The Bottle Of Wine A Night Diet

THIS week the British Dieticians Association sent out an interesting puff about the five worst celebrity diets. Click here to read it. They included one which involved eating jars of baby food (only works if you are a baby), a protein only diet and a raw food diet. Then this, the Alcorexia / Drunkorexia Diet.

You may not be able to have your cake and eat it, but you can certainly have a cheeky few glasses to cheer you up.

It’s when people eat very few calories during the day/week and think they can save all the calories they have not eaten then use them to binge drink alcohol. You must be blind drunk, they say. 

Following a VLC diet alone is madness, as you will most certainly not be getting the calories, vitamins and nutrients your body needs to survive and function.  In addition, you will feel weak, tired have no energy and will become very irritable very soon. 

Alcorexia - swapping food calories for alcohol calories

Alcohol has little nutrition other than calories.  To do this in order to ‘bank’ your calories so you can go a use them on alcohol is pure madness and could easily result in alcohol poisoning and even death.  Anyways, that's the warning, but here is Stepanie de Leng's take. You may not be able to have your cake and eat it, but you can certainly have a cheeky few glasses to cheer you up.

Stephanie De Leng's Wine Diet

Do you hate to diet? Have you tried? Do you love wine? Then try my long proven diet – it is not a diet that you start and then finish, it is a diet for life that will make and keep you thin, and allow you to party and have fun at the same time. It is the diet I follow, and so happens to be the foods I prefer anyway and it includes wine.

Please, no doctors or health experts admonishing me about units. I just don’t care or believe what they say anyway. No meaningful research has ever been done on wine drinkers who follow a healthy diet. It is always on binge drinkers who do not eat, and people who are into vast quantities of spirits such as whisky and vodka. A healthy liver is a happy liver, true, though I have no idea where mine is and apparently that is a good sign.

Over the years I have had all sorts of blood and liver checks and I am delighted to report that I have super blood. So what’s stopping you? Read, drink and feed!

Stephie’s Wine Regime:

You must have 2 to 3 portions of fruit a day – juice is counted as long as it is not from concentrate and also dried fruit – two pieces count as a portion. It is best to have your fruit in the morning to give a burst of energy for the day. You must have at least three portions (preferably seven) of vegetable a day with the exception of potatoes, turnips, sweet potatoes, swedes and parsnips.

It is not possible to eat too many vegetables. Celery is one of the best. Avocados are brilliant. Asparagus is a treat for your hair and sex drive. I could go on and on, but basically, the rawer they are, the better – with two exceptions; although spinach is high in iron, it contains oxalic acid, which inhibits iron and calcium absorption. Cooking breaks the oxalates down and therefore avoids that problem. Similarly, the lycopenes in tomatoes, which incidentally give them their red colour, are hard to absorb unless they are cooked. Lycopenes are great for your skin and are powerful anti-oxidants, so much so that longevity of the Mediterranean people have been attributed to their high tomato intake.

Milk Thistle

Unless all your fruit and veg are organically and home grown, you must take a good multi-vitamin supplement, milk thistle for your liver, and a good omega 3 oil supplement. Do not take more, unless your doctor has identified a particular deficiency – you could actually doing yourself harm and your urine will be very expensive. If you have dry skin you should also take starflower oil supplements.

You must have 4- 8 raw almonds a day for your liver and heart. No more. No other nuts allowed. You can eat as much meat, fish, poultry and eggs as you wish, but try to keep it varied, with a heavier emphasis on fish if possible. Nothing can be deep-fried. You may not drink milk (milk is for babies!), cream or hard cow’s cheese. You may have modest portions of Camembert or goat’s cheese. You can have as much cottage cheese or quark as you like – this is good for your calcium levels.

You may not eat any potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, swedes and parsnips as above. All rice, millet, barley, bulgur wheat must be avoided with the exception of wholegrain brown rice in small quantities. You also cannot eat anything with flour or sugar in it. So no pasta, bread, biscuits, sweets, etc.

There is a small exception to the last rule. Try to have two small squares of chocolate containing 70% cocoa each day for your nerves, happiness and heart. Do eat pulses and lentils. They are very high in vitamin B complex and roughage. Although they contain carbs, they are also high in protein and the carbs are very slowly released. You must drink three mugs of warm water a day – one before each meal. The more herbal teas you drink on top of this the better. If you suffer from water retention, take dandelion tea (buy it at your local health food store). It is amazing.

Almonds

Drinking liquids speeds up your metabolism and helps you lose weight more quickly. However, apart from one glass of juice a day in your fruit allowance, you must have no liquids with any form of sugar in them as you are drinking wine. You should also avoid anything with aspartame as this can cause a fatty liver and increase your appetite. It is one of the most evil of manmade substances and one day it will be banned.

In the meantime it is enough to say that amongst its many side effects, it stimulates the release of insulin and leptin, and so encourages the storage of fat – exactly the opposite result you would have been looking for. If you wish to take a sugar substitute, I recommend Xylitol from the birch tree. It has no known side effects and is a natural substance.

You are allowed up to a bottle of 12 per cent wine a day (if the alcohol content is higher reduce your intake accordingly). This is why all sugar and most carbs apart from pulses are removed from your diet. Your body converts carbs into sugar. You are getting your sugar from wine so leave out the carbs. You do not want to become a diabetic. You want to have a great time.

It is preferable to abstain from alcohol for one day a week although Rod Stewart once told me that he goes on a diet every Sunday as follows: a boiled egg and water for breakfast, a boiled egg and water for lunch, a giant steak, salad and bottle of red for dinner. He was 40 at the time and looked great. He is 66 now and still looks pretty amazing for his age, not to mention that he has about a million children.  

Rod Loves His Wine