Saturday 25 July 2015

THE RELUCTANT DIETER - Special Offer 99p

If every diet you have tried has  made you run for a Mars bar or dive into a 2 litre tub of ice cream this diet could well be the answer you have been looking for.  For the next 7 days, my book, the Reluctant Dieter's Guide to Health and Weight loss is on special offer on Amazon for 99p.
 
This is the simplest and most effective weight loss diet you will ever try, one that fits in with the life you lead, and one that gives effective, long lasting results.  It is a change for life, and one that will bring you rewards you have thus far only dreamed of.   
December 2013
 
December 2014
 
July 2015, Aged 58


I released my book, The Reluctant Dieter in January 2015, but have to admit I have been absolutely rubbish in following up my book, for the simple reason that my life has changed so dramatically I haven't had the time!  More of which to follow soon :).  Suffice to say, I haven't returned to my bad eating habits, and know that I never will again.  Why on earth would I eat something that would make me feel ill? And why didn't I ask myself that question 30+ years ago! 

Now, I no longer wait until after dark to replenish my fridge with comfort food and alcohol to numb the pain, I go out in daylight (no, I haven't melted, and thus far no flying house has landed on me), dressed up as if I am about to have a flirtatious lunch with Gerrard Butler in full 300 gear (him, not me), I shall be wearing a cute dress and a splendiferous hat

AGE 56
Almost a year ago, on the 8th August and my younger son's birthday, I realised that the best gift I could give him, his big brother and those I love, was my own strength and resilience.  All the negativity that was oozing from me was affecting everyone around me. I was the epitome of ill health, an overweight, middle aged frump that life had all but destroyed.  A heart attack or stroke waiting to happen.  I once turned up at the Doctors in 3D cinema glasses complaining about my blurred vision - I kid you not, I was a wreck.  Even my (lovely lady) GP used to give me a hug after each visit. 

I had lost the will to live and it was reflected in my bloated face and body.  For me, the answer to every question was not so much money, as more grub. Once my attitude towards food changed, the weight dropped off and it has stayed off.  I am now regularly bumping into old friends who knew me over 30 years ago, they are recognising the 'old Hut' (from a distance at least, ha ha, SAS (Smart Arsed son), says a satellite station on Jupiter), but whatever it is I am doing it is working!    

Almost a year on since I had my epiphany that anyone could lose weight if they really wanted to, I have remained svelte(ish) lol, and I haven't touched a sausage roll since :(  If my GP had said to me 30+ years ago, 'go for a walk every day', instead of handing me monthly prescriptions of antidepressants, I am sure my life would have taken an entirely different, and maybe less rocky path, doh!

Losing weight and regaining your health is not so much about food, but our attitude towards the food we eat, and our attitude towards ourselves.  We look for foods that will trigger happiness, rather than foods that will heal us mentally and physically. Cures for our minor and major ailments are all around us, they are on every supermarket shelf and getting dusty at the back of our own store cupboards!  We don't seem to realise that we don't have to give up ANY of those same taste sensations, melting moments, or hot diggidy dog kicks, we simply have to be more imaginative and inventive.  I don't say to myself 'I can't have a cream cake', I say 'there must be way, and I will find it!' ;) 

I have kind of given up eating in the same way as 'normal' people these days, though I could if I wanted, any meal can be as healthy as you want it to be, and the Law does not state your plate must be piled one mile high.  These days, I eat little and often and I try to keep my diet to 80% healthy stuff, fruit, veg, nuts, seeds, yoghurt etc, with a 20/30% leeway for passing temptations, this may have to be varied as I have just bought 3 gallons of ice cream* :() I still 'stand and stare' at the cream cake and pie sections of my local supermarket and drool and whine like a puppy at M&S food ads, but I remember how bad I felt, and how lonely I was and I head back to the fruit and veg aisle.  

My recommendations are, keep looking for the happy triggers, but be a bit more discerning.  Get your 'highs' from stuff that will give you more highs, the better you begin to feel, the less you will want to eat the Doritos and cream cakes that keep you confined to the sofa cyber shopping for a mobility scooter. A stroll around the block will put a glow in your cheeks and a smile on your face, far quicker than a handful of Prozac or a gallon of cheap cider.  I exercise, even when it hurts, maybe even especially when it hurts, because in a weird way, I kind of like it, it gives me a tangible enemy to fight. I will not be confined to an armchair, staring into space.  I think of myself as an 'old banger' - if you neglect it and allow it to sit idle for too long, all the parts start to seize up!     

When you begin to realise that ONLY YOU have control over your health, you can begin to see things differently.  No pill or doctor in the world can cure you if you continue scoffing the doughnuts and lying on the sofa like Andy Capp.  If you are getting older, of course your joints and bodily parts will creak and ache, they've been around a long time and new parts, by and large, are not generally available!  It really is a case of 'use it, or lose it'. 

