Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Rosemary Conley
Title Page
Acknowledgements
Useful information
1. How to lose weight fast
2. The diet trial
3. It works! It really, really works!
4. Are you ready to diet?
5. How to lose a stone in a month
6. The 28-day plan
Phase 1: 14-day fast track
Phase 2: 14-day 1400
7. Phase 3: Your personal inch loss plan
8. The 28-day plan diet menus
9. Recipes
Soups
Broccoli and Leek Soup
Chicken, Mushroom and Lemon Soup
Chicken Noodle Soup
Chicken and Turkey
Chinese Chicken Kebabs
Barbecued Garlic Chicken
Chicken Shaslik
Southern Fried Turkey
Turkey and Mango Samosas
Beef, Lamb and Pork
Lamb Medallions with Blackcurrant Sauce
Cheesy Cottage Pie
Lamb and Mushroom Goulash
Wine Braised Pork Slices
Ham, Leek and Sweet Potato Pie
Brunch Pitta
Fish and Seafood
Black Bean Prawns
Prawn Saag
Singapore Noodles with Prawns
Vegetarian
Leek and Sage Meatballs with Pasta
Amazing Inch Loss Salad
Garlic Mushroom Pasta
Roasted Pepper Pasta
Quorn and Rice Bake
Bombay Rice
Stir-Fried Rice Noodles
Cauliflower Bhaji
Greek Salad Wrap
Desserts
Tropical Sorbet
Strawberry and Rhubarb Mousse
Coffee and Apricot Roulade
Banana Muffins
Plum Tatin
Frozen Berry Smoothie
Amazing Meringue Sundae
Crunchy Apple and Blackberry Pie
10. The Amazing Inch Loss maintenance toning programme
11. The Amazing Inch Loss Plan Solo Slim diet trial
12. The Amazing Inch Loss Plan Solo Slim diet and meal planner
13. The Solo Slim 28-day fitness challenge
14. Are you doing your five-a-week?
15. Eating out on a diet
16. Maintaining your new weight
17. Your personal calorie allowance
Index of recipes
Picture Section
Copyright
About the Book
Lose a stone in just 4 weeks!
‘Yes you can lose a stone in a month and my trial dieters proved it.
By following my amazingly simple step-by-step 28-day plan, you’ll see dramatic results like never before. In trials a team of 50 dieters, aged between 18 and 70, lost an average of 1 stone in just 28 days! Medically approved and the most effective diet I’ve ever created, the Amazing Inch Loss Plan is incredibly easy to follow and provides a safe long-term way of keeping the weight off.
I’ve included extensive and varied meal plans, tailored daily exercises and essential motivational tips. Plus, for the first time ever, I’ve incorporated ‘high protein’ meal options – perfect for dieters wishing to avoid carbohydrates.’
Here’s what my trial dieters thought of the Amazing Inch Loss Plan …
‘I can’t believe how much I’m allowed to eat. I can stick to the diet easily. The diet and the daily activities are brilliant … I’ve been converted to the Rosemary Conley way and it’s so easy … My husband doesn’t believe I’m the same woman – he feels like he’s having an affair with someone else!’ Jeanette Hopkins, 37, lost 2st 5lb and 32.5 inches in six months
‘I was so surprised how fast I lost weight – 6Ib in the first week, over a stone in a month and 2st in eight weeks’ Andrew Corbett, 47, lost 1st 8Ib in one month
‘I was gobsmacked at how quick I’d lost the weight … I can’t believe I didn’t do this before – it’s so easy … I felt fantastic. I went down two dress sizes in a month and I could fit into all of my old clothes’
Teresa O’Neill, 37, lost 1st 1lb in one month
‘The biggest shock about the diet was how easy it was to follow’
Ryan Flack, 22, lost 1st 9lb in one month and a total of 3st 2lb in six months
About the Author
Rosemary Conley is the UK’s most successful diet and fitness expert. Her diet and fitness books, videos and DVDs have consistently topped the bestseller lists with combined sales in excess of nine million copies.
Rosemary has presented more than 400 cookery programmes on television and has hosted several of her own TV series on BBC and ITV. In 1999 Rosemary was made a Deputy Lieutenant of Leicestershire. In 2001 she was given the Freedom of the City of Leicester, and in 2004 she was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours List for ‘services to the fitness and diet industries’. In 2012, Rosemary was one of the oldest contestants ever to appear on Dancing on Ice.
Together with her husband Mike Rimmington, Rosemary runs five companies: Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Clubs, which operates an award-winning national network of almost 200 franchises running around 2000 classes weekly; Quorn House Publishing Ltd, which publishes Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Magazine; Quorn House Media Ltd, which runs rosemaryconley.tv, an online TV channel; Rosemary Conley Licences Ltd; and Rosemary Conley Enterprises.
Rosemary has a daughter, Dawn, from her first marriage. Rosemary, Mike and Dawn are all committed Christians.
