On Apr 17, 2004, at 1:20 pm, Andrea Hughett wrote:

> Or any diets.  In my office there are two skinny young
> women who eat, from what I can see, nothing but junk
> food.  Then there are two chubby-to-portly middle-aged
> women on Weight Watchers

Weight Watchers is commercial genius, even if they did it by accident.
It's a restricted calorie, carb-based diet that is guaranteed to help
you hang on to the last few pounds you want to lose.  You could
probably spend the rest of your life on Weight Watchers, attending
meetings and eating their ready meals.

I know a girl that went from 22 stone to about 15 with Lighter Life
(who provide a diet where you eat nothing but nutritional soups and
bars to supple vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids), then
switched to Weight Watchers and can't get below 13 stone.  She's quite
tall but I suspect her ideal weight would be 10 stone or less.  I've
sent her a few pages of The Paleo Diet because she has the symptoms of
polycystic ovaries, and I copied the whole of chapter 5 in the hope
that she would buy the book.   The thing is, I don't like to preach to
her (or anyone) especially as she's lost 9 stone off her own
initiative.

I would like to see her try a paleolithic diet but a lot of people
either don't believe it works or is healthy, or aren't prepared to give
up foods they like or think they need.  My driving instructor is about
50 and recently turned diabetic, but won't switch to a paleo diet
because his dietician says "you need wheat for roughage".  (That
comment is just too easy a target- I did wonder how the woman got to
her position not knowing their is more fibre in most veg).  And my mum,
who suffers the same chronic fatigue I had, won't give up milk.  I know
milk is a problem for me, and my nan (my mum's mum) had a whipped cream
allergy in her later years, but she won't try a paleo diet because
crippling fatigue is apparently better than drinking black tea.

So any comments on how to gently open peoples eyes to this would be
appreciated- although Clockwork Orange springs to mind :)