The Reluctant Dieter' is a not a diet book with recipes per se. RD looks at why we eat the wrong things, what they are, what they are doing to us, and how we can change our attitude and enjoy the life we should be living.  I don't list recipes or rules (as if! rules are just made to be broken) and I don't ban anything.  When your mind is firmly set on losing weight and achieving your goal, your brain responds by making the correct choices.  When you realise how addictive the food you have been eating is, you honestly don't want to eat it, ever again.  OK, only occasionally, and in small quantities. 

When my mind was made up, I lost over 3 stone in 3 months and I did it sensibly and healthily.  I secretly wanted my GP to tell me I was eating far too few calories, but he didn't, he beamed and said 'carry on doing what you are doing'.  I am delighted to say, that my book has had a similar effect on a dear friend, she is now running marathons and her GP is recommending my book to her patients. 

The Reluctant Dieter's Guide shows you how to lose weight quickly and effectively, at minimal cost (99p as of Saturday 25th).  You don't need any fancy food or equipment, everything you need is easily to hand and available at your local shops.  If you love your grub (as I do), you will seek out and snazz up the abundance of healthy and superfoods that are all around us. Passion fruit squeezed over frozen yoghurt is every bit as satisfying as a large bear claw and it comes without the guilt.  I have plans for a Reluctant Dieter's recipe book shortly.

Meanwhile, if every weightloss diet you have tried has failed because you didn't like the foods, the points, the rules, then I urge you to try my reluctant diet, because it put you in total control. I show you painless and cost free ways and means in which to fit losing weight into your own personal lifestyle.  I discuss food and depression and the way in which they are horribly entwined.  How easy it is for your weight to spiral out of control, yet how easy it is to turn it all around.  Yes, I did say easy! 

The Reluctant Diet is a quick fix, I was dropping dress sizes by the fortnight, but it is also life changing - you learn about food as you shed the weight, and your appetite for the unhealthy stuff goes. You no longer see the pleasure in eating so much that you have to undo buttons, you want to leave a bit of space so you can try something else.  Once you begin to eat portions relative to your body's actual needs - including 7 a day fruit and veg, the tank remains full! The eternal hunger goes.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/RELUCTANT-DIETERS-GUIDE-HEALTH-WEIGHT-ebook/dp/B00RNV3PC4


99p for the next 7  days! 

Sadly, I am plagued by stalkers online, people who follow me constantly and rubbish my work.  If you click onto the link, I urge you to read the honest reviews.   



Excerpt from Reluctant Dieter:


Foreward


I’m not the result of a laboratory experiment or a year spent with a formidable personal trainer and a cupboard full of goji berries, simply a middle aged fat woman who took control of my life, lost over 3 stone, and got my mojo back within 3 months. It wasn’t painful, I never went hungry and I will never return to eating the harmful addictive food I ate before.
 
Best of all, I took myself out of the fat belly danger zone and brought my high blood pressure and high cholesterol back within the normal range and my Type II Diabetes has gone. 
 
High Blood Pressure, High Cholesterol and Diabetes Type II, make up the huge variety of symptoms that combine to form Metabolic Syndrome, that nasty killer condition that ensures we rarely see old fat people. Our bodies simply cannot cope with carrying all that excess weight around and we are not aware that we have got it until we drop down dead. Alternately, when we haven’t got it anymore, we can see just how ill we were.   
 
At the age of 57 I had pretty much resigned myself to being overweight and unwell for evermore.  It was all part of the ageing process wasn’t it? With middle age comes middle aged spread and acceptance that all the dreams I once had now lay in my children.  I had written myself off.
 
There was no such thing as a successful diet, because as soon you return to ‘normal’ eating the weight piles back on.  As far as I could see there were two choices, an extended miserable life of lettuce leaves or a shortened life of eating the food I enjoyed.  There had to be a better way and I was determined to find it. 
 
And find it I did, and I want to share it with everyone who has ever failed at dieting, or even succeeded, because the very gentle diet and exercise routine I suggest YOU create, will be manageable, but more importantly, sustainable for life. Unfortunately, the diets drawn up by other people (experts) consist of foods we can’t afford and aren’t available in our local shop.  If you are planning the menus, you make the choices.
 
When I bit the bullet and started my diet and exercise program, I fully expected it to go on for a very long time before seeing any results. The startling fact is, the opposite was true.  The effects were almost immediate (within days), even with my ‘I really don’t want to do this’ half arsed approach, it worked. I leapt with joy at discovering how easy and pain free losing weight was going to be, but with a tinge of regret - if only I had known I could shift 3 stone within 3 months, painlessly and with minimal effort, I would have done it years ago! 
 
