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Adam Richard’s guide to crash dieting

Richard with Spicks and Specks mates Josh Earl and Ella Hooper.

Richard with Spicks and Specks mates Josh Earl and Ella Hooper.

The comedy veteran has tried almost all of them, so he’s a self-professed expert to deliver the pros and cons. “Before I list my top five weight loss plans, let me make it very clear that I am still fat,” Adam admits. “There is no ‘trick’ to losing weight. In most cases, it is purely psychological, and you need to work on the emotional reasons you over ­eat, or under-­exercise. I can hear you sitting there saying, ‘I don’t have any emotional reasons, and I’m still fat’ and that, my friend, is the worst emotional reason for being overