COVER STORY

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Did you overindulge this Christmas? If so,

suggests spending the next 21 days following Annie Deadman’s fitness plan...

The first thing that strikes me when I meet Annie Deadman is how incredibly normal she is. I am expecting a media-savvy Lululemon leggings-clad fitness “guru” who will churn out Instagram-friendly sound bites and make me feel fat and inadequate.

Instead, I find a 58-year-old woman-next-door who lives what she teaches, which is that any busy midlifer – woman or man – can learn to eat better and move more without too much sacrifice or effort. Energetic, practical and a touch scatty, she’s generous almost to a fault; despatching me with herbal tea and a pack of chicken sausages after a training session in her home with the instructions: “Eat more protein!”

We first meet at the Telegraph’s offices as I prepare to embark on the workout and diet regime detailed in her new book The 21-Day Blast Plan. The idea is to chat to her a couple of times over the next three weeks. I moot a workout together. “Oh brilliant!” she claps her hands in delight. “So you actually want to do the whole thing, do you?” I nod. I may be busy, but I am a no-half-measures type of person: if I am going to test out her plan, I am going to do it properly.

There are times over the next three weeks when I regret this. But I am on a mission: I want to lose about half a stone and hoik myself out of my junk-diet-no-exercise rut. I am also a little sceptical – will Deadman really put me through my paces? She looks amazing; toned not skinny; it’s just that she doesn’t look like the stereotypical personal trainer. Where are the Lululemon leggings?

How quick am I to judge. Her HIIT (high intensity interval training) sessions, which take about 20 to 30 minutes, may be designed to do in your living room, but, if you follow them to the letter, they make you sweat and work you hard. The programme is tough, but it’s straightforward – there’s no alienating jargon, but it’s not patronising. Deadman stresses you’re not expected to master loads of complex moves, but to “just have a go”. I do the workouts in my sports bra and pants – needs must, you get hot. Apologies to the postman who is probably wishing he could unsee the sight of me star-jumping in my underwear.

Deadman’s approach has all the hallmarks of having been devised by a woman who found healthy eating and fitness a little later on in life. “I was in my late 30s, just had my second daughter, and went to enrol with a new GP,” she says. “And this nurse looks at me, and says, completely out of the blue, ‘you could do with losing a stone’. In my head I thought ‘damn you!’, but her words stuck.”

At first Deadman did what many new to exercise tend to do – she zipped outdoors for a jog, “which was torture”, eventually enrolling in classes on a path to getting in shape. She started learning about health and fitness, booking herself on nutrition and personal training courses, and eventually setting herself up to teach clients oneon-one. After the break-up of her marriage, she decided she needed to earn cash so began formulating her Blast Plan online.

Success arrived by accident – unbeknown to her, a local journalist had enrolled on her plan and lost two stone over six months. “There I was, trying to get my website off the ground, when one day, completely out of the blue, I get a text from a friend saying I was in the paper! I couldn’t believe it.”

Book publishers came calling shortly after, perhaps spying a gap in the market and, indeed, if that was their motive, I’d agree that Deadman is different to most fitness evangelists. A woman in her 50s who has been there, done it, got the T-shirt, she’s familiar with the barriers that stop midlifers getting in shape: namely full-on jobs and a busy family life: “so many things get in the way of looking after yourself ”.

Her eating plan (“it’s not a diet, it’s about retraining yourself to eat better,” she says) is designed with this in mind. It follows a “cook spag bol for the kids, but leave out the pasta for your own meal” ethos. It’s high in protein and good fats, low in carbohydrates; plus it’s dairy-, sugar- and wheat-free. Caffeine is allowed – one cup a day only.

You follow two simple lists: the first is a (long) checklist of ingredients you can eat anytime; the second, a list of carbs you can add to the first meal you have after a workout ( both lists below). There’s no calorie counting or weighing out of ingredients.

The most important thing, Deadman stresses straight away, is that you need to follow the whole programme – don’t skip the workouts and only do the food bit as there’s solid science why this won’t work, and vice versa. “Your body needs carbohydrates for energy, but too much of it creates a flood of the hormone insulin that turns it into glucose. If this glucose isn’t used up through exercise, it will be stored as fat. Basically you can never tell when your hormones are uneven, but keeping alcohol, caffeine and sugar to a minimum 80 per cent of the time will help with not only fat loss, it will balance out

one piece of fruit at any point during a workout day. This is in addition to the portion of low-carb fruit featured on the Anytime list of foods, and to your post-workout meal with carbohydrates.

BREAD MADE WITHOUT WHEAT

Rye bread and other good wheat-free varieties are permitted.

‘Amaranth, sorghum and teff sound like posh children’s names but have impressive nutritional stats’