Also by Rosemary Conley
Rosemary Conley’s Hip and Thigh Diet
Rosemary Conley’s Complete Hip and Thigh Diet
Rosemary Conley’s Inch Loss Plan
Rosemary Conley’s Hip and Thigh Diet Cookbook (with Patricia Bourne)
Rosemary Conley’s Metabolism Booster Diet
Rosemary Conley’s Whole Body Programme
Rosemary Conley’s New Hip and Thigh Diet Cookbook (with Patricia Bourne)
Shape Up for Summer
Rosemary Conley’s Beach Body Plan
Rosemary Conley’s Flat Stomach Plan
Be Slim! Be Fit!
Rosemary Conley’s Complete Flat Stomach Plan
Rosemary Conley’s New Body Plan
Rosemary Conley’s New Inch Loss Plan
Rosemary Conley’s Low Fat Cookbook
Rosemary Conley’s Red Wine Diet
Rosemary Conley’s Low Fat Cookbook Two
Rosemary Conley’s Eat Yourself Slim
Rosemary Conley’s Step by Step Low Fat Cookbook
Rosemary Conley’s Gi Jeans Diet
Rosemary Conley’s Ultimate Gi Jeans Diet
Acknowledgements
This new edition of my Amazing Inch Loss Plan would not have been possible without the help of my great team.
In my original Amazing Inch Loss Plan book I thanked the many people who had helped me with different aspects of the book: chef Dean Simpole-Clarke for the recipes; Sue White and Bridget Key for running the diet trial; Mary Morris for her expertise and guidance on the exercises and, in this revised book, her tremendous technical knowledge and input in the ‘Are you doing your five-a-week?’ chapter; Caroline Whiting, Head of Training at Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Clubs, for her help on how to get folk motivated; and Dr Susan Jebb, an eminent nutrition scientist, for her expertise and guidance on the nutritional principles that I follow.
A big thank you to our wonderfully talented franchisees who run Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Clubs and who have supported their members as they followed the Amazing Inch Loss Plan in our classes over the last year. Without them I would not have had the thrill and privilege of meeting, a week before this book went to print, four spectacularly successful slimmers who had lost 37 stone between them in the last ten months on my Amazing Inch Loss Plan! Eve Leonard, Stephanie Hughes, Carl Williams and Michael Hutchinson have proved beyond doubt that this diet and fitness plan works and are now among my Slimmers of the Year for 2011.
This latest version of my Amazing Inch Loss Plan has been greatly extended by the inclusion of an extra diet plan: my Amazing Inch Loss Plan Solo Slim diet. Based on the highly nutritious and very convenient ready meals which we have created, I have produced a diet plan that has been tried and tested, both by some new dieters and others who had been dieting for a while but who had seen their weight-loss progress stalling. This diet is included in this book for the first time and I hope it will give hope to any struggling dieter! I would like to thank Teresa Lewis, our Solo Slim Foods Manager, for her help in selecting new flavours and products for the range in order to maximise the choice for you, the reader. I must again thank Sue White, our researcher, who undertook and supervised this latest trial, and to all the trialists who participated. A big thank you, also, to my PA, Louise Jones, for deciphering my endless ramblings when I was dictating and writing the many additions to this book; to Anja Zeman for calculating the calories of all the menus; and to Sian Cartwright for her contribution to the ‘Eating out on a diet’ chapter.
Thanks also to Gemma Binch and the production team at www.rosemaryconley.tv for recording the 28 days of workouts that are included on the website for you, the reader, to follow, day by day. This entailed a lot of work and this innovative advance in technology has enabled this book to come to life. The production team also recorded interviews with some of our trial dieters so that you can see their progress on this diet.
Most of all, I want to thank my editor, Jan Bowmer, with whom I have had the privilege of working for over 20 years. The reformatting of this book from its original presentation was a mammoth task and Jan is a master for detail and has the most logical brain, which makes my job so much easier. Jan, you are a total star! Thank you also to Roger Walker for designing the book in just the way I hoped it would be.
Finally, thank you to all my readers. I hope that you will find this book does exactly what you want it to and that you will see a slimmer, fitter you emerging after just 28 days, and beyond. And I hope you will go on to enjoy further benefits as you continue to follow the principles of this book.
Useful information
Body weight conversions
Spoon measures
1 teaspoon = 5ml
1 dessertspoon = 10ml
1 tablespoon = 15ml
Abbreviations and symbols used
Visit www.rosemaryconley.com for more diet and fitness advice.
1 How to lose weight fast
IF YOU WANT to lose weight faster than ever before, then this is the diet for you! Just look at the successful slimmers featured on the back cover of this book and in the photographs inside to see how amazingly this diet and fitness plan works. Stephanie Hughes lost 12 stone in 10 months. Michael Hutchinson lost 10 stone in 10 months. Carl Williams lost 9 stone in six months and 22 year-old student Eve Leonard lost 5st 10lb in nine months.
So, would you like to start by losing a stone in a month? Well, providing you have a reasonable amount of weight to lose, you should be able to do just that. Fifty volunteers who followed the diet over a four-week period lost 50 stone between them and that’s why I can make such a bold claim that you can indeed lose a stone in a month.
