost more than a few measly pounds and well eat a whole bag of potatoes and a tub of lard for seconds. Other diet book writers talk the talk. We walk the walk. Well, we walk it now. We used to just waddle, thighs chafing attractively together.

Thats the problem with the usual diet books. Were not going to say they dont work, because many of them do the majority, probably why wouldnt they? All kinds of diets work; the problem is sticking to them. Thats because diet books are not written by people with a lot of weight to lose. They dont come from the minds of the formerly fat. So you get these grim, gloomy volumes of finger-wagging directions: boil a fish, steam a sprout, run for two hours. And those books are unbelievably depressing. They make you feel like youve been punished, excluded from normal life, and they make you want to give up before youve even begun. They expect you to do ridiculous things, and eat in a ridiculous way one that, weve found, is not sustainable in the long term, and that is of itself incredibly demoralizing. Most diets are a disaster if you have families; they sit there with their delicious dinner, you sit there nibbling on a leaf, feeling like a leper. Its just horrible.

We really like food this diet was conceived and developed in a restaurant. Neris and I used to meet for lunch every week and one summer afternoon, a couple of bottles in, we got to talking about weight, for the hundredth time. Neris had just bought The GI Diet and could make neither head nor tail of it; India as you will read in a minute had had a moment of extreme sartorial crisis in a department store. We both knew we needed to lose weight and suddenly, during our conversation, the idea became a real possibility because it occurred to us that we could do it together. Two minds are better than one, after all, and we liked (rightly, it turns out) the idea of the inbuilt support system.

Were greedy, which is how we came to be so weeble-ish in the first place. And while we understood, when we first embarked on our diet, that we would obviously have to make some sacrifices, we didnt want to feel like total freaks, either. We wanted to be able to go out for dinner. We wanted to eat at friends houses without first having to email them a great, long, tiresomely anti-social list of our dietary requirements. We wanted to go to the pub, on girls nights out, to weddings, to parties, and not feel like Fatty on a Diet sitting in the corner with a diet soda and a crudit.

We all know what to do to lose weight, in theory: eat less and move around more just about covers it. Makes sense. Sounds perfectly reasonable. Indeed, it is perfectly reasonable, if you want to lose five pounds. But the eat-less/move-more method is a thin persons mantra, and comes from a thin persons mindset. If youre the kind of person who weighs 112 pounds and occasionally forgets to eat, eat-less/move-more is blindingly obvious and true. But weve never forgotten to eat in fact, we used to be starving hungry at pretty much any given time of the day. We dont have a thin persons mindset, one that assumes the self-discipline that many dieters ourselves included find easy to grasp in theory but rather trickier to put into practice. For us, eat-less/move-more simply isnt enough. Nice idea, but some people are just, well, too fat for such a vague instruction. Besides, eat-less/move-more doesnt even begin to address what goes on in your head when it comes to food, or the fact that so much overeating is emotional. And it fails to acknowledge that the gym is anathema if youre uncomfortable with the concept of crop tops, bare arms and paying for the pleasure of being in a room full of toned, trim people who are your physical opposites. If it were really as simple as eating a wee bit less and doing more sit-ups, wed all be waifs.

What we wanted was to find a way of eating that was on the one hand very straightforward no calorie-counting, no points, no having to think too hard and on the other incredibly detailed. We wanted a plan to adhere to. A serious plan that went into minute detail, but that was flexible. Not two weeks worth, either; we wanted precise directions to stick to for as long as it took which is why this book gives you a lifetimes worth of instructions. And we wanted recipes that wed want to cook regardless of whether or not we were on a diet (and cheaty, easy-peasy recipes for when we didnt feel like cooking). We wanted to know what to eat and drink in any number of situations, at any given time of day including feeling a bit peckish at midnight, or weirdly ravenous at 11 am so that we never had to pause to ask ourselves what was and what wasnt allowed. It feels very comforting, sticking to a plan in this way, and sooner or later you learn it by heart and it becomes second nature. And it absolutely, 100 percent hand-on-heart works: check out the pictures for the rather hideously graphic evidence.

Is it easy? Kind of. Were going to start this book as we mean to go on, which means absolutely no lies (it works both ways: we dont want you to lie to yourself any more either much more on this later). For the majority of the time, its so easy that you completely forget youre on a diet. Sometimes its harder. Very occasionally, youll feel pretty majorly pissed off, to be frank. But the elation you feel as the pounds drop off and the compliments start flowing should override any difficulties, and besides, youre going to be eating delicious food warm, hearty, rib-sticking food of the kind that is not usually associated with the word diet. Were not expecting you to survive on salad. Our way of eating is not going to interfere with your life, either. It just quietly goes on in the background while you get on with the other stuff, such as selling your too-big clothes on eBay once a month. In terms of easiness, the thing we found vitally important about our diet was to understand that in order for it to work, the transformation the moment when it all clicks into place needs to happen before you start out, not after. That means right now. There will, obviously, be a dramatic physical transformation at the end of your diet, but we have discovered that for any diet to succeed, an emotional transformation is not only necessary but crucial. That means starting off at a place of self-love, not self-disgust. It means making the most of yourself right now not tomorrow, not in a month, not in a years time. We know youre beautiful now (and were going to be showing you ways of building on that) but we need you to believe it too. In our now considerable experience, no diet will work long term until that mental click. It is a powerful and invaluable tool. If you have no idea of what were talking about here, read on: the first part of the book is all about getting you to the point where you have faith in yourself.