Would you spend £1,000 a week to lose a stone with Slim the Reaper?
She’s the whip-cracking Russian who’s TV’s toughest ever weight-loss guru. So...
‘I want them to cry. They cry by Wednesday’ ‘When did the British become so weak?’
lucrative gap in the market — she opened up one of her restored houses, which she was already running as a B&B with her late husband, to wannabe skinnies.
The ‘tough love’ approach might be a winning gimmick for the TV career (she’s already had a taste of that as a consultant on Channel 4’s The Fat Fighters), but she also deems it necessary.
The diet industry, she claims, is way too gently, gently. ‘You aren’t allowed to say people are “fat” any more, but why not? I call a broom a broom,’ she says. ‘People need me to be honest.’
Her actual regime does sound like it could come straight from the gulag. It’s not just cabbage on the menu — not that there is a menu. ‘There isn’t a menu. They eat what we tell them,’ she says. All manner of vegetables are either presented raw or slightly cooked.
‘It’s not a diet that should be followed long-term,’ she insists. ‘It’s a short, sharp shock, a kickstart. The intention is to shock the metabolism. It’s not just to do with weight loss but also to do with cleansing.’
Hence in her Slimmeria ‘hotel’, alcohol, caffeine and carbohydrates are forbidden. Treats include a few slices of apple (in the programme she is filmed telling kitchen staff to cut the slices thinner), although if your energy levels are really depleted she will allow a ‘magic raisin’. Yes, a single raisin.
She also advocates something she calls ‘window eating’ which, she explains, is about leaving a gap between meals. But when she says ‘gap’ she means ‘chasm’, given that guests stop eating at 6.30pm, and don’t have their next meal until 1pm the following day. Bedtime is a stringent 9pm and the wake-up call comes at 7.15. Exercise is a must. All guests are expected to do a two-hour walk every day.
To help them along, Galia strides along beside them, berating them for talking when their energy should be going into walking faster.
‘ Where is your sweat?’ she shrieks. ‘I don’t see sweat. You should be sweating lots.’
Does it work? Well, of course it works. Her fans (who include the actress Lisa Riley, who used Galia’s retreat to kick start her 12st weight loss) say that it works at miraclelevel. Galia claims that most clients who check in leave after a week having lost something in the region of a stone.
WE HAVE agreed not to reveal what the three guests who feature in the first episode of her new show lose, but suffice to say, it is astonishing.
‘Our record is 26lb in one week,’ she says. ‘That was a man who was quite overweight to start with.’
She shudders. ‘It does make you ask: “What sort of diet did he have before?”’
Is it healthy, though? Here’s where it gets trickier to assess. There are proven benefits to a diet that incorporates short periods of fasting — in that, Galia is correct. And there are trained staff on site at her retreat to make sure clients are safe.
What of Galia’s own qualifications? Galia is happy to admit she is qualification-free — and insists the regime is right for starting fatties down the road the slimness.
For the masochistic, maybe. And the monied. After all, who knew cabbages could cost so much?
Galia is unrepentant. ‘ It’s a system that works.’