Want to lose a few pounds? Try the Great Granny Diet!
‘EAT like your great-grandma’ should be the mantra for dieters, according to a top weight-loss surgeon who has watched thousands try – and fail – to shed the pounds.
NHS doctor Andrew Jenkinson advises avoiding seemingly healthy low-fat options in favour of traditional fare, including a fry-up breakfast.
He also advocates shunning supermarkets and heading to the local greengrocer’s, butcher’s and fishmonger’s shops.
Mr Jenkinson, a bariatric surgeon, said: ‘Imagine you are taking your great-grandmother around the shops. If there’s food she doesn’t recognise, don’t buy it.’
He has now written a book, Why We Eat (Too Much), based on what he has learned over his decades on the job – during which time he has spoken to 2,000 obese patients.
What they told him about dieting – an experience shared by millions – was ‘always the same story’, he said.
He added: ‘They all say they lose weight to begin with but then put it on again and end up heavier than they started.’
While crash diets might appear to work in the first few weeks, he explained, they usually backfire because they trick the body into believing it has to cope with a famine – and save energy.
As a result, weight loss stalls and eventually rebounds as the dieter is driven to eat more by powerful hunger hormones. They then end up blaming their lack of willpower, when the real culprit is a diet that is destined to fail.
Mr Jenkinson said a better approach is to ditch quick-fix solutions in favour of an oldfashioned approach – buying fresh food on a daily basis and cooking it yourself.
His book states: ‘My simple eating rule would be to try and buy all your food from the greengrocer’s (a traditional one that just sells fruit and vegetables), butcher’s (one that sells dairy products as well as fresh meat) and fishmonger’s.’
This will put dieters ‘on the right track’. And unless they avoid ‘industrialised’ modern foods that contain too much sugar, wheat and vegetable oil – which tend to promote hunger, not quell it – they will never achieve ‘sustained weight loss’.
Dieters should start the day with ‘a traditional full fry-up’ which will ‘set you up for the day’ and avoid mid-morning hunger pangs.
However, Mr Jenkinson does not pretend his approach is easy. Although he stresses it is not a ‘no-carb diet’, he does recommend reducing them – meaning no more toast with your morning eggs, bacon and sausage.
He added: ‘There should be no bread in the house. You can probably remove the bread bin as you won’t need this.’
Dieters must also make an hour or two a day to shop and cook from scratch – time often being wasted by ‘mindlessly watching Netflix or scrolling through social media feeds’.
‘Buy your food from a greengrocer’