The Empire Strikes Back: Does the “Jenny Craig” diet work?

Does the “Jenny Craig” diet work?  Let’s ask Carrie Fisher…

August last year and we shared an article about Carrie Fisher who had lost three and a half stone on the Jenny Craig diet…..the piece was simple and to the point: it wouldn’t last.  It couldn’t last because the diet was based on conventional wisdom: eat less (much less) of the same food that made you overweight in the first place and exercise more.  This morning this picture appeared in our paper:

Well, may be it’s an unfortunate angle but for many of us this will strike a deep chord.. the fact is, diets don’t work.  And to all those diet groups out there like Jenny Craig who pedal “small portions” of biscuits and pasta and low-fat, high sugar “food” we say again…get real!  This is what made you fat in the first place, carefully manufactured “food” designed to de-sensitise you taste-buds and knock out your natural ability to tell when you have had enough.

And when the diet ends (as any one who has ever embarked on a restricted calorie diet knows it inevitably will), tell us…what’s changed?

To tackle weight issues once and for all you have to clean up your diet.  Anyone who tells you any different is being economical with the truth.  Period.

Some of us labour under the illusion that we are broken.  Wrapped up in our stories we forget the first rule of life: which is that we are all alive now  and really just how much of an very big adventure it is!

For many our experience of life is being compromised by the poor quality “food” we eat and the devastating impact it has on our mind, body and soul.  It can numb us and makes us less then our real Selves.

The answer?  Stop using food to avoid life.  Stop inventing reasons why you can’t do it too!  Therapists and counsellors will sit with you for hours turning over your childhood to come up with valid reasons to make you less than.  Don’t fall for it.  Keep it simple, keep it real.  Change the food you eat.  Learn what you can and can’t eat in order to find your natural weight (and we’ll give you a clue..paleo…) and stick with it, for life.  In this way you have practical tools: a compass and guide to focus on to get you out of the place you find yourself and better still you’re doing it for yourself!  Keep walking forward, don’t look back.  Why does it work?  Because you are eating real food combined with satisfying healthy fat that will keep you feeling well and content.

In the meantime, we wish Carrie well and invite you to share your thoughts on conventional dietary wisdom and the affect it has had on your life.