Our 50-strong trial team consisted of men and women of various ages and weights. The youngest participant was eighteen-year-old Jane Gillespie, who weighed in at 11st 5lb at the start of the trial. At the end of the four weeks Jane weighed 9st 12lb, having dropped two dress sizes in one month. The oldest participant was Jenny Winning, who was 70 years old at the time of the trial. Jenny lost 13¾ lb in four weeks.
This diet works and, providing you stick to it to the letter, you will see incredible results on the scales. And if you do the recommended daily exercises and aerobic challenges, not only will you lose weight but you will also shed an amazing number of inches from around your body.
My original Amazing Inch Loss Plan book was published in January 2010 and went straight into the bestseller charts. This new edition, which is published in a smaller format so it’s handy to put in your handbag or briefcase, includes testimonials from many successful slimmers who have followed the diet in the original book or at a Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Club.
The Amazing Inch Loss Plan diet was introduced into Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Clubs in January 2010 and in the 17 years that the clubs have been in operation our franchisees say they have never witnessed such astonishing weight losses among their class members. I’ve seen this too at my own classes, which I still teach on Monday evenings, and I can’t explain the excitement I feel when I see my members physically shrinking in front of my very eyes, week after week.
So what makes this diet different?
The Amazing Inch Loss Plan is a fairly strict, calorie-controlled, healthy eating plan combined with a structured aerobic and toning programme. The eating plan is based on 1200 calories a day for the first two weeks. This results in a fantastic weight loss after just 14 days, giving participants a massive boost and the motivation to continue for the next two weeks on a more generous 1400 calories per day. From week five, the recommended calorie allowance is based on an individual’s age, gender and weight, which will enable them to carry on losing weight at a steady pace of 1–3lb a week depending on how strictly they stick to their calorie allowance and how determined they are to exercise on a daily basis. It’s a classic case of the harder you try, the greater the results.
Work out with me
One exciting new development with this updated version of the Amazing Inch Loss Plan is that we have taken the daily exercises from the original book and filmed them for our internet television channel (www.rosemaryconley.tv). So, while you are following the 28-day plan you can tune in and work out with me each day as I demonstrate the toning exercises that will reshape your body. The exercises are progressive so that everyone can do them, and the programme is designed in such a way to enable you to advance at a very comfortable level and achieve maximum strength and mobility by the end of the 28-day period. To enjoy this unique service, all you have to do is log on to www.rosemaryconley.tv/ailpDay1, ailpDay2, etc., and of course it’s absolutely free. Try to follow the exercises in sequence as they have been carefully planned to work all the main muscles in the body in the safest and most effective way.
To maximise your weight loss you will also need to undertake some aerobic exercise on a regular basis. Aerobic exercise is quite different from the toning exercises that accompany this book as it works the heart and lungs and burns body fat. On each day of this plan you will see that I suggest an aerobic challenge, which could be going for a brisk walk or a swim, working out at a fitness class – such as a Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Club class – or to an aerobic fitness DVD. All my fitness DVDs are suitable for this purpose, although my Real Results Workout is particularly effective. The benefit of using the aerobic workout from one of my DVDs is that it targets the whole body so it will not only increase your fitness, but give you a great shape too. See www.rosemaryconley.com to check the selection of DVDs available. If you have any physical restrictions, you can try my Ultimate Whole Body Workout, which includes an aerobic chair exercise programme.
‘My weight would not budge until I followed this diet. I don’t feel I’ve been on a diet but a healthy eating plan that I plan to keep following. I feel so much better and can now wear clothes I had “grown out of”! Thank you!’
Gillian Betts
High-protein eating
More and more people are choosing to cut down on carbohydrates, and my Amazing Inch Loss Plan was the first of my diets to include some high-protein, low-carbohydrate options. In the diet trial, it was interesting to note that the people who followed the high-protein options lost just as much weight as those who chose the high-carbohydrate alternatives, so it comes down to personal choice. Both options contain lots of filling foods. The high-carbohydrate menus are based on low-Gi foods, which release energy slowly and keep you feeling fuller for longer, while high-protein meals have been proven to have a high satiety value. The result is that my dieters have found it surprisingly easy to survive on as few as 1200 calories a day without feeling hungry.
This diet is medically approved and offers a vast array of different foods for you to eat.
Solo Slim
My Solo Slim® range of ready meals was launched in 2010. All the meals are low in fat, calorie controlled, contain no E numbers and are totally healthy. The meals are prepared in such a way that you do not even need to refrigerate them and they have a shelf life of up to 12 months. They are the perfect answer for those occasions when you don’t know what to eat in the evening or want something quick when you get home from work. Alternatively, you can base your diet around them, eating a different flavoured soup or ready meal at lunchtime and a different ready meal each evening. These products are only available as part of a Rosemary Conley healthy food box. Alternatively, you may be able to purchase them via our classes. You can choose which meals you want to include in your box and order them online from www.rosemaryconley.com or by phone to ensure you get exactly what you want delivered directly to your home.
