Good For: Personalised weight loss which has been shown to help you lose weight fast.

Overview:

The Cambridge Weight Plan, formerly known as the Cambridge Diet, is aimed at both men and women and is a low calorie diet that allows you to choose between meal replacement products to speed up your weight loss, or normal meals for more gradual weight loss.

The meal replacement options include bars, shakes, porridge, mouse and soups.

What you can eat depends on how much weight you want to lose. The mainstay of the plan does involve their branded meal replacement meals, said to contain a healthy mix of fat, carbohydrates, protein, fibre and more than 30 other nutrients.

In a departure from many of the other big diets out there, you cannot sign up for the Cambridge Weight Plan, nor buy any of their products, online or even from a shop. Instead you must first arrange a meeting between you and a Cambridge Weight Plan consultant who will visit, measure and weigh you and decide which programme would suit you best.

This personal touch helps to set the Cambridge Weight Plan apart from its less one-to-one competitors and may go some way to explaining why 25 million people have used the plan globally since its launch in 1984.

The Six Stages of the Cambridge Weight Plan

There are six steps to the Cambridge Weight Plan, moving from a very low calorie diet in step one (440-640 calories) through to a low calorie diet in steps two and three (810-1,000 calories) to 1,200 calories in step four, 1,500 calories in step five and maintenance and stabilisation in step six.

Your consultant will determine where you should start from. Step one should last between one to 12 weeks only and has two options: Option one is 440 to 555 calories a day, where you will eat three Cambridge Weight Plan products in place of meals (for men and women above 5ft 8ins, four Cambridge Weight Plan products must be eaten).

Option two is a slightly raised 640 calorie option where you can eat three of the products alongside a 200 calorie meal (recipes will be provided) or four products and 200ml of skimmed milk.

As this step is so drastic, your doctor will first need to be informed. If you have certain medical conditions, a doctor’s signature will be needed before you can take up this diet.

Once you move further through the steps, you will be allowed to eat normal calorie controlled meals. The plan is in essence a low calorie diet with nutritional supplementation.

Pros:

• The diet has been used clinically to prepare obese patients for surgery and has been decreed medically safe.
• Its safety and nutritional values have been reviewed and approved by independent laboratories.
• The plan encourages fast weight loss.
• Use of consultants and one on one meetings guarantees a personal level of involvement and support from the Cambridge Weight Plan experts.
• The diet takes a very sensible stance on healthcare and will involve your doctor whenever your consultant deems it relevant.
• Charts and information on the official website lets you know of any potential ingredients that could cause allergies or intolerance (lactose, gluten, soy, peanuts, milk, egg, fish, yeast etc…) in each product.
• Most products are suitable for vegetarians. Exceptions include most of the calorie controlled ready-made meals (with the exception of vegetarian chilli), the Strawberry Silk readymade shake and the mix-a-mouse.
• No need to count calories, points or measure weight or portion size.
• The Cambridge Weight Plan stresses that the diet should give you your recommended daily allowance of minerals and vitamins if you follow it to the letter.
• Experts recommend this for people with a BMI of 30 and above (the Cambridge Weight Plan says you must have a BMI of 25 plus a stone before you can begin step one).
• Provides lactose-free products if needed.
• Flexible; allows you to start at any stage of the six stage process, should your consultant agree.

Cons:

• Some people may not want to go to the effort of having to arrange a meeting and visit with the Cambridge Weight Plan consultant before they are even allowed to begin the diet.
• Not as convenient as many other plans where you can sign up or buy products from a shop or online.
• As weight loss ketosis sets in, namely burning the fat in your body, you may notice bad breath.
• Some people may experience headaches during the first three days on the diet as a result of carbohydrate withdrawal.
• Rapid weight loss may affect fertility and temporarily interrupt menstrual patterns.
• Others may experience diarrhoea if they are not used to the mineral content in the Cambridge Weight Loss products. They are advised to drink water with every meal to dilute the effects.
• Anyone who experiences constipation, which can be a common side effect of a low calorie diet, is encouraged to use Cambridge Fibre to help their body.
• A spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association warns that there will be some inevitable weight gain once the programme is finished.
• Doesn’t help you to tackle your previous lifestyle or eating issues, meaning you may just revert back to the unhealthy behaviour once you finish the programme.
• Step one is incredibly strict and may be difficult to keep to.
• The choice of shakes, soups and food is limited and the diet may get boring very quickly.
• May find it difficult to handle cravings for food as most of the diet is liquid.

Exercise:

Exercise is recommended but it is not the focus of the programme.

