Documentaries
First, the Christmas gluttony; next, the New Year’s resolution. Perhaps How to Lose Weight Well (Vibe, Sky 006, Sunday, 7.30pm) will help.
It’s a Channel 4 series, now in its second season, in which Dr Xand van Tulleken and dietitian Hala El-Shafie follow people on particular diets and also look into some of the products on the market, such as vitamin drips, placenta pills and so-called zero- and negative-calorie foods.
Diets covered include bone broth, green smoothie, clean eating, Weight Watchers, Dukan, DNA, South Beach, peanut butter, apples and
pears, and baby food. That last one, by the way, involves eating up to 14 jars of baby food a day.
The dieters are divided into “life-changers” and “crashers” – those who want to shed weight quickly for a particular event.
In episode one, two men want to lose weight for a darts tournament and a bride wants to lose weight for her wedding.
There’s no real forensic look at the science behind the diets, but the participants give a pretty clear indication of whether a diet is easy to stick to.
“The smoothie diet was a success for the first week and utterly miserable for the second week,” says Emilie. Meanwhile, her friend Harriet has this to say about the bone-broth diet: “I’m never doing it again, ever.”