‘Both me and my doctor are very happy! Losing so much weight in just a month, and so easily, is amazing!’
Bill Wiltshire
In this book I have included a Solo Slim diet based on these ready meals. This takes all the choice and decision-making of what to eat out of your daily routine, as all you have to do is open the packet, heat it in the microwave or empty the contents into a saucepan and cook up some vegetables of your choice and, hey presto, you have your calorie-controlled, ready prepared meal. For many people, this makes dieting easier and more effective as there is no room for error when calculating food quantities and portion sizes.
To prove the effectiveness of the Amazing Inch Loss Plan Solo Slim diet, we carried out another trial where dieters were asked to live on Solo Slim® foods for one month, just adding fruit, additional vegetables or salad and their chosen breakfast menu from the options given. The results were astonishing. The trial dieters found the diet easy to follow, incredibly convenient and they loved the fact that they didn’t have to spend time preparing the meals. Even those participants with not a great deal of weight to lose were amazed at how fast the pounds dropped away. It was just so easy.
It’s up to you whether you want to follow the Solo Slim diet in its entirety or you just want to incorporate the occasional Solo Slim meal into your free choice diet. After you have reached your ideal weight, Solo Slim can prove extremely helpful in maintaining your new figure. Using Solo Slim meals for, say, just two days a week could be enough to allow you to eat reasonably normally for the rest of the time providing you stick with your new low-fat way of eating and active way of life. All of the Solo Slim menus are personally selected and tasted by me and they really do give you a very substantial and delicious meal, either at lunchtime or in the evening. And as each meal is calorie controlled and low fat, you know exactly what you can accompany it with to keep within your calorie allowance and ensure maximum slimming success.
My daily motivational tips will keep your willpower topped up and, along the journey, you will learn how to speed up your weight loss, tone up your muscles and turn your body into a ‘fat burner’ rather than a ‘fat storer’ so you can stay slim without ever having to diet again.
You really have nothing to lose but your weight so what are you waiting for?
2 The diet trial
OVER THE YEARS I have held several trials to test my diets. It’s helpful for me to have ordinary folk who lead regular lives try out my eating plans, because it provides real proof that the diet in question works and is easy to follow. Their comments, observations and experiences then enable me to tweak the diet if necessary to make it more practical and therefore more effective in the long term.
I had already carried out two previous trials to determine how much weight it was possible to lose safely in two weeks on an eating plan based on 1200 calories a day. With this Amazing Inch Loss Plan, I wanted to see if men and women alike could continue for a second two-week period on a relatively low number of calories, in the hope of proving that it was possible to lose a stone in four weeks. Prior to creating this strict four-week diet, I took professional advice from Dr Susan Jebb, a nutrition scientist, on whether it would be safe to ask men and women of any age and fitness to follow an eating plan based on 1200 calories a day for the first two weeks and then 1400 calories for the next two weeks. She confirmed it would be perfectly healthy for them to do so, providing they ate a well-balanced diet, took a multivitamin supplement and stayed properly hydrated, so I set about creating this two-stage plan.
Next, I appeared on BBC Radio Leicester to ask for volunteers to try the diet. Radio Leicester has helped me with trials before, even as far back as 1986 for my original Hip and Thigh Diet, and the listeners are really supportive. Radio presenter Tony Wadsworth is a great guy and his wife Julie Mayer, who is a roving reporter for Radio Leicester, is a real fitness fan. During the four-week trial, she held several radio interviews with some of the slimmers who described their progress on the diet. It made the whole experience great fun.
In selecting my volunteers I wanted people who, ideally, were ‘virgin’ dieters so that I could get as accurate a result as possible. ‘Serial’ dieters usually come with their own views of what works and what doesn’t and would have been less likely to stick with the trial for the full four weeks. I also wanted my trial dieters to be committed to exercising almost every day. Serial dieters are notoriously not keen on exercise.
Fifty folk – both men and women – were chosen from the applications I received and their ages ranged from 18 to 70 years, with the average age being 48 years. Their weights ranged from 10st 5lb to 22st 1lb, and the average weight was 15st 6lb. We also filmed the trial dieters at the beginning of the trial and at three-monthly intervals. If you visit www.rosemaryconley.tv you will see how they transformed themselves into confident, happy, trim and healthy people. It was the first time we’d ever filmed any of our trialists because we hadn’t, on previous occasions, had the opportunity to meet them in person or the facility to actually record them on film. I’m so glad we did as, when the trial dieters watch themselves on www.rosemaryconley.tv, they cannot believe what they are seeing! They had forgotten how big they once were and are so proud with themselves now that they’ve lost even more weight.
Each volunteer was given the option of following either the high-protein or the high-carbohydrate meal options and we ended up with 25 slimmers in each category. Interestingly, the average weight loss of each group turned out to be identical – 1 stone in the four weeks of the trial!
The greatest weight loss in 28 days was seen by 63-year-old Bill Wiltshire, who shed an astonishing 1st 10lb – the most I have ever known anyone to lose in a month! Bill started off at 22st 1lb and, four weeks later, weighed in at 20st 5lb, plus he lost 23 inches in total from his body, including five inches from his waist.
