Imogen Edwards-Jones has done everything she can to lose weight - except try out GTG's go-to nutritionist Amelia Freer
There are many irritating things that happen to you when you crash into your forties. The crow’s feet, the tramlines, the barcode lips and the knockers that flap in the breeze like empty Sainsbury’s bags, but it’s the extra lard that really annoys me.
Post-two children and more fertility drugs than an Octomum, I have an entire wardrobe I can’t fit into any more. Despite 1001 squat thrusts in the gym, I still have back fat, front fat, arm fat and bum fat that takes on its own momentum when I run. Which I tend not to do . Mainly for fear of being overtaken by my own arse as it careers ahead of me, totally out of control.
It’s the troughing, I hear your say. And you would, of course, be right. I am fond of food, usually quite bad food. When I was a child in the 70s, Grown Ups, I remember, didn’t really eat. They would inhale wine and fags and coffee and that seemed to be enough. They all wore Biba and bikinis and had the jutting hip-bones to make it work. But for some reason those habits were not passed on to me. Well, the wine, fags and coffee were, but in addition I also seem to need crisps, toast, toast and marmite, baked potatoes, mash, Twiglets, pasta, cheese, cheese biscuits, cheese on biscuits… I could go on. And on.
Anyway, I have tried to diet. Quite a few times actually. And quite a few diets. I have done The Scarsdale, the A-Plan, the F-Plan, the Slim Fast, I’ve spent many a flatulent week on the cabbage soup diet, and indeed the Liz Hurley watercress soup diet. I’ve made paint blister at 30 paces with my breath after three weeks on Atkins and I’ve done month after turgid month chewing galettes and oat-bran while on the Dukan, or the Do-can’t as it became known in our house. And still, still, I can’t get into my jeans without having to lie flat on the bed and hold my breath until I pass out. Even then I can only wear them for short periods of time as they bruise my hips and slowly cut off the circulation to my feet.
So when Get the Gloss suggested I go to see Amelia Freer ( www.freernutrition.com ), nutritionist to the stars and indeed this website, I was a little sceptical to say the least. If the trillion dollar diet industry had failed to ease my zip then how was one really rather attractive woman in West London going to make a blind bit of difference?
But Metabolic Balance®, the programme that Amelia uses, is a little different to the usual bowl of cabbage soup. Firstly, it involves a blood test where your sample is analysed with more rigour than an Olympic athlete and, using the results from your complete breakdown, she delivers a diet that is tweaked and completely fine-tuned to your hormone and metabolic level.
The list is comprehensive and very specific, so you might be allowed to eat spinach but not broccoli, anchovies but not haddock, and avocado but not watercress. All are consumed in small weighed amounts, with no snacking between meals and nothing to drink but water. The diet begins with a two day cleanse which involves steamed vegetables and absolutely no coffee. None. None at all. Not a cup. The one, the only thing that gets me through my day.
“So how much weight do you want to lose?” asks Amelia as she whips out her scales and her measuring tape. There is no cheating room here.
“Um, a stone? A stone and a half?”
“Right,” she nods, making a note.
“Oh!” I say, having expected her to fall over laughing at the ludicrousness of such a proposition. “You actually think that is doable? For me? Really? Me? Are you sure? Thin?” I could almost hear the heavenly choir bursting into an uplifting chorus as a scintilla of hope glinted on the dim and distant horizon of experience.
“Of course," she smiles. "If you stick to the plan."
To be continued…