James Duigan - Clean & Lean for Life: The Cookbook: 150 delicious recipes for a happy, healthy body

CLEAN and LEAN
FOR LIFEThe CookbookJames Duiganwith Maria Lally James Duigan, world-renowned wellness guru and owner of Bodyism, Londons premier health and wellness facility, is one of the worlds top personal trainers. Bodyisms glittering client list has included Elle Macpherson, Lara Stone, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, David Gandy, Holly Valance and Hugh Grant. He is also the author of the bestselling Clean & Lean Diet, Clean & Lean Flat Tummy Fast!, Clean & Lean Diet Cookbook and Clean & Lean Warrior. Photography by Sebastian Roos and Charlie Richards Copyright 2015, James Duigan Contents Introduction This beautiful book is full of delicious foods and simple recipes that are wonderfully Clean and Lean. Yes, they will help you lose weight but, more importantly, they will help you feel good. Every ingredient and combination of foods has been chosen with your health in mind, so relax and enjoy the ride.

This book has also been written with busy people in mind, so the recipes are simple and easy to prepare, with ingredients that you can get just about anywhere. This book is not about challenging your cooking skills. It is about helping you to become a healthier, happier, more energised version of your self. There are a few points to remember that will really help you on your health journey. Firstly, diets dont work they just dont. Making profound and lasting changes is not possible when you do something for just a couple of weeks.

In fact, most diets will result in weight gain as well as often making you sick and miserable. If something sounds crazy, then it probably is. Please dont ruin your health, and I mean both your physical health and your mental health. The key to success is keeping it simple. If you are weighing your food or your poo (yes, some people do this), counting calories, only eating cabbage or only drinking chinese herbs (yes, these are things), then you are doing it all wrong and it wont work. In order to transform your body, you need to change your life in a way that is enjoyable and sustainable, and the good news is its really very easy.

Remember that any change in your body happens in your mind first. This is where you need to really understand that you deserve to be healthy and happy and once you do this, all the choices you have been struggling with will suddenly become easy and effortless. You will no longer sabotage yourself with crazy fad diets or mountains of junk food because you will know that you deserve perfect health and a perfect body. A perfect body, you ask? What is the perfect body? It is the body that you are healthy and happy in. You may be happy being very underweight or very overweight, but youre not healthy and that is just a medical and biological reality. You may also have a really healthy body and yet youre constantly miserable because youre never happy with how you look, which is all too common and too sad for words.

So you need both. You need to be happy and healthy, and that my friends is the perfect body. And it really is possible, regardless of what you may have believed in the past. Your past does not equal your future and right now, in this very moment, you have an incredible opportunity to finally succeed in making a permanent and beautiful transformation. Self acceptance is the key here and letting go of shame and guilt is essential. No more beating yourself up, no more pointing out the negative.

Let go of the past, stop seeing it as a series of failures and see them as they actually are a series of powerful lessons for you to learn from. Now is the time to empower yourself with kind and positive thoughts, words and actions. You are beautiful and powerful and you never need to doubt that. Now all you have to do is trust yourself and start living a Clean and Lean life!A way of life I also want to share a little story about myself in the hope that it may help you understand that we are all just doing our best and that we are all human and vulnerable to what life puts in our path. My beautiful dad was my best friend and my hero and in 2012 he was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. We completely changed his diet by cutting out all sugar, dairy and red meat, we got him doing yoga, visualisations, drinking vegetable juices with turmeric and whatever else we could think of, and when Dad went in for his next appointment 3 months later, his cancer had completely disappeared.

We were all so grateful and happy and cherished every moment we had with each other as a family. We had two more beautiful years with him and then the cancer came back very aggressively. I went back to Australia to help him fight for his life. I remember him saying that he knew he would beat it because I was there with him but I couldnt do it. My dad believed in me and I failed him. I couldnt save him, and telling my mother and my sister that Dad had just passed away was the hardest thing I have ever done.

As I walked into the house I was ashamed that I hadnt been able to save him. I felt so sad for my family and I felt very alone. So how did I cope with this? I comforted myself with food. I had been eating potatoes and rice and pasta with dad (he needed to keep his weight up) so he didnt feel lonely and I just didnt stop. My weight really went up and I put on ten kilos very quickly. I wasnt comfortable or happy but I didnt care.

It all seemed so trivial next to losing dad but as I came out of the haze of the first stages of grief I noticed that I really didnt feel healthy at all. I decided to become more mindful about what I was eating, which helped a little, but nothing really happened and I still felt like I had let everyone down. I spend my life telling people to let go of shame and guilt and here I was, carrying it around everywhere I went like a dark cloud. It was Chrissy who very gently pointed out to me that it was time to forgive myself, that it wasnt my fault and I could not have done any more to save my dad and I knew she was right, but I just couldnt quite let go of it. I was almost comfortable with my shame and guilt and I felt like my grief was my only way of holding on to my dad. However, I also knew I had to do something different, so I really worked on it, every day.

Sometimes, every minute, and eventually I was able to let my shame and guilt go and I began to feel good about myself again, and when this happened I began to choose more kindly for myself. I was eating better and enjoying life and as a consequence, almost effortlessly I lost ten kilos in 3 months. Ive learnt to smile again and now the memories of my father mostly bring a smile rather than tears. So whatever youre going through, no matter how many times you feel youve failed, just know that youre not alone and that right now is the time to forgive yourself and begin living the life of your dreams. Whatever youre going through, no matter how many times you feel youve failed, just know that youre not alone. As I was writing this introduction, I read a study that states 40% of girls between the age of 3 and 5 are worried they are fat as if I havent cried enough writing this thing.

I looked at my amazing, kind, talented and intelligent daughter and I just wanted to pick her up and protect her from all of this forever. But I cant do that, so Im going to change the world instead. If you are lucky enough to have children, please dont ever focus on their weight or how they look. It. Will. Them. Up. Up.

I hear stories of parents who weigh their children every day at breakfast and after dinner its heartbreaking. It is why we have girls (and boys) on social media hijacking genuinely good messages about being strong not skinny next to a picture of an anorexic body in a bikini promoting a bikini body guide or posting about being strong empowered women and by the way heres a picture of my butt in a G-string or knickers (I tried this and lost a lot of followers, but thats a different story!). My point is, please be mindful of the words you use around your children and the people you love. And dont take your health, exercise and nutritional advice from a 23-year-old on social media who has done a 6-week personal training course and has absolutely zero accountability for anything they say. You deserve better and so do our children.