Twenty-one-year-old Ryan Flack lost 1st 9lb, reducing his weight from 21st 12lb to 20st 3lb and his body fat percentage by almost five per cent – an extraordinary achievement in just four weeks.
Our top female slimmer on the trial was 18-year-old Jane Gillespie, who slimmed down from 11st 5lb to 9st 12lb and dropped two dress sizes in four weeks!
The trial dieters came to our head office at Quorn House each week to be weighed and measured by two members of my staff – Bridget Key, who used to be a franchisee for our Clubs but now works at head office as part of our Franchise support team, and Sue White, whom I appointed as my researcher for the trial. The dieters were weighed on our special, and rather sophisticated, scales, which also measure body fat percentage. In addition to calculating each person’s body mass index (BMI) and basal metabolic rate (BMR), these scales also predicted their ‘metabolic age’ based on all the information given and the readings taken.
When trial dieter Andy Corbett first weighed in, his metabolic age was calculated at 55 years – 10 years older than Andy’s actual age of 45. After four weeks on the diet, Andy lost an amazing 1st 8lb (slimming from 15st 12lb to 14st 5lb), and his metabolic age reduced by 15 years, from 55 to 40!
Andy decided that he would rather exercise early in the day, so at six o’clock each morning he worked out to one of my DVDs. He told me that he and his wife had never laughed so much as he initially struggled with his co-ordination and felt his flab wobbling about as he exercised. After a month, he admitted that the workouts were no longer as entertaining and his wife didn’t laugh as much because he could execute the routines much better now that his beer-belly and man-boobs had almost disappeared! Andy lost four inches from his waist in the four weeks.
Mark Clayton slimmed down from 16st 1lb to 14st 11lb, losing a total of 1st 4lb. Mark is 45 years old, but when he started the diet his predicted metabolic age was 60. After just four weeks his metabolic age had gone down to 38 years!
The lowest weight loss achieved over the four-week period was 8lb and there were several people who lost 11, 12 or 13lb, which was still excellent, and they were delighted with their results. Deana Merry lost 12lb, even though she went on holiday to France during the trial. And Sue Vickers admitted that she hadn’t stuck rigidly to the diet but nevertheless lost 8lb and 16¾ inches in four weeks.
As we get older, our metabolic rate reduces, so I expected that my older trial dieters would not achieve anything like the average 1-stone weight loss over the four weeks, but six out of the eleven over-60s did lose a stone or more.
On the final weighing in day, the atmosphere was electric. Everyone seemed so upbeat and all the members of the trial team looked notably slimmer. The room was buzzing with stories of how their doctors had reduced their blood pressure tablets or diabetes medication and how the pains in their knees, hips, ankles had diminished! They all felt so much healthier and couldn’t believe how quickly they had become accustomed to eating less than before and yet they hadn’t gone hungry. They had enjoyed exercising and being part of the trial and were very grateful for the chance to improve their health. Dave Goodman, who lost 1st 5lb, explained to me that he’d had a fairly serious chest complaint but, after losing his excess weight, he hadn’t had to use his inhaler for three weeks!
To top it all, over the four-week period the trial dieters had achieved an average weight loss of 14lb and lost an average of 13.3 inches from their bodies. I was thrilled and I felt confident that anyone else who followed the diet in this book, with all its motivational messages, daily exercise recommendations and menu suggestions at their fingertips, really could lose a stone in a month, and I was happy to make this claim.
Here are some additional comments from members of the trial team:
‘This was my first diet and I can’t believe how easy it was to follow and that I lost 1st 9lb in the first month! I am amazed!’
Ryan Flack (lost 1st 9lb)
‘This is the easiest diet I have ever known. I can’t believe the results after just four weeks. I don’t feel so sleepy, my skin is much clearer and I feel much more confident. It has certainly changed my life and the way I think and feel about food. I am now well on the way to a new me!’
Helen McLeod (lost 10lb)
‘I really didn’t believe I could eat so much food and lose weight, but it works. I don’t want this good feeling to end! My health has improved, my self-esteem is returning, I feel feminine again. I actually went in to a shop and bought a new dress and it fitted! I was so excited.’
Susan Bishop (lost 13lb)
‘I have completely lost my beer belly and man boobs. Brilliant! I have really enjoyed the trial. I work out to the DVD every morning for 30 minutes. My wife says I’ve lost my stomach and I’ve stopped snoring at night. I sleep better, feel better and am generally much happier. My get up and go has come back and I feel so fit! The other morning I was walking around a park and I hadn’t noticed my shorts were falling down, showing my summer-patterned underpants. This is the fashion for teenagers, not a 46-year-old!’
Andy Corbett (lost 1st 6lb)
‘This was my first ever diet and I am amazed at the results. It is so easy to follow, tasted great and I didn’t feel I was missing out. I am really pleased that my cholesterol has also significantly reduced.’
