Forget about counting the calories or food groups, there is another way of healthy eating
BORED with breaking wind on Atkins? A touch confused about the cause and effect of carbs, fats and high protein? Fed up with worrying about calorie, yo-yo diets and the inevitable banishment from normal life, and jolly nice nosh as you know it?
The book, The GL Diet Diet Freedom by Nigel Denby written in collaboration with Deborah Pyner and Tina van der Heijden offers you the chance to lose weight permanently, without sacrificing either your taste buds, or your brain cells.
Nor will the seemingly painless process leave you feeling like a damp dish rag; quite the reverse in fact as the authors claim this healthy eating programme promises its followers ownership of boundless bags of energy.
The GL stands for Glycaemic Load and despite the heavy sounding sub-title; the publication is exceedingly user friendly. Written with the failed serial dieter in mind, it is mercifully devoid of carb/calorie counting and minus any ubiquitous point scoring system.
Deborah Pyner is herself a former serial dieter, who also suffered from IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), a painful condition that was made more so when she ate carbohydrates.
Staying here in Cyprus for one month, Deborah cooked up a storm in my kitchen, introducing me to a whole raft of deliciously different dishes, even coming up with a tempting alternative to my favourite potatoes in the form of a divine creamy cauliflower mash.
Nigel Denby is a man who definatly ‘knows his onions’ and has quite a background. He is not only a professional dietician and nutritionist, he is also a chef, who runs his own restaurant, along with working out of his London, Harley Street practice, where he specialises in weight management. His writing is refreshingly clear and easy to understand; there’s no high-tech scientific waffle which just bores and depresses most dieters. It’s a simple programme that uses a food selection system based on science, on fact, not fad, but most importantly its been designed to be practical and easy to follow.
One section I really enjoyed and found helpful was the eating out guide. Here, almost every type of eatery from Indian, Chinese, Mexican, Greek, along with fast food chains, are looked at, and a menu of dishes are recommended which will maintain your GL.
For example, with Indian food avoid Biryani and Naan bread, but, if you need something to mop up the sauce a chapatti is the best option. Rice in a Chinese restaurant has the highest GL of all so that’s to be given a body swerve, along with nachos and tacos if going down Mexico way.
The author obviously has a soft spot for Greek food, encouraging us to dip into Houmous taramasalata, kebabs and halloumi but hopes we can resist nibbling on the pitta bread.
The other section I liked was the low GL recipes, I tried the chickpea curry recipe last week and it was voted delicious. The recipe for cauliflower mash I used to top a fish pie rather than use potatoes, and when sprinkled with cheese tasted much better than if I had used potatoes.
So, what have we got here in this title, and why should we all rush out and purchase it? It’s written by folk who have both an understanding of diets and have themselves experienced the cause and effect from the stuff we all happily pile onto our forks on a daily basis. The ‘freedom’ mentioned in the title is important because once you have reached your target weight there is an acute sense of well being and that will always translate for both men and women into experiencing a great sense of freedom in every aspect of life.
This is also a book to buy even if you are not aiming to lose weight but still love your food and just want to eat healthier, and keen cooks will buy it for the original recipes published in each section.
l The GL Diet Diet Freedom by Nigel Denby is published by Blake Publishing (£7.99)
