Current Weight: 19 stone 7 pounds
Waist: 104cm Hips: 140cm
Lost: 1 stone 11 pounds
My problems with weight go back to when I was about 6 or 7 years old, thinking I was fat. I started dieting when I was about 13 years old. My mum took me to the doctor for diet pills when I was 16 years old.
Over the years, I’ve tried just about every diet known to man, but the weight kept creeping on. Every time, it was the same: I would lose a few pounds and gain it all back plus some. At 40, I weighed more than 22½ stone. I knew I had to change my life, but I wasn’t happy, and I found comfort in food. And I had a lot of medical problems. First, I suffered from a pinched ulnar nerve. Then at age 42, I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, or ADD. A couple years later, I was diagnosed with asthma. After years of being hospitalized for asthma attacks and gaining almost 6 stone, thanks to medication and depression, I was told by my pulmonary doctor that I had gastro-oesophageal reflux disease, or GORD, which was exacerbating my asthma. This was the first time I realized that the foods that were causing me to be fat might also be the foods causing these other serious illnesses and disorders.
By this time I was back up to just over 21 stone and housebound. I was so fat! I was embarrassed to be seen. I felt like a complete failure. I was on three daily medicines for asthma, a nightly antacid, an ointment for eczema and bottles of ibuprofen for joint pains. I had to wrap an elastic bandage around my knee every day to manage the pain.
When I tried to diet, the results were frustrating until I read about JJ’s Virgin Diet. Her explanation of food intolerances described everything I was feeling. I took the symptoms test and marked almost everything with the highest score. Right then, I committed to the plan. After just 3 weeks, I lost 11 pounds, including a couple inches off my waist and hips. I cleaned up my shopping, my kitchen and my health. As it turns out, I am gluten- and dairy-intolerant. And much of the food I thought was healthy really wasn’t.
I learned how much I have poisoned my body over the years. Now I don’t have cravings for sweets; fast foods; or fatty, starchy, high-carb foods. I am satisfied with whole, clean, natural foods. My asthma symptoms are so much less than before that I almost don’t need the medicine at all. My eczema spots are all but gone now. I can take walks without pain. I don’t have headaches. I have not had any indigestion since my second day on the plan. My ADD seems to be non-existent. No more brain fog. No depression. I have energy that I haven’t had in years. Most of all, I have hope.
I have learned for the first time what to eat, why to eat and when to eat. I feel so much better! This programme saved my life!
Leslie was at the end of her rope. She’d been to every doctor in the Los Angeles area, and nobody could help her. As it happens, her stepmother is Suzanne Somers, an expert in health, beauty and fitness. Suzanne knows all the gurus, besides being one herself. But none of them could fix Leslie’s problem. Leslie was nearly 3 stone overweight. It didn’t seem to matter whether she ate or not. She had this chronic bloating thing going on – in fact, she got more and more bloated as the day continued, no matter how little she ate.
I loved Leslie on the spot. She’s adorable. And I was struck by how much she was already doing the right things – and how little any of them were helping her.
“What’s going on, JJ?” Leslie asked me. At this point, she was beyond frustrated. “You’ve got to help me out, because nobody else has ever been able to.”
I felt a lot of sympathy for Leslie, who was working so hard to lose weight – and with so little result. She exercised and was very careful about counting calories and controlling portions. But as I tell all of my clients, your body isn’t a savings bank or a calorimeter. It’s a chemistry lab. Counting calories and measuring portions just isn’t enough. You have to know how your body is responding to the foods you eat. And Leslie’s body was telling her that she wasn’t eating right.
I suspected that Leslie’s problems stemmed from food intolerance. She had been eating a high-FI diet for years, including all the supposedly healthy choices: eggs, tofu, whole-wheat bread, whey protein shakes. She lived on fizzy diet drinks and caffé lattes with skimmed milk. Sometimes she’d treat herself to some corn chips and salsa. That made at least 6 of the 7 high-FI foods right there: eggs, soy, gluten, dairy, artificial sweeteners and corn. All she was missing was sugar and peanuts, and when she occasionally ate desserts or processed foods (which are often made with peanut oil), she was consuming those, too.
“Look,” I told Leslie, as gently as I could, “you can be doing all the right things – exercise, careful eating, the works – but if you’ve built up a food intolerance or messed up your digestive tract, even the right things can’t help you. Right now, your immune system is on high alert, and it’s overreacting to many of the foods you eat. Until we get your immune system to chill out, you won’t be able to lose weight.”
Food intolerance is one of the most frustrating conditions I know. All of a sudden, you can’t lose those extra pounds, even when you are eating and exercising exactly as you always have. Sometimes you might even be eating less and exercising more – and you still gain weight! How unfair is that?
The best way to get Leslie’s immune system back on track was to cut out all 7 high-FI foods and increase her intake of low-FI foods. Once her immune system wasn’t jumping into hyperalert and flooding her system with inflammatory chemicals, her digestive system would have a chance to heal. I also suggested my special Virgin Diet Shakes as a source of protein. Along with the healing foods and healing supplements I recommend, the Virgin Diet Shakes would help reverse inflammation, reducing all those ‘protective’ chemicals that were causing Leslie’s body to gain weight, ageing her skin and hair and sapping her energy. In 7 days, I promised Leslie she would lose the bloat and look years younger. The Virgin Diet was the key.
In fact, that’s exactly what happened. When I saw Leslie a few weeks later, she was so excited that her words kept tumbling over each other. “I’ve lost more than 10 pounds already, and I feel so hopeful about the other 30! Look at my skin. It hasn’t looked this good in years! My friends keep asking if I was away on holiday. At work, they know I wasn’t, so they’ve started a rumour about me having a new boyfriend. I can’t believe how good I feel!”
I was so happy for my client because she had finally stopped accepting the weight gain, exhaustion and premature ageing that she had come to believe was her lot in life. Instead, she was losing weight, feeling great and looking 10 years younger. Terrific was now her new normal. It can also be yours.
So, what’s the first thing I’d like you to do on the Virgin Diet? I hope you’re sitting down because my first piece of advice might shock you: stop counting calories.
That’s right, I’m suggesting that you stop counting calories because your body is not a savings bank or a calorimeter. It’s a chemistry lab. Although the total number of calories counts, it is only part of the story. The source of the calories matters far more. If your calories come from foods that are causing your body trouble, then it almost doesn’t matter how much or how little you eat. Even moderate intake of problem foods sets up your body for weight gain. And as we’ve seen, those problem foods are not