Mark Clayton (lost 1st 4lb)
‘I feel so much healthier, and my confidence has gone sky high! My hubby thinks I’m up to no good because I’m wearing nice clothes and looking in the mirror more!’
Deana Merry (lost 12lb)
‘Wow! I was absolutely thrilled. I lost 16¾ inches in total in only four weeks – including four inches from my waist. Thank you! It has really made a difference to my life.’
Sue Vickers (lost 8lb)
‘Great diet. Really simple and effective and it retrained your brain and stomach to each much smaller portions without you even realising it. And it works!’
Teresa O’Neill (lost 11lb)
‘I have enjoyed this diet and have never achieved such a good result on any other diet.’
Louise Slingsby (lost 1st)
‘Before this diet I was under the illusion that, because of my age [60], it would be almost impossible to lose any weight. You have proved me wrong. Thank you!’
Leslie Charles (lost 10lb)
‘Thank you for letting me be one of the lucky ones. I really enjoyed doing the trial and will be carrying on doing it now my mind is in the zone and I have seen such great results. The diet was easy to follow and I didn’t miss anything really.’
Polly Gray (lost 10lb)
‘I lost almost a stone in four weeks, but the biggest shock was my inch loss! I no longer suffer from heartburn or acid indigestion. I have more energy and can walk without getting out of breath. I can’t believe how much food you can eat in one day!’
Jeanette Hopkins (lost 13.5lb)
‘I felt such jubilation at losing a stone. Now I need to move forward and lose more – the best of the rest of my life is just around the corner!’
Julie Neville (lost 1st 1lb)
Six months on …
Several of the trial dieters have stayed in touch and come in for regular weigh-ins with Sue White and we’re delighted to see that they have continued to lose weight. In the summer of 2010 we decided to run the Solo Slim diet trial along similar lines and the results were equally impressive. We have filmed several of the dieters and they too will appear on www.rosemaryconley.tv by the time this book is published.
Here are case histories of eight of the original volunteers from the trial team who succeeded in achieving results beyond their wildest dreams. I hope the tales of their individual weight-loss journeys will help motivate you to give this Amazing Inch Loss Plan your all and spur you on to ultimate slimming success.
TERESA O’NEILL
Age 36
Height 5ft 9in (1.75m)
Old weight 12st 9lb (80.3kg)
New weight 11st 5½lb (72.3kg)
Lost 1st 3½lb (8kg)
BMI was 26.1 now 23.6
Teresa O’Neill went from a size 16 to a size 12 in a month to fit into her dream wedding dress after taking part in the diet trial for my Amazing Inch Loss Plan.
Teresa O’Neill had the perfect motivation to lose weight – she was desperate to fit into the wedding dress she’d bought in the sales. She explains: ‘I’d bought too small a dress because I thought I’d lose weight. I did try to diet a few times after buying it, but I always got side-tracked.’
Two years of an unstructured diet and hardly any exercise had turned Teresa from a fit and healthy gym bunny into an overweight bride-to-be. She admits: ‘I put on weight because I stopped exercising. I just got out of the habit of going to the gym, and the weight crept on over two years. At my biggest I felt really fat. I didn’t go out a huge amount but on the occasions I did, I’d try on an outfit and feel awful. I felt everything looked terrible on me.’
Unfortunately, at the same time as getting out of her good exercise habit, Teresa got into bad eating habits: ‘I was eating much larger portions and my weakness was finishing off the children’s tea. I didn’t gorge on chips or anything, but you don’t realise how many calories you’re eating in normal meals.’
Weighing 12st 9lb and daunted at the prospect of her approaching wedding, Teresa applied to be a trial dieter on my Amazing Inch Loss Plan. To her relief, she was accepted on the trial and chose to follow the high-carbohydrate option. She confesses: ‘It was hard at first – I wasn’t used to weighing out food – but the Portion Pots® helped a lot and after the first week it felt completely normal.’
Teresa started on the 14-Day Fast Track at a challenging time as she’d booked to go on a camping holiday with friends. She recalls: ‘I found it difficult to stick to the no-alcohol rule for the first two weeks because I was the only one out of our friends who stayed sober on holiday. Once we’d set up camp, a Rosemary Conley van pulled up alongside us and I thought I was being watched. It turned out to be a franchisee on holiday but it meant I was extra good.’
Teresa quickly started to feel better about herself and realised how the small sacrifices were all worth it: ‘I felt like I had a big halo on my head because while I was cooking veggie chilli the others were all stuffing their faces with barbecued food and burgers. And although I now have a gin and slimline tonic at the weekend, I think avoiding alcohol during the first two weeks made a real difference.’
‘I was gobsmacked at how quickly I lost the weight’
Teresa lost 11lb in the first four weeks of the diet and by the time of her final wedding dress fitting she’d lost a total of 1st 1lb. She says: ‘I felt fantastic – I was amazed that I went down two dress sizes and I could fit into all of my old clothes. More importantly, I could fit into my wedding dress! I was gobsmacked at how quickly I lost the weight.’