Checklist:

Alcohol: No.
Caffeine, as long as it’s black though decaffeinated versions are preferred.
Eating Out: No.
Family-Friendly: No.

Health warnings:

None of the Cambridge Weight Loss programmes are suitable for people with a BMI of 20 or below; anyone with severe depression or bipolar; anyone with a heart condition, kidney or liver disease; anyone who has had an operation or serious accident within the past three months; pregnant or breastfeeding women or women who have given birth within the last three months; anyone with a history of eating disorders; anyone dependent on alcohol or drugs/ substances or children under 14 years of age. People who are taking obesity medication or who have had gastric band or bypass are also not allowed to start this diet.

Summary:

Most experts are in agreement that, despite the severity of this diet in stage one in particular, the Cambridge Weight Plan is actually healthy. They also agree that it will encourage rapid weight loss.

The bad news for dieters on the plan is that the weight is simply likely to come back unless you also learn how to change or deal with the food issues that caused you to get overweight in the first place. The maintenance aspect of stage six does try to help you deal with this, albeit by still recommending that you eat one Cambridge Weight Plan product each day.

That said, the diet can certainly kick start your motivation and weight loss and may well have an important role to play if you are obese and find that you cannot lose the weight via healthy eating and exercise.

The biggest challenge of the Cambridge Weight Diet will be sticking to it over the long term. The sheer boredom and monotony of liquid meal replacement foods may make your motivation wane; no matter how nutritionally viable the products are, it can leave you craving solid food.

Far be it for us to recommend cheating, but you may find it easier and more realistic to allow yourself the odd addition to the diet now and again and just accept that the weight loss will slow a little.

Where to Buy:

The Cambridge Weight Plan is only available through Cambridge Weight Plan consultants and is not available over the internet or anywhere else. Find a consultant at www.CambridgeWeightPlan.com.

Private slimming clinics have been discovered handing out potentially dangerous weight loss drugs.

Two of the pills being doled out by private clinics in England are phentermine and diethylpropion, comparable to amphetamines. Both were outlawed in the UK in the year 2000 amid concerns about heart disease.

The drugs were subsequently reintroduced as a result of legal action from the manufacturer, but have since been shunned on the NHS due to safety concerns. Private doctors are also urged not to provide them.

However, in a worrying discovery that may be putting patients at risk, the Care Quality Commission found six separate clinics giving out the two drugs, without alerting patients to any possible side effects.

Some doctors hadn’t even checked their patients’ blood pressure readings or weight before giving out the tablets, even though phentermine and diethylpropion had previously been associated with heart problems.

In another case, the now shut down Diet Centre in Cambridgeshire allowed an unqualified nurse to dole out slimming pills, while Dr Anthony Adam Schiff in Newbury and New Leaf Health in Leeds were given warning notices.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) also cited ‘major concerns’ with three other clinics, but is worried this is just the tip of the iceberg and that many of the 80 registered private weight loss clinics in England may be handing out potentially dangerous medication as well.

The diet industry is worth £2 billion in England alone, not surprising when you consider that some centres charge monthly fees of £80 and registration costs of £20.

One dieter who suffered side effects as a result of taking slimming pills dispensed by a private clinic complained of insomnia, shortness of breath and palpitations.

Josy Lofthouse, a 52-year-old 5ft mother of two from North London, was given a month’s supply and was only told that they could make her feel depressed.

She told the Daily Mail: “I became hyperactive and a raging insomniac. I learned afterwards that the drugs were amphetamine-based, like those taken illegally by young ravers who want to party all night without getting tired.

“Worst of all, I developed terrifying and constant heart palpitations that I couldn’t control. By the end of the first week on the tablets I’d lost a few pounds, but I was too frightened to continue.”

Mrs Lofthouse, who wanted to go from a size 16 to a size 12, says she lost the weight anyway via a healthy eating and exercise plan.

A spokesman for the CQC said: “We would urge anyone who has concerns about medicines that they’ve been prescribed or information they’ve been given by a slimming clinic to contact their GP – but also to tell CQC.”

Demand for weight loss supplement raspberry ketone has shot up after the influential U.S. show Dr Oz branded it a ‘miracle fat burner’.

Made from raspberries with natural ingredients so it has ‘no side-effects’, raspberry ketone is a fairly recent discovery from a humble berry already known for its antioxidant benefits and is proving interesting to the diet and weight loss world, especially so now that Dr Oz has featured it on his show.

In typical style, products approved and given the thumbs up by Dr Oz, full name Dr Mehmet Oz, Professor of Surgery at Columbia University, tend to have their profiles raised considerably.

