Only Fat People Skip Breakfast
Get Real – The Diet Book with a Difference
Lee Janogly
In memory of my brave, beautiful friends
SHIRLEY SEGAL,
JOY STOCK
and
JILL LEVY,
who would have enjoyed this book.
I miss your laughter.
Table of Contents
Chapter One There Ain’t No Fairy Godmother
Chapter Two Who’s Conning Who?
Chapter Three The Sugar You Eat is the Fat You Wear
Chapter Four Your ‘Living Slim’ Eating Plan
Chapter Five You Either Get it – or You Don’t
Chapter Six Exercise – No Sweat, No Point
Chapter Seven You Don’t Take Orders from a Biscuit
Chapter Eight You’ve Lost it—Now Keep it Off Forever
On the eighth day God created cellulite.
And it came to pass that the Lord looked down upon His creation of the female form and lo, she was partaking overly of the Snickers bars and the cheese ’n’ onion crisps and much of the produce of the Häagen Dazs.
And she gathered unto herself an abundance of flesh and became wide of hip and thigh and the Lord was mightily pissed off at what He saw.
So the Lord summoned his trusty prophet Bulgythias and spake unto him: ‘Yo brother, dig these fat chicks! Go forth and tell ’em how it is, man.’
So the prophet Bulgythias took upon himself the task of studying the word of the diet counsellor, as it is written in the mighty tome Only Fat People Skip Breakfast by Lee Janogly, and spake thus unto all womankind:
‘Heed my words, for if thou dost enter the portals of yonder Starbucks and order a full-fat caramel mocha latte with double cream topping, yea, verily thou shalt be great of girth and thick of thigh!
‘Yield not unto temptation. Seek ye not the fruits of the sugar cane but take unto thyself the flowering broccoli instead. As thou walkest through the valley of the Marks & Spencer car park and enter the holy portals of the food hall, choose thou wisely. Gather unto thee the fish and the fowl, the fruit and the veg, and forsake all products bearing the word "frosted". Leave behind thine vehicle and powerwalk around thine neighbourhood and, in time, thou shalt be rewarded with thighs that are a joy to behold—yea, a tight bum in Versace jeans shall be thine! And thine mate will be sent wild with desire, for your price is far above rubies (which doesn’t say much for Ruby, but still…)
‘So take heed of this wise counsel and thou shalt dwell in the House of the Slim forever. Amen.’
Telephone Conversation with a New Client (NC)
NC: Hello? Is that the diet counsellor? I hope you can help—I’m desperate! I’ve got three stone to lose and it just won’t shift. I’ve tried every diet going, hut nothing works. I tried not mixing protein and carbohydrate hut who can stick to that? You can’t have fish and chips, there’s no spag bol or burgers, so what can you eat? Then I tried that French guy’s diet where you can have lots of butter and cream but that didn’t work for some reason. Cabbage soup made me nauseous. As for the high-protein diet, people backed away because my breath smelt so foul and I couldn’t go to the loo. But at least trying all these diets has taught me lots about nutrition. For example, I know that you must only eat fruit in the mornings because the enzyme that digests fruit doesn’t work after midday…
Me: Oh really?
NC: Oh yes, didn’t you know that? Anyway, so I went to Weight Watchers but I ran out of points by lunchtime. Then I did Slimming World but I accidentally had a hamburger on a green day and I’m colour-blind anyway. I couldn’t work out that Zone diet, I haven’t got a Little Black Dress, I read through all the blood group diets and you can eat more or less the same on all of them so what’s the point? I really don’t know what to do.
Me: Have you tried eating less?
NC: What do you mean?
Chapter One There Ain’t No Fairy Godmother
I am a diet counsellor.
If you came to me for dietary advice I would assume that you wished to lose your excess weight and remain slim for the rest of your life. Obvious? Not exactly. Most people are looking for a quick fix and want instant results – and why not? That’s how we approach a lot of the difficulties we encounter in our daily life, both at home and at work: identify the problem, find the solution, apply it and move on. Unfortunately, that won’t work with your weight. If you’ve got rather more fat reserves than you need, well I bet they were there yesterday, a week ago, maybe years ago. Building them up has taken a lot of time and loving care, so it will take more than a few days of low-fat food to reduce them.
But we live in a fast-track world. Many of us are drawn to short-term, intensive deprivation diets—cabbage soup for a week, for example—in the hope of quick weight-loss, even though the weight lost on such diets is usually just water. Few people these days seem to have the patience to aim for slow, steady weight-loss that will last for life.
Many people are so eager to shed their excess pounds quickly that they become vulnerable to the allure of unhealthy or unsustainable diet regimes. There seem to be two main ‘start-slimming’