In August 2009, Teresa proudly walked down the aisle in her size 12 wedding dress. She recalls: ‘It was a fantastic day and on my honeymoon in Greece I even wore a bikini.’
Teresa has also seen an improvement in her health: ‘I’d always suffered with heartburn, but as soon as I started the diet it completely stopped. That’s one of the reasons why I’m so determined to stay on the diet, it’s made such a difference.’
Since her wedding day, Teresa has lost another 2.5lb, taking her total weight loss to 1st 3½lb. She has kept up her new low-fat way of eating and avoids her old habit of tucking into a takeaway curry at the weekend: ‘I’ve bought a nice curry cookbook and I cook everything from scratch. My tikka masala tastes just as good as the takeaway. I use yogurt instead of cream and mine doesn’t have all that oil on top that you get in takeaways. The whole family eat what I eat and I’m more conscious of the food we have.’
Exercise has also become a big part of Teresa’s life. After getting back into gym classes, Teresa believes it’s one of the main things that contributed to her weight loss. She says: ‘Before the wedding, I hit the gym big time and started to enjoy exercise because it made a huge difference to my weight loss and toned up all of the flabby bits. The weight just fell off because I went to at least three gym classes a week – I find treadmills quite boring and the classes feel like a social event as well as exercise.’
Teresa now has a healthy BMI of 23.6 and feels like an entirely new person: ‘I can’t believe I didn’t do it before because it’s so easy! I feel more confident, I have more get up and go and generally feel happier.’
ANDREW CORBETT
Age 45
Height 6ft (1.83m)
Old weight 15st 12lb (100.7kg)
New weight 12st 11lb (81.2kg)
Lost 3st 1lb (19.5kg)
BMI was 30.1 now 24.7
A love of junk food had sent Andrew Corbett’s waistline ballooning and his cholesterol and blood pressure soaring. After changing his diet and exercise habits he lost over 3 stone in six months and regained his fitness.
Cricket captain Andrew Corbett had been caught in the classic trap of denial. At his biggest, 15st 12lb, he didn’t think he was overweight at all: ‘I was getting more comments from my family and also the guys at work but I thought I looked fine. It wasn’t until I was getting chest pains that I went to the doctor and realised it was a problem.’
Andrew discovered he had extremely high cholesterol of 7.1 as well as a high blood-pressure reading of 170/90 and his doctor immediately put him on medication. But Andrew realised he also needed to take responsibility for his own health: ‘My legs were clamping up from the medication and I didn’t feel good at all. As captain of the second team at my local cricket club I didn’t think it looked good.’
Andrew’s weight had increased steadily over the years and, with 12-hour work shifts, his diet was all over the place. He admits: ‘Through the day, I’d eat sandwiches, cheese, cakes, sausage rolls, pork pies, everything. Cake was my weakness, especially fruit, date, Bakewell, lemon drizzle cakes and upside-down-puddings. I’d eat cake every day – big lumps of it. My wife Debs is really good at making them.’
But it wasn’t just his working day that was a disaster for his diet. As manager of a local children’s cricket team, Andrew didn’t have much time at home so often chose the quick option when it came to meals: ‘We ate takeaways twice a month and then I had a weakness for kebabs which I also had twice a month, along with five packets of pork scratchings a week.’
In an effort to cover his growing waistline, Andrew wore oversized T-shirts and avoided getting changed in front of his team-mates at the cricket club: ‘When I played cricket my clothes fitted me like tents – big enough to hide my belly. In my cricket vest I looked like Daffyd from Little Britain and the lads used to do impressions of me. I was so embarrassed that I’d get changed quickly in the changing rooms so that the others wouldn’t see me.’
Out on the cricket pitch Andrew struggled to keep up with all the action. He says: ‘I couldn’t even run between the cricket stumps.’ But it wasn’t only out on the cricket pitch that Andrew couldn’t summon up enough energy – his lack of exercise in other areas of his life contributed to the slump in his fitness levels: ‘I used to go everywhere in the car – I was lazy and lethargic and just couldn’t be bothered. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t wear nice clothes – I couldn’t even fit into extra-large sportswear.’
Andrew’s wife Debs suffered many a restless night due to his size. ‘My wife said I was a nightmare. I used to snore a lot – it was so bad I woke myself up. Debs told me that when I turned over in bed, she felt like a pea on a drum because I bounced the mattress so much.’
‘I had hit my mid-40s and I was on a slippery slope’
In the nick of time, Andrew heard about my new diet trial and applied straight away. As strokes run in Andrew’s family, a new, healthy lifestyle couldn’t come soon enough: ‘I had hit my mid-40s and I was on a slippery slope, as I weighed over 15st.’ As if that wasn’t enough to shock Andrew into action, after his 20th wedding anniversary trip to Barcelona, the photos made him realise how big he had become. He says: ‘I saw the pictures of myself and knew I had to do something. They made such an impression on me that I still have one of the photos as a screensaver on my phone – just to remember what I used to look like.’