According to pharmacist Dr Sarah G Khan, raspberry ketones really do appear to burn fat and increase metabolism by increasing the body’s norepinephrine levels and raising the body’s temperature. At the same time, she believes raspberry ketones help to lower glucose levels; the less glucose circulating in the body, the less likely it will be converted into stored glycogen.

The raspberry ketone enzyme would seem to directly interact with the fat cells in the body.

Dr Oz used visual aids to explain the impact of the raspberry ketones on fat cells. In a particularly intriguing demonstration, he used balloons to illustrate fat cells and viewers saw them shrink in a tub of liquid nitrogen – intended to imitate the impact of the raspberry ketones. The balloons then expanded again when they were taken out of the liquid nitrogen.

He also showed before and after pictures of two women who had taken the raspberry ketone supplements. Both showed significant weight loss.

Dr Oz made no bones about the fact that the raspberry ketone supplement should be used alongside a healthy diet and exercise regime, but excited dieters by saying it could help with weight loss by “tricking the body into thinking it’s thin.”

He stressed that the supplement would probably only be effective for a short period of time, and weight maintenance afterwards would require a healthy diet and exercise.

Thanks to Dr Oz, raspberry ketone looks set to be the next hottest supplement taking the diet and fitness world by storm.

Raspberry Ketone supplements can be purchased in the UK online at Evolution-Slimming.com and HealthSpark.co.uk.

** Raspberry ketone may not be suitable for certain people with different health conditions, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart issues, asthma and anyone on antidepressants or anxiety medication.

She has been described as a ‘wickedly funny, brutally honest, pint-size, potty-mouthed spitfire’ by Rolling Stone magazine, and Kelly Osbourne has certainly had her share of life’s drama.
Certainly profane at times but never boring, she shot to fame in MTV reality show The Osbournes with parents Sharon and Ozzy and the rest of her dysfunctional family.

Bearing her soul on TV at just 17 years old, as she was when The Osbournes first aired, can’t have been easy; indeed Kelly has described it as ‘stressful’.

However, since the show ended, she has made the headlines as much for her yo-yo dieting and much publicised battle with prescription drug Vicodin, in which she went to rehab three times, as for anything her family have done.

Now she is making headlines of another sort – for losing up to 50 pounds in weight, and, unusually for Kelly, keeping it off. She admits she hasn’t been the best role model for healthy living in the past, but all of that is behind her now as she embraces a healthier lifestyle.

She has been keen to share her weight loss secrets with fans and fellow dieters alike, being characteristically blunt and honest about her former problems with food and how she has finally won her weight loss battles…

Kelly Osbourne on Being an Emotional Eater

It was obvious that even from a young age Kelly struggled with her weight. What may not have been quite so obvious to those of us watching from the side-lines, however, is that she also suffered from bouts of depression and emotional eating.

Growing up in the public eye was particularly tough. Kelly was often teased by the press for her weight, with the result that she ended up hating herself.

“I was called fat and ugly in the press almost my entire life,” Kelly told Shape magazine in 2010. “I understand that being judged by others comes with the territory, but it broke my heart and ruined my self-esteem.

“It sets you up to hate yourself in a huge way. I was so angry about the things people said about me. I truly believe it’s the main reason I turned to Vicodin and ended up in rehab three times. I just hated myself.”

After the drugs came the food. She admitted that after she left rehab, she turned to food to take the pain away, bingeing whenever she felt down.

“I’d order a pizza and eat my emotions away,” she said. The only result was that she got fatter and fatter, which made her hate herself more.

It was only when she signed up for Dancing with the Stars in 2009 that she came to realise just how bad her diet really was. She couldn’t understand why she felt so bad in rehearsals, why she was feeling sick or even why she wasn’t losing any weight despite the gruelling dance workouts, when the reality was that she was gorging on French fries and pizza all day.

Her diet left her no energy to join in with rehearsals or to commit in the way that she wanted to. That’s when her Dancing with the Stars dance partner, Louis van Amstel, came to her rescue. He taught her about healthy eating and encouraged her to work out six hours a day in order to get fit.

“He made me eat turkey burgers and salads and explained to me that a high-protein, low-carb diet would keep me energised,” she said. “Then I started losing weight and realized, ‘Oh, it’s true what they say: Diet and exercise really work!’”

Dancing with the Stars was the beginning of Kelly’s rebirth as she lost 20 pounds during her time on the show.

