Eat fat, get thin: the new diet rules

When you join a new gym, you don’t expect to be sent home with a long list of fats to introduce into your diet. Neither is it normal to be given a workout plan that lasts for no longer than 15 minutes. Isn’t that just a warm-up?

But that’s exactly what happened to me at The Library, a boutique gym in Notting Hill that specialises in superfast workouts and rapid results. The owner, Zana Morris, was confident I’d shift at least 5lb on her 12-day starter programme, a regime that involved gorging on ribeye steaks, whole avocados and great dollops of cream cheese plus lifting weights so heavy you’re almost sick with exertion.

I had put on a stone and a half since having a baby five years ago, mostly around my middle. Women are particularly prone to this pattern of weight gain, with hormones, age, stress, lack of sleep and a sedentary lifestyle all blame factors. Even though I’d cut out croissants, curries, butter and cheese, switched to skinny lattes and slashed my wine intake, still my weight was creeping up. Cycling for nearly two hours a day had given me the lowest pulse rate in the office but still my dress size rose. So the notion of eating more fat, loads of it, and doing a lot less exercise was perversely appealing: if being good doesn’t work, perhaps I should try the fat and lazy approach.

Fat is getting good press right now. After decades of being told we need to cut it out, a slew of experts are reassessing its positive benefits. Nina Teicholz publishes The Big Fat Surprise (Scribe) this week, arguing that the healthiest diet contains plenty of protein and liberal amounts of fat, butter and cheese. Morris believes that carbohydrates are actually what make us lay down weight — especially around the middle — by causing spikes in our insulin levels. “Fat is the only food group that doesn’t cause an insulin release,” she says, recommending instead that you follow “a high fat, very low-carb diet which also causes your body to burn fat as opposed to sugars as a fuel — meaning you burn into your body fat and therefore actually lose fat.” So eating high enough quantities of fat along with the right foods could actually help you become thin.

Morris also offers an explanation for why cycling wasn’t making a dent in my weight: “Intensive exercise beyond 45 minutes causes your body to lose more muscle than it’s capable of recovering, meaning there’s a muscle loss. As your daily calorie intake is almost exclusively burned by your muscle this is the very tissue you do not wish to lose.” So too much of the wrong sort of exercise really can make you fat.

Morris prescribes super-tough short bursts of high-intensity training (HIT) that actually break down your muscle, meaning the body has to work to build it back up again, which it does with all the protein you’re getting from that ribeye. You also get a big metabolic boost she says: “A short HIT causes a massive surge in your metabolism for at least two hours after the training session.”

I went straight home and got stuck in to a steak with melted Boursin cheese and an avocado and walnut salad. The next morning I hit the gym at 6.40am, did the toughest workout of my life and less than 20 minutes later, with legs like jelly, went for breakfast of eggs, bacon and coffee with double cream. Lunch was salmon with green salad and a big bag of macadamia nuts. No wine. No juice. No carbs. No sugar.

I did this every day for a fortnight, the trainer rotating my workouts to target legs, arms, chest back and abs. For a week, my muscles ached and I grew ever grouchier. In a pep talk, Morris tossed me a hefty chunk of wobbly rubber: “That’s 5lb of fat.” It was enough to make me carry on — for another week anyway.

And in the second week a corner was turned. My body stopped hurting, my mood lifted and I could only manage two meals a day. Yet I never felt hungry and my energy levels were steady. My clothes began to feel looser as my body got slimmer and stronger. By the final weigh-in I’d lost 7.8lb — 6.6lb of it fat — and skimmed 10 inches from my body.

It has been incredibly motivating: it’s hard to stomach food that rich for long and a fortnight was enough for me. But I’ve lost half a stone and learned vital lessons: fat is not the enemy to staying slim, and quality of exercise can matter as much as quantity. Should I stick to the lazy, fat regime? Other than that stubborn stone — and maybe my appetite — what’s to lose?