Andrew was accepted as a trial dieter and chose to follow the high-carbohydrate option. ‘No alcohol for the first two weeks sounded scary at first,’ he admits. ‘For years, I hadn’t gone without alcohol for more than two days – after a cricket match, it’s very sociable and I’d always have a drink. But my fears about the diet were unfounded. It wasn’t hard at all.’
As well as adapting to no alcohol for two weeks, Andrew had to get used to a whole new way of eating, after being on a cake and pastry diet for years: ‘I missed the taste of kebabs at first, as well as peanuts and pork scratchings but I don’t miss them now. To stick to the diet, I avoided takeaway shops completely – I didn’t want the smell to tempt me.’
Andrew’s taste in foods saw a complete turnaround: ‘I love fruit now. Because I started the diet in the summer I ate loads of strawberries and blueberries and my taste-buds changed. I was used to tasting fat but the low-fat diet meant I could taste everything better.’
At the same time, Andrew also discovered a love of walking. After six months of recording his steps on a pedometer, he’d racked up over 1,500 miles. ‘I now wear a pedometer every day to record my steps – I even work out the average number of steps that I do every week. To help keep the weight off I deliver a local community newspaper so I do loads of walking. My wife says I’m addicted to my pedometer.’
With his new eating habits and exercise regime, Andrew’s weight quickly dropped off. He says: ‘I was so surprised how fast I lost weight – 6lb in the first week, over a stone in a month and 2st in eight weeks. I wanted to get my BMI down to 25, but in the beginning, I thought I had no chance.’
As well as walking everywhere now, Andrew goes to classes, where he has lost another half a stone. ‘If it wasn’t for the trial I might never have gone to a Rosemary Conley class and danced with 40 women. But I’m so glad – the class is a community and we have such a laugh.’
‘People don’t recognise me’
As quickly as his weight fell off, Andrew’s health improved too. He revisited his doctor after six months on the diet and the results spoke volumes. His cholesterol levels and blood pressure were perfect. He says: ‘I no longer have to take tablets and I only have to see the doctor once a year, instead of once every two months.’
Andrew, who’s now 47, also saw a massive difference in his appearance and it didn’t go unnoticed. ‘Everyone could see the difference. I had to buy new suits for cricket because they were falling off of me. I’ve now bought a slim-fit suit and that felt great. All my old clothes are gone – I’ve just kept one pair of baggy jeans. Since I’ve lost weight people don’t recognise me – they have to do a double take.’
Andrew’s new healthy eating and fitness regime has changed his whole lifestyle: ‘I have more get up and go – I’ll walk to the shops rather than drive. Before, I couldn’t run between the cricket wickets but now I’ve been made Bowler of the Year. I also sleep better. I love getting up early and going for a walk around to the shop and I still wear my pedometer – the only time I take it off is for bed. I’m determined that I won’t go back to what I was.’
JULIE POLE
Age 46
Height 5ft 1½in (1.56m)
Old weight 13st 3lb (84.1kg)
New weight 10st 13lb (69.8kg)
Lost 2st 4lb (14.3kg)
BMI was 34.6 now 28.7
A pregnancy shock and hectic family life saw Julie Pole’s weight increase to over 13 stone. After following the Amazing Inch Loss Plan, Julie conquered her comfort-eating habit. She lost over 2 stone and dropped from a dress size 18 to a size 12.
When Julie Pole married husband Kevin she weighed 9st 7lb and was happy with her shape. She was no stranger to exercise as she was a regular gym goer for years. It was the surprise of her shock pregnancy that led to a bad diet, no exercise, and to Julie piling on the pounds, until she topped the scales at over 14 stone. She says: ‘It was a shock to the system that I got pregnant at 37. I used to walk every day but then stopped all of a sudden and the weight just piled on. I ate too much during my pregnancy – I had strong cravings for liquorice so ate it all of the time, and I loved olives.’
But it wasn’t just pregnancy weight that Julie carried. After giving birth, she and her family went through a traumatic time as her newborn was in a critical condition for 10 days in hospital. Baby Brennan had swallowed fluid and it was on his lungs. Julie recalls: ‘Everything went downhill and when you’re low you tend to eat more. It was a really tough time, I still get upset now when I think about it.’
Her comfort eating and lack of time meant Julie put on over 4st and her health and fitness was second to her baby. She says: ‘You try to do your best by your baby, he had a bad time with his milk and cried continuously. I just used to grab the easiest thing for myself to eat. You put your baby first and the diet on the back burner – I didn’t think about it.’
Like many new mums, Julie returned to full-time work but that only worsened her weight problem. ‘With work and a new baby I had no time for myself,’ she admits. ‘My job was office-based and it became the norm to binge on biscuits – food is the first thing I went to for comfort.’
As her size continued to expand, Julie’s confidence started to take a knock. She lost her passion for shopping and ended up wearing the same old clothes: ‘I didn’t like going shopping because I couldn’t get into the clothes. I love shopping and love clothes but shops often don’t do ranges for the larger lady. I hated having to go the next size up too.’
‘The diet suited me and it encouraged me to exercise again’