Kelly Osbourne on Crazy Fad Diets

Of course, her impressive Dancing with the Stars weight loss wasn’t the first time Kelly had lost weight, though it was certainly the most enduring. Kelly admits to being a victim of fad diets in the past.

She lost nearly 40 pounds on the Blood Type Diet but, as any nutritionist could have told her, she gained it all back before the 2009 dance show.

In her earlier desperation to lose weight, she also tried other extreme tactics, such as taking ADHD medicine that was also meant to suppress the appetite, or taking diet pills. She also starved herself until she felt sick and was shaking, and tried the Atkins Diet but “had to eat so much meat and cheese, I hated it. No vegetables. I felt dirty when I ate like that.”

Her new found knowledge of diet and exercise gained from her time on Dancing with the Stars, however, has stayed with her and she has since gone on to build on that success and lose even more weight. What’s more, she has now learnt how to keep the weight off as well.

“I’ve completely changed the way I eat since doing Dancing with The Stars,’ she told U.S. magazine Life & Style.

Kelly Osbourne’s Diet Tips

After she finished Dancing with the Stars, Kelly was horrified to discover the weight was slowly starting to creep back on and decided to get serious with her health.

Now her diet focuses on being low-carb and sugar-free, concentrating on protein and vegetables.

She cites her diet secrets as portion control and no longer bingeing, combined with being active.

She no longer eats chips, pizza, cookies or drinks soda all day long, preferring instead salads, egg white omelettes, turkey burgers and grilled chicken. She shares her tips for healthy but fulfilling snacks, listing sugar-free jelly, sliced cucumbers and apple as her preferred snacks for mid-morning and evening.

She is adamant, however, that ‘a little of what you fancy does you good.’ “If I want a piece of cake I’m going to eat a f***ing piece of cake,” Kelly says in her typically forthright way. “You just have to learn your boundaries.”

She isn’t afraid to indulge now and again, with pizza and Brie her favourite treats, but she says: “Now, when I’m full? I stop eating! It may have taken me years to figure it out, but I’ve finally learnt how to do it right.”

It no doubt helps that she doesn’t have junk food in her house anymore.

One of Kelly’s biggest diet secrets, however, is a humble apple… half of which she eats just before she goes to bed.

Kelly says: “They say you should never eat before you go to bed but a trick I’ve learnt is to eat just a little bit of something that has no carbs and no sugar in it before you go to sleep because it keeps your metabolism going. I’ve found just having a tiny little snack - like half an apple or something like that - before you go to sleep really helps.”

Kelly Osbourne’s Exercise Regime

For someone who has lost 50 pounds and is doing an impressive job of keeping that weight off long-term, it’s refreshing to hear Kelly admit that she ‘hates working out’ … and, like many of us when we first start a new exercise regime, used to detest seeing herself in the mirror.

“I would look at myself and think, ‘Ugh!’ I was miserable. To get to the gym—when you already don’t like yourself—is really hard.”

She refused to accept defeat, however, and took little steps to make going to the gym fun.

“I started wearing cute outfits and putting on a little bit of makeup. And as vain as it sounds, it really helped me because eventually I stopped hating the way I looked.”

Since then, she hasn’t let anything stop her from taking the exercise she needs to keep in great shape. She has kept up her dancing since appearing on Dancing with the Stars and was also a fan of Pilates.

“Pilates is amazing, my posture is so much better and I’m even starting to get muscles on my tummy - it’s incredible,” she said.

She also took up the fat-burning exercise, the Bar Method, for a while and credits it for sculpting her body to look even better than it did in her Dancing with the Stars days. The Bar Method combines interval training with muscle-shaping isometrics and dance conditioning to target all the major muscle groups and improve posture.

Kelly told Us Weekly that she took a 60-minute class three times a week. “Not every day,” she said. “I don’t have that kind of dedication! Working out sucks. It’s miserable. You sweat and you stink, but then you’re done — and you see that just taking an hour three times a week can change you so much. It becomes addictive.”

After that, she upped her exercise regime to work with trainer Sarah Hagaman in Los Angeles. She did strength training three days a week and 30 minutes of running on the treadmill the other four days.

In addition, she has also recently got hooked on exercise class plyometrics, an exercise regime intended to improve the power in your muscles.

“It’s a killer—it hurts so much. But when you walk out of there, you’re like, ‘I can’t believe I just did that and my body looks this good.’”

There’s no doubt Kelly now takes her exercise regime very seriously, and the results speak for themselves.

At her heaviest, she was a UK size 18, a lot of weight for a petite 5ft 2in woman to be carrying around. Now she is staying steady on the scales at a UK size 6-8 and she is so much happier with her life.