As cheesy as ‘if I can do it, anyone can’, might be, it applies. I’m an a stereotypical, post-menopausal Fat Fifty Female, who has tried every diet, failed and sought solace in a sausage roll. The only exercise I got was the short walk between the living room and the kitchen, with the occasional trip to the supermarket to stock up on double cream and packets of BOGOF sweet things. That I was anti exercise was a given.  
 
I lost the weight without any treadmills, without any humiliation and without ever going hungry.  That losing weight is hard is a myth, it’s not, it’s easy.  That doing exercise is painful and unpleasant is also a myth, it’s not, it’s easy and indeed fun and it doesn’t need anywhere near the amount of time and dedication that is implied.
 
Most of us are put off dieting and exercise because we are always being told how hard it is and we have horrible memories of diets that banned things. We are put off before we begin, because the results they are selling us are out of our reach. Much as we would like to run around the local park in lycra, or swim ten miles before breakfast, we can’t because we’ve got laundry to put on, kids to get to school and some explaining to do to our boss about the report we didn’t finish yesterday - and probably why we are late - again.   
 
Alternately, if we have spent the last ten years moving gently from bed to sofa to comfy chair (via the fridge), a couple of hours on a treadmill would probably kill us.  We need to take baby steps, and every little helps. 
 
The diet and exercise plan I suggest, will be the easiest and most effective you will ever do, because you will fit it around your own lifestyle. If you are eating with the family, you simply need to up the veg and decrease the proteins and fats. You wont need to go out and buy anything special.  If you are lucky, and your family are learning about food with you, they will accept the brown bread and loss of coco pops without complaint. 
 
This isn’t a dieting book per se, I’m not a health food guru and I have much yet to learn.  Its simply an account of how I did it, and the hurdles and pitfalls I faced along the way. If anything it is ‘The Reluctant Dieter’s’ Guide to fitness and weight loss, because if my half arsed approach to healthy eating and exercise worked, I am sure there are others out there who will do much, much, better!
 

10 comments:

  1. Well done keep it up i think u got to a age where u was thinking about death more and your own mortality and realise that u got much more to offer life and your family u seem to have a new inner confidence to go with it i have not seen pictures of a old Cristobel but the new Cristobel is looking fantastic that old saying healthy body healthy mind . [your link to your book is not working] .

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  2. Pity Oprah's show is no longer running, but hey, there's always Jes Wilkins& co&co. This stuff will really help folks. More power to you, Christobell!

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  3. Oh dear, forgot to omit the Christ out of Cristobell, silly me. Must be thinking of TB too much; it's all your fault Ros, you terribly wicked woman ... 'YOU'! Peace, joy and buckets full of laughter anyway! xx

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  4. I've fixed the link, many thanks :)

    You are right of course right 17:04, weight gain is all part of the depression/addiction, self neglect cycle and so many of us are unaware of it until we reach the point of what we think is no return. Yet we can stop it, and indeed reverse it, at any time we want - who knew? Since discovering that fact, I have wanted to shout it from the rooftops!

    Mind and body are indeed intertwined, and it is our mind and our attitude that we have to change when we embark on a diet, once we achieve that, everything else falls into place.

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  5. Thanks Cristobell, for sharing your amazing story! To lose a stone a month isn't something to be sniffed at, in fact it's bloody fantastic lol. The new you looks terrific and you have every right to be proud of how you look, well done you.

    Moving on to me if you don't mind :) I am a type two diabetic and had started to get to grips with being overweight and coping with depression, I was pleased with the progress I was making until sadly my mum died last October, throwing me back into my old ways of raiding the fridge in the early hours of the morning! I just couldn't stop myself from gorging on all the things I knew were bad for me. I started to feel guilty about my comfort eating, and it made me quite ill, I was throwing-up all the time which didn't help. I'm now trying to get back on track and realize I've got to help myself. Putting the weight back on has done nothing to help my confidence. I had got rid of all my size 20 clothes at a charity shop, only to have to
    go buy more. I'm more determined than ever to get back into a healthy lifestyle and be able to shop for fashionable clothes that actually fit like a glove LOL.

    Is your book available in the shops or can you only purchase it on Amazon?

    I'd also like to get my hands on your other book "cry and you cry alone" I only buy items using "Crossed Postal Order's" on line.

    Sorry in advance if my spelling/grammar is terrible.. I'm practically dozing off, been a long day!!!

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  6. I'm so sorry to hear of your loss 22:52, bereavement can devastate us for sure, and losing your mum is one of the hardest things any of us go through. It is probably still difficult for you at the moment, but as you begin to heal, you will see that your mum is still with you. She is probably there when you look in the mirror and in all the little things you say and do. If you have children, you probably see her in them too. From their tiny little mannerisms to the same raucous or dry sense of humour. Our loved ones live on in us, and in the lives of everyone they touched.

