The Baby Food Diet: Eat Yourself Thin!
Fad diet or fat buster? FHM’s Josh Woodfin tries the latest Hollywood craze
Let’s get one thing straight: I have big bones. My mum told me. I was briefly even the heaviest baby in the Royal Devon & Exeter hospitals’ history. But now I’m just a chubby desk jockey. Well, enough is enough. I want thin – Hollywood thin. The current ‘it’ diet is ‘The Baby Food Cleanse’, apparently advocated by Jennifer Aniston and Lady Gaga. Aside from a ‘proper’ evening meal, the stars substitute all food for baby mush. The concept is based on portion control and the fact baby food is very pure. I like the concept, but I’m a big engine to run. Could I really last a week on little more than squashed yams?
Day 1:
Breakfast:
Ella’s Kitchen Organic Sweet Potatoes, Pumpkin, Apples and Blueberries. Basically a pack of the brown off-bits on an apple you throw away. Not good.
Lunch:
Cow & Gate Grandma’s Sunday Lunch. Some solids, but still a gag-worthy mush.
Dinner: Grilled chicken and beetroot salad. Healthy, tasty. Imbued with a quiet confidence that my 16st frame will soon be slighter.
Day 2:
Breakfast: Four Petit Filous. Almost start crying as the childhood memories come flooding back.
Lunch: Cow & Gate ‘Yummy’ Bolognese. I’d question the title, but it’s the best so far. I have two.
Dinner: Prawn stir-fry. I cook and eat this so quickly I’m awake all night worrying about food poisoning.
Day 3:
Breakfast: Petit Filous and mashed banana. And a slow, gruelling stroll past a painfully aromatic McDonald’s.
Lunch: Cow & Gate Shepherd’s Pie. Best lunch yet, actually quite filling, which is good as I’m starting to imagine the work experience as an enormous talking sausage.
Dinner: Poached salmon and (quiet voice) Thai green curry… Whoops.
Day 4:
Breakfast: Four bananas. Bit of a wobble, sat for five minutes with a piece of toast in my hand before devouring said bananas.
Lunch: Three Cow & Gate Bologneses. Really hungry now. Snappy as well.
Dinner: Bolognese. Actual bolognaese, and a lot of it. Instantly feel that familiar comforting bloat. Up yours, babies.
Day 5:
Breakfast: Nothing, just a long trip to the toilet that I dub ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’.
Lunch: Cow & Gate Cottage Pie. I stand outside eating, then go inside in case people think I’m a food pervert.
Dinner: Chicken. More grilled chicken and salad and a small glass of red wine that leaves me reeling.
Day 6:
Breakfast: Four coffees, two bananas. And my first daytime cigarette in months.
Lunch: Cow & Gate Grandma’s Sunday Lunch. I eat it alone. My housemate has gone for a pub lunch with our friends.
Dinner:
Bottle of wine. Early night.
Day 7:
Breakfast: Ella’s Organic Sweet Potatoes …and blah, blah, blah.
Lunch:
Cow & Gate Yummy Bolognaese. Strangely enjoyable as I near the end. Like a cancer patient’s last cigarette.
Dinner:
Grandma’s Sunday Lunch.
Final weight: 15st! Only joking. I’m still 16st.
Conclusion:
I was hungry, irritated, and bored. And crucially, I was too tired to exercise. The theory of the baby food diet is sound, but it’s an extreme version. Portion control, healthy eating and exercise will make you thinner
The Expert View
“Was Josh constipated?” asks Harley Street nutritionist Yvonne Bishop-Western. Yes he was, Yvonne. Josh was backed up like the M25 on Christmas Eve, and just as grumpy. “That’s because baby foods contain little fibre, because it’s pureed to make it easy to absorb.”
Our expert also says a long-term baby food diet could actually make Josh fatter. “I would expect him to lose some weight in the early days,” she says. “But if he’s regularly eating the tastier, fruity ones – which he will because the others taste quite dull – then he’s going to be getting an awful lot of sugar.” Unused sugar = Big Fat Josh.
From the August 2010 issue of FHM India.
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