She’s endearingly upfront about her love for her new figure and is clearly delighted with the way she looks now, even going so far as to tweet pictures of her very trim stomach. The days of being picked on, humiliated and bullied for her weight are long behind her.

She told Shape magazine: “Ultimately, I’m really glad I lost the weight the way I did. I never thought in a million years I’d be that healthy girl who wakes up every morning to exercise. After being called ‘cherubic and chubby,’ I’m rocking a bikini!”

She adds: “’Everyone always asks ‘What is the secret?’ But there really is no secret. It is the old fashioned way of making a commitment to yourself and waking up every day and doing it.”

A person’s penchant for fatty food may be influenced by their genes, say researchers.

Researchers from several prominent universities in the U.S. say people with particular versions of the CD36 gene may be predisposed to fatty foods more than people with other types of the gene. That’s because researchers believe they may find the taste of fatty foods creamier and more enjoyable than others.

The breakthrough research may explain why some people find it hard to stick to low-fat diets, and may one day help them to select diets that are attainable. The researchers suggest the results may even allow food manufacturers to develop better tasting low-fat foods.

In animals, the CD36 gene is important for the capacity to detect and choose fat. This ability may once have been useful in humans many years ago, but now carries the potential for obesity. The new study is the first one to show its significance in humans.

Kathleen Keller, assistant professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State University, says: “We have demonstrated for the first time that people who have particular forms of the CD36 gene tend to like higher fat foods more and may be at greater risk for obesity compared to those who do not have this form of the gene.”

The researchers studied 317 African-American men and women, identified for their ethnic group’s vulnerability to obesity.

They were all given Italian salad dressings with differing amounts of canola oil, rich in fatty acids. The volunteers were then asked to evaluate the dressings for fat content, creaminess and oiliness. They also collected saliva samples to establish which form of the gene CD36 they had.

The findings show that those with the AA version of the gene – estimated to be 21 per cent of the population – regarded the dressings as ‘creamier’ than their counterparts. A questionnaire asking about their food tastes also revealed they liked oily products, such as cooking oil, olive oil, salad dressings and preferred half cream and half milk (half and half) more than their non AA gene counterparts.

Keller, who worked with scientists from Columbia, Cornell and Rutgers universities, published the study in the Obesity journal.

She added: “It is possible that the CD36 gene is associated with fat intake and therefore obesity through a mechanism of oral fat perception and preference. In other words, our results suggest that people with certain forms of the CD36 gene may find fat creamier and more enjoyable than others. This may increase their risk for obesity and other health problems.

“Our results may help explain why some people have more difficulty adhering to a low-fat diet than other people and why these same people often do better when they adopt high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets such as the Atkins diet.
“We hope these results will one day help people select diets that are easier for them to follow. We also think the results could help food developers create better tasting low-fat foods that appeal to a broader range of the population.”

Good For: According to the experts, not very much. However they do admit that you can lose weight on this diet in the short term.

Overview:

It’s not a good sign when the British Dietetic Association lists the Blood Group Diet as one of the five worst celebrity diets to avoid in 2012. It certainly doesn’t have a good opinion of the diet, which claims that you can lose weight by eating specific food (and avoiding others) relative to your blood group, and no amount of celebrity endorsement from the likes of Cheryl Cole and Courtney Cox-Arquette is going to make it change its mind.

So how is the diet supposed to work?

Creator of the Blood Group Diet, Dr Peter D’Adamo, naturopath and author of Eat Right For Your Blood Type, believes blood types determine how our body breaks down different nutrients. In a supposedly scientific theory, he bases his diet on the notion that blood groups O, A, B and AB each have their own antigen markers, helping the body determine what is alien or not. He believes this marker reacts poorly with particular foods and causes health concerns.

He believes that digestion is also determined by our blood type and that it is much easier if you eat the right foods for your body (which is again based on your blood). As such, you will lose weight.

Sample Foods

So, which foods are right for our blood type? Well, Dr D’Adamo believes our blood types developed at different rates in history; as such, we should eat what our ancestors would have been eating at the time.

This means that all those people in blood group O, for instance, the most common blood type in the UK and supposedly the oldest, should live on protein and meat, as their ancestors did. This means a high meat and fish intake, no dairy, wheat or grains. Nuts, seeds, eggs and certain vegetables and fruits are allowed; cereals, bread, beans, pasta and rice are not.