    I'm not religious, but I do believe our loved ones watch over us, and urge us on, even if it is only through the memory of their smiles, and their encouraging voices - stored in our brains from long, long ago.

    Once you have a goal my friend, you are least 75% there, and simply by taking the time to write to me tells me your mind is made up! Isn't it sooooo much more fun shopping for size 12s isn't it? I had almost 20 years of being a fatty I'm ashamed to say, so am like a kid in a sweet shop and loving clothes more than I ever did! I want to go to Hollywood so dress as if I am heading off to catch the next plane, even if I am only going to the sweet shop, lol.

    I am now living my life by the philosophy of 'The Secret' - a documentary I am urging everyone to watch. You really can have anything you want! Once you decide on the person you want to be, you will evolve into that person!

    We are all afraid to disturb the universe on so many levels, yet there really is no need! All that is stopping us from doing whatever we want, or achieving whatever we want, is the limit we put on ourselves. Happy, successful people know this, they have no limits!

    You sound like a determined woman 22:52, you got rid of those size 20's before, you can do it again! I am hoping that my little book will be the last diet book you will ever need because it is about changing your attitude to food and your attitude to the way in which you treat your body. We wouldn't dream of putting a deep fried Mars bar into the petrol tank of a longed for shiny new convertible, so why would we eat one?

    I'll be honest, empty nest syndrome knocked me for six! I look after other people, its what I do, Even old feminist that I am, I can't help it. Cooking just for myself seemed pointless, and thus began the downward spiral. I know when I relate anecdotes like that, I am far from alone. It is intended to strike a chord, because when we begin to understand why and when we lost our zest for life, the healing process can begin.

    My book is only available on Amazon at the moment, but if I could, I would stack it in every GP's surgery. Sadly, depression and obesity related illnesses are so often combined and all are being treated by billions of pounds worth of government approved drugs, that shouldn't even be necessary!

    I wish you well, and do please keep me updated :)

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  7. Jumble sales are so much fun eh Ros?

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  8. Last October, I had reached a very depressing 16 stone 5 pounds. I'm 54 and 5 foot seven. My knees were feeling wrecked.
    That's it, I decided, time to get back to the gym (4 sessions per week, mostly cardio) and time to cut out all the crap from my diet (bread, spuds, rice, pasta, all sugar products)
    Today, I have dipped under 13 stone (12-13 ... whoopie).
    I've gone from a 42 waist, to a 34 - and I need a belt on my jeans.
    All my XXL and XL stuff have found their way to the local charity shops, and my wardrobe is full of M or L sizes.

    My knees no longer give me problems and I'm hardly out of breath following an hour on the cross trainer.

    My dear wife said she is so proud of all the hard work I've put in to getting into shape, and she spends a lot of time 'examining' my new shape!

    She says I don't snore anymore, too. Another big plus to losing weight.
    I had a litre of caramel-flavour protein shake about 2 hours ago. I'm off to prepare my evening meal now, which will be : boiled cabbage, roasted butternut squash, 2 roast chicken thighs, a grilled sausage, and fried onions, mushrooms, and tomatoes, fried in a ceramic pan with a tiny spray of oil.
    Sorted.

    A 2 hour gym session in the morning will start another healthy week.

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  9. Cristobell, thank-you for those encouraging words/support it really does help to know someone is there, and knows exactly how you are feeling.You're absolutely right about Mum still being there!! When she died while going through a case..she'd previously told me where to find important papers etc, I found a letter addressed to me, although very upsetting she basically said when I'm feeling down to talk to her as if she was still there, and she would be watching over me, and guiding me when I'm troubled. I'm not religious either but I do believe her presence is still with me to some extent as I can almost hear her voice giving me the will to carry-on, when things are tough, as they are at this moment in time.

    The goals you have spoken about can be achieved when I have a free mind to deal with those issues, which hopefully won't be too far away!! I'm still waiting to hear from various parties before I can release any monies to the beneficiaries that have an interest in my mum's estate. The job bestowed on me as executor of my mums will is far more stressful than I ever imagined it would be. Submitting forms umpteen times, only to be told after keeping them in their in-tray for weeks on end, that they require more information IS so frustrating!

    Thanks for being a friend and letting me sound off on your blog, it really is very therapeutic, Your helpful words and kindness knows no bounds! (Cristobell unbound) that made me smile.:)

    I spent yesterday trying to get a copy of your book from booksellers on eBay, where they would accept a crossed postal order, up to now no luck, but I won't give-up until I get one! I don't sell on eBay only buy, and pay all my sellers by crossed P.O which most sellers accept when I tell them I don't do Paypal, or use credit cards online. I put a post up on the book section on ebay asking why they wouldn't accept my form of payment....wait for it...a member replied "the reason why is probably because they have never heard of them", thick as pig-poo to admit that, I would have found out the answer before pulling that one outta the bag, LOL :)

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