My craziest regime came from a Tarot card reader

LIKE many women, my weight has yo-yoed up and down most of my adult life. Growing up with a mother who was paranoid about her own weight, combined with a grandmother who fed us daily love through huge portions of yummy Jewish meals, resulted in my divided attitude towards food.

Although skinny as a teen and a young woman, my body started growing after three pregnancies and continued after menopause. Round about then, I started a mad medley of every kind of diet you can think of. Cabbage soup, pineapple, watermelon, grapes and lemon water, and many others. But the strangest one I have ever tried was recommended to me during my post-Ab Fab search for spiritual happiness, by a wise old woman who lived

in Sussex. She gave me a Tarot reading and, while looking at my future, told me we were being joined by her spirit guide, who was anxious that I detox my body of all its bad habits from my old PR days. As I certainly wanted to lose weight, I was all ears.

The ‘wise woman’ told me I should eat nothing but brown rice — for three weeks!

I had enjoyed a lifestyle of smart restaurants, where I ate rich cuisine with good wine, and while I had often accompanied it with a simpler macrobiotic diet that contained brown rice, the thought of only eating brown rice filled me with horror.

The spirit guide also suggested I bury my watch in the garden for the three weeks and let time run its own course. By then, I was burnt out from 20 years running a fashion PR company, while trying to be the perfect mother, wife, daughter, sister and friend. The thought of not looking at my watch to see where I needed to be next sounded good.

So I started cooking up bowls and bowls of brown rice. I ate it for breakfast, lunch, dinner and any other time I needed a snack.

I have to admit, I started cheating towards the end, adding greens and some soya sauce, but on the whole, I was loyal to my instructions and the weight did gradually come off.

Having now spoken to natural health and nutrition expert Clive de Carle, he explained that a diet of brown rice is simply too narrow and isn’t sufficiently nourishing — rice is a carbohydrate, which will eventually turn to sugar.

So would I ever do it again? Absolutely not. I have realised that, though I welcome a good detox every now and then, my body works best not on silly diets, but when I cut out sugar, wheat, alcohol and dairy products.

My detox guru Ursula Peer, who has just hosted a detox week for me in Mallorca, cooks delicious veggies and grains on which I fill up and still lose weight.

One thing she strongly advises, and which I know keeps the pounds at bay, is not to drink liquids when eating, as it stops the digestive process. It’s little habits such as this that keep the weight down for me now.