Blood type A was supposedly identified at the time our ancestors began living a vegetarian-only diet. As such, they should eat vegetarian, with no dairy products allowed. Grains, vegetables, pasta, rice, fruit and beans are acceptable.

Those with blood type B are the lucky ones; their blood type was supposedly identified when our ancestors began a nomadic existence, leaving their farms and travelling the land. As such, they are allowed to eat dairy, meat, grains and vegetables but should avoid processed foods and eat only a small amount of carbs.

Finally, those with AB blood apparently had ancestors who were responsible for helping humans move to modern times; as such, they are allowed to follow a combination of the foods applicable for both group A and group B blood types. This is particularly confusing when you consider that type As are vegetarians (and can’t eat dairy), while type Bs can eat both meat and dairy. Apparently, the best way around this is to eat a mostly vegetarian diet with some meat, fish and dairy occasionally.

If you’re thinking this diet sounds a little faddy, you’d be right. The short fact of the matter is that most experts agree that Dr D’Adamo’s theory is absolute nonsense.

Pros:

• You will almost certainly lose weight simply because the diet is very tightly calorie restricted.
• It’s hard to find many pros about this diet, but it does at least recommend cutting out processed foods, alcohol, excess coffee and chocolate – all of which is good advice.
• No need to count calories, points or weigh food.

Cons:

• Critics say there is no evidence to back up Dr D’Adamo’s claims that blood type influences digestion.
• Could lead to significant deficiencies such as calcium, says the British Dietetic Association.
• Particularly worrying is that fact that the two most popular blood types in the UK are groups O and A. These groups risk calcium deficiencies because of a lack of dairy (risking osteoporosis) and low iron intake because of a lack of meat (risking anaemia).
• Very difficult diet to stick to as it is so strict.
• Unsustainable in the long run; once you start to eat normally, the weight will creep back on.
• Nutritionists will tell you that cutting out food groups completely is never a healthy approach to weight loss.
• You’ll need to know your blood type before you can even begin this diet.
• Only those with blood type B are allowed the nearest thing to a normal diet—unfortunately, only one in 10 people have this blood type.
• Critics also refute the theory that blood types can be connected to certain diseases, as Dr D’Adamo also postulates.

Checklist:

Alcohol: Not allowed.
Caffeine: Urged to cut back.
Family Friendly: Certainly not if anyone in the family has a different blood type.
Eating Out: Very unlikely.

Exercise

It’s also recommended that different blood groups take up different exercises, according to what their ancestors may have been doing at the time. Group O, for instance, should take up energetic aerobic exercise, such as running (all the better to catch those animals), while group A should opt for yoga or golf. Group B people should aim for hiking (their ancestors walked all over the land) while the confused ABs should take calming exercise interspersed with hiking or other moderately intense activities such as swimming or tennis.

Summary:

We don’t like diets that try to sound as if they’re based on science, when really they’re based on science fiction, and the Blood Group Diet is one such programme.

Certain people may well fall for the claims in Dr D’Adamo’s book Eat Right For Your Blood Type: The Individualized Diet Solution to Staying Healthy, Living Longer & Achieving Your Ideal Weight, and risk health problems over the longer term.

Nevertheless, despite all the pseudo and downright misleading science, people are still flocking to the Blood Group Diet, possibly because it does show weight loss results and the idea of personalised diets are always in favour.

If you are adamant that you want to try the Blood Group Diet, however, we can’t stop you. Just be sure to only try it for a short period of time, say a week, in order to avoid the health dangers.

Where to Buy:

You can buy Dr D’Adamo’s book at Amazon.co.uk.

If you want to resist junk food, put it off until later, just make sure you don’t specify when.

That’s the advice from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology who say delaying gratification until an unspecified time may help you avoid giving in to temptation at all, or help you to eat less of it when you do eventually yield.

In contrast, telling yourself that you will ‘wait for dessert’ or ‘won’t eat until tonight’ – in essence, specifying when you will eat that doughnut or that chocolate bar – does little to prevent you from snacking.

Giving a nebulous, vague or imprecise time to indulge, however, helps to keep temptation at bay.

That’s because postponing the temptation doesn’t encourage guilt over an indulgence, nor does it provoke thoughts of laborious abstinence – both of which have been associated with later bingeing, says psychologist Nicole Mead, of the Catolica-Lisbon School of Business and Economics in Portugal.

The researchers tested their theories on volunteers who were carrying out various duties. All were provided with bowls of M&Ms; one group was told to munch the M&Ms when they wanted, another were forbidden from eating them while a third group were told they could chomp on the M&Ms later if they wanted.

