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Lose weight fast and feel FAB!

Do you want to shed your excess weight fast and improve your health and fitness into the bargain? Well, now you can! In the 40 or so years I’ve been helping people to lose weight and get fitter I’ve never witnessed weight losses like those seen by our members after my FAB Diet was introduced to our Diet and Fitness Clubs in 2012. I’ve created diets before where trialists have lost a stone (6.4kg) in the first month but on my FAB Diet our members continued to lose weight at an amazing rate, with some managing a stone each month. The results were truly astonishing and yet the diet offers three meals a day of ‘normal’, everyday food. No powders or potions, and no gimmicks – just healthy food that YOU select from the many meal suggestions, together with some exercise that’s within your capability, and you choose what you do. Put this magic combination together and you can achieve a slim and toned body, just like the slimmers featured in the photographs here. They all followed the diet and transformed their shape, size and health – fast! You can read their stories in Chapter 2.

This diet does what it says on the tin! It shows you how to boost your weight loss by attacking the unwanted fat on your body in a calorie-controlled, low-fat eating plan and effective exercise plan to help you achieve the figure and fitness level you’ve always dreamed of. And once you’ve lost your weight, I’ll show you how to keep it off for good.

The beauty of my FAB Diet is that it’s so versatile and caters for every taste and lifestyle. There are high-protein meal options if you like to follow a high-protein diet. Maybe you love your carbs? That’s fine too, as I’ve included meals for those who love bread, pasta, rice and potatoes. Perhaps you have a sweet tooth? You’ll find plenty of meal choices where a dessert has been included in the menu plan and, of course, there’s a vegetarian alternative at every mealtime.

You can prepare your own meals, using the delicious recipes in this book, or for a speedier solution there are quick and easy alternatives for creating tasty meals using ready-made sauces – including my own Rosemary Conley range. And if you don’t want the hassle of preparing a meal from scratch, you can select my Solo Slim^® ready-meal options in the diet, which can be ordered through my website (www.rosemaryconley.com). All you have to do is pop a pouch of delicious 100% natural, healthy food into a microwave or empty the contents into a saucepan and heat on the hob. This really is the easiest diet ever.

And to make it really simple to select the type of meals you want, all the different meal categories are colour-coded so you can see your preferred options at a glance – for instance, all the high-protein options are in red, carbs are yellow, vegetarian green, and so on. See here for the full key.

Your good health

Exercising regularly and eating a healthy diet that offers a balance of nutrients and plenty of fruit and vegetables will not only help you achieve a healthier and slimmer body and control your body weight, but will also help reduce your risk of developing serious conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. We all imagine these things won’t happen to us but none of us is immune from disease and we should do everything in our power to reduce our risk.

In particular, the carbohydrate meal choices in my FAB Diet are ideal for diabetics as they are based on healthy low-Gi foods – that’s foods such as oat-based or high-fibre cereals, wholegrain or multigrain bread, pitta bread, sweet potatoes and waxy new potatoes, basmati rice and pasta. Low-Gi foods help to lower the glycaemic index of a meal, which in turn helps to stabilise blood sugar levels. The beauty of low-Gi foods is that they also keep us feeling fuller for longer, thereby reducing hunger pangs – which is just what you want on a weight-reducing plan!

According to the charity Diabetes UK, eating a healthy diet can curb some of the complications associated with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Untreated, diabetes can lead to blindness, heart disease, kidney failure and nerve damage. If you are a diabetic, losing weight will make a big difference to how your condition is managed. For people without diabetes, losing weight can also have a positive impact on their risk of developing the condition.

Diabetes UK advises that breaking down your daily food intake into three smaller meals, with snacks in between is useful for controlling the condition. So my FAB eating plan – which offers three main meals a day with a healthy mid-morning and mid-afternoon ‘Power Snack’ – is ideal for helping diabetics manage their condition as well as lose their excess weight.

Visit www.diabetes.org.uk for more information on diabetes, or you can watch Zoe Harrison from Diabetes UK discuss diabetes on my free internet TV channel (www.rosemaryconley.tv).

How does the FAB Diet work and why is it so effective?

No diet will work unless the total calories from the food and drink you consume are less than the total calories you spend in energy. If you eat less than you spend, you will lose weight – it’s a simple matter of physics.

Some foods have more ‘fattening power’ than others. As fat has nearly twice the number of calories, gram for gram, of carbohydrate or protein, cutting down on the fat in your diet will be a huge help in your weight-loss progress. At the same time, if you can spend a bit more energy by being more active, you’ll lose weight faster, providing you stick to a calorie-controlled diet. But it’s important to have enough food to keep you feeling fuller for longer so you don’t dive into the biscuit barrel the first time you feel peckish! And my FAB Diet allows you to do that.

I know that counting your daily calories is boring and tedious. That’s why all the meals in my FAB Diet are calorie-counted, so you don’t have to worry about that unless you eat something outside of the recommended meals. I’ve designed this FAB Diet so there’s something for everyone, and with plenty of variety in the menus offered you’re bound to find something to suit – whether you prefer cereal or toast or fruit for breakfast or you like a sandwich or a proper meal at lunchtime or perhaps eat only chicken or fish for dinner. All the options are there for you to choose – and repeat – to your liking.

To burn fat faster, as well as following the eating plan in this book I ask you to do some aerobic exercise each day, such as brisk walking, cycling or an aerobics class. Add in some toning exercises three or four times a week and you’ll firm up and strengthen your muscles, which will give you a better shape. You can choose what exercise you do or you can follow the daily fitness challenges I’ve set for you in the first four weeks which will enable you to build up your fitness gradually. You may find it helpful to read Chapter 10 before you start the diet.

Three steps to successful weight loss

The FAB Diet is divided into three stages. The first stage is designed to kick-start your weight loss so you see quick results early on. Research has shown that if you lose a significant amount of weight in the early stages of a weight-loss plan, you are much more likely to continue. So, for the first two weeks, you follow the quite strict, 1200-calorie Kick-Start Booster Diet. You’ll find the results of this initial effort incredibly encouraging. In trials, dieters lost an average of 7lb (3.2kg) in 14 days, so it’s worth making the effort to stick to it.

In week three you move on to the 1400 Fortnight Diet, where your calorie allowance is increased to 1400 calories a day so you can enjoy an alcoholic drink and some extra treats. Then in week five you progress to Your Personal FAB Plan where your individual calorie allowance will be based on your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is the number of calories your body needs to keep ticking over even if you stayed in bed all day and did nothing. This means that every bit of energy you spend moving around in your daily life and any other exercise you do will be fuelled by your body’s fat stores and you’ll burn more calories. (You can find your BMR by checking the charts at the back of the book.) Also in week five I’ve introduced a Fat Loss Booster day each week where on one day a week I ask you to be extra strict with your diet, sticking to 1200 calories a day, and to exercise more energetically, which will make a huge difference to your weight-loss progress.

Keep it off

Once you’ve achieved your desired body weight, it’s vital to maintain it if you are to enjoy your new-found health, energy and confidence, and I will show you how to do this without feeling as if you are ‘dieting’. Staying active and continuing to eat low-fat foods is the key to long-term success.

If you stick to the diet and exercise regularly, you will be truly amazed at your rate of progress and you’ll look great and feel fit and fabulous. You are starting on a wonderful journey that will change your life.