After the experiment was supposedly finished, the M&Ms were brought back and all were allowed to eat them.

The first group of volunteers who had been allowed to eat the M&Ms ate an additional 5.19 grams of the chocolate on top of what they had already eaten. Those who had been forbidden from eating the M&Ms ate 9.81grams, while those who had been told they could eat the M&Ms later if they wanted ate just 5.08grams – the smallest amount of all the groups.

The experiment echoed throughout the following week as well. Those volunteers who had been prohibited from eating the M&Ms ate chocolate 4.48 times on average during the following week. Those who had been allowed to eat the M&Ms ate chocolate 3.18 times more that week, while in contrast, those who had been told they could eat the M&Ms later, ate chocolate just 1.15 times more.

“Participants in the ‘don’t eat’ condition ate practically double the amount of M&Ms as those in the ‘wait until later’ condition,” said Mead.

She added: “Postponement has real implications for everyday consumption. It encourages self-control.”

Another experiment, where 105 students in a Netherlands high school were given crisps and put into three groups in the same way as the M&M study, showed the same findings. In addition, an extra group were told they could opt for one of the three eating options themselves.

At the end of the week, those students who held off eating the crisps until later, had eaten the least amount of crisps – and crucially, hadn’t replaced the crisps with other snack food. The results were the same whether they had been told not to eat the crisps until later or whether they had chosen that food group themselves.

“It’s a cooling-off strategy,” theorised Mead.

The key is not to vow to treat yourself at any specified time, says Mead. In another study with cookies, for instance, those who promised they would eat the cookies at the end of the study ate the same amount as those who were allowed to eat them earlier.

Mead does admit, however, that further research needs to be done to establish whether this technique would work in a deliberate weight loss setting.

Good For: A personalised diet that doesn’t feel like a diet.

Overview:

It’s not often that a computer programme feels specialised but LeDiet certainly takes enough factors into account to give a truly personal diet plan for you. Based on the brainchild of nutritionist Prof Marian Apfelbaum who created an innovative computer programme that could personalise diets based upon thousands of factors as long ago as 1975, LeDiet is its modern equivalent.

Built on the ethos of providing successful diets without restricting calories unnecessarily or creating a hard-to-follow diet with an unhappy dieter, the online diet system first takes you through an in-depth questionnaire about your eating, diet and exercise habits, as well as your wishes and statistics.

From your results, it identifies the best diet for you and provides a highly personalised food plan based on your eating preferences, allergies, eating habits, lifestyle and wishes. It promises to provide a diet that reduces the frustrations of constant eating restrictions by making sure nothing is banned or heavily restricted. Instead of banning food, it controls portion size and frequency of meals.

Diets available include the Balanced diet, where you reach your ideal weight at your own pace; the Express programme, where you start to lose weight very quickly and the Anti-Cellulite diet where you are taught how to eat enough fibre and protein but only a small amount of simple sugars, salt and lipids. The LeDiet 45 Years programme helps you to cope with weight problems associated with ageing, while the After Baby programme helps you regain your healthy weight while taking into account the needs of post-pregnancy.

Pros:

• No forbidden foods.
• The questionnaire is detailed enough to allow the software to gain a thorough understanding of your likes, dislikes, habits and wishes.
• The eating plans are customised to your own wishes and tastes.
• LeDiet boasts impressive partners such as Yahoo! Health, NetDoctor, WebMD and AOL France.
• Flexible enough to adjust to your lifestyle (active or sedentary), your personal food tastes or allergies, and how often you prefer to eat a day (prefers three to four meals a day, breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack).
• Suitable for those people who are both over and under-weight.
• Rated the number one self-help weight loss diet by the Consumer Association in 2006.
• As well as tailoring your diet to help you lose weight, it also considers any nutritional imbalances you may be suffering from.
• Diet focuses on weekly progress and not daily, taking a broader view of weight loss, allowing the dieter to relax.
• According to its own survey of people who had followed LeDiet for at least a month, the average weight loss was 7lbs per month.
• You can take the questionnaire up front without paying and learn which diet you should be following before paying for it.

Cons:

• You must be prepared to fill in the lengthy questionnaire first.
• The food allergy section lacked some common allergens.
• No exercise programme provided.
• Lack of information, or diet samples, on its website.
• Not suitable for diabetics.

Health Warnings:

Not suitable for breastfeeding or pregnant women or anyone with a condition that requires specialised dietary care, such as diabetes, hypercholesterolaemia or a salt free diet, for instance.

Checklist:

Alcohol: Yes as long as you specify that you want it including in your meal plans up front.
Caffeine: As long as it’s black.
Eating Out: Yes, with a little bit of imagination.
Family-friendly meals: Yes.

Exercise:

No mention of exercise programmes provided.

Summary:

Many of the more mainstream diets claim to be personalised to your needs and wishes, but few feel as complete as LeDiet. The sheer amount of information it takes into account, while initially time consuming, promises a diet that should work for you.

While LeDiet may have only five main diet ‘types’ to choose from, the fact that it asks you for your wishes, diet intentions, preferences and traditional habits suggests that it goes much further than simply choosing a basic diet. It certainly eschews the ‘one diet fits all’ approach. The pricing seems reasonable for the personalisation that you get.

Where to Buy:

You can sign up at the official website at www.LeDiet.co.uk. The cost is £16 per month.

Scientists have claimed that sugar is so toxic that it should be regulated like cigarettes and alcohol.

The astonishing claims, published in the journal Nature, say that sugary food and drinks lead to obesity, cancer, heart disease, liver problems and contribute to up to 35 million deaths each year.
It is so poisonous that it should be controlled through legislation and taxation, they say.

The U.S.-based authors say that obesity is now a bigger worldwide problem than malnutrition, and state that there are now more obese people across the world than malnourished ones. They link this to the fact that sugar consumption has trebled in the past 50 years and stress that sugar not only makes us fat but changes our metabolism.

The result of eating too much sugar – raising blood pressure, damaging the liver, unsettling hormones – mirrors the impact of drinking too much alcohol which, they stress, is made from distilling sugar.

As such, their article, The Toxic Truth About Sugar, complains that sugar is too easily available, easily abused and is toxic to society.

They say: “A little is not a problem but a lot kills – slowly.”

The scientists say it is now time to turn attention to sugar as once we did smoking and airbags in cars in order to protect the public health and the next generation.

Led by Robert Lustig of California University, a childhood obesity expert, the scientists recommend doubling the price of fizzy drinks via taxation, restricting their sale to the over 17s or 18s only and introducing new regulations to deal with school vending machines.

They favour such draconian measures as opposed to education or teaching children about diet and exercise as they believe the latter is likely to be ineffective.

That’s perhaps not surprising when you consider that most people don’t know that a mars bar, for instance, contains 60g of sugar per 100g (the recommended daily allowance of sugar for women is 90g) or that Heinz tomato ketchup contains 23.7g per 100ml. Likewise, a can of coca cola contains 10.1g while a Starbucks skinny peach and raspberry muffin can contain as much as 43.6g of sugar.

Says Dr Laura Schmidt, of California University: “We’re not talking about prohibition. We’re not advocating a major imposition of the government into people’s lives. What we want is actually to increase people’s choices by making foods that aren’t loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get.”

The article stresses that responsibility primary lies with the food companies to make healthier products, though the food and drink industry claim the focus on sugar is demonizing and unrealistic.

For decades, women have worried about their appearance and weight and it now seems that men are equally as body conscious.

According to a new survey, four out of five British men are unhappy with their bodies and are concerned about their beer bellies and lack of muscles in particular.

The online study from the University of the West of England (UWE) questioned 384 British men with an average age of 40 and discovered that at least a third of them would trade one year of their life if they were able to get an ideal weight or body shape.

Almost two thirds of men who took the survey – 63 per cent – complained that their stomachs, chests and arms weren’t muscular enough; in a shocking reversal of gender roles, however, a quarter of those wouldn’t go to the gym to exercise because they were too embarrassed by their appearance.

The desire for more muscles may well explain why one in five men was on a high protein diet, and nearly one in three were using protein supplements.

The findings from the UWE’s Centre for Appearance Research also revealed that men now talk to one another about their body issues. Eighty per cent of respondents said they regularly talked about their bodies with male friends.

Dr Phillippa Diedrichs, from the Centre for Appearance Research, nicknamed these male peer discussions as ‘body talk’ and said: “Body talk reinforces the unrealistic beauty ideal which reinforces leanness and muscularity. This is traditionally seen as an issue for women but our research shows that men are feeling the pressure to conform too.”

Central YMCA commissioned the survey and chief executive, Rosi Prescott, added: “Historically conversation about your body has been perceived as something women do, but it is clear from this research that men are also guilty of commenting on one another’s bodies; and in many cases this is having a damaging effect.

“The high levels of body talk that we have found in men are symptomatic of a growing obsession with appearance.”

Experts in eating disorders have since called for men to be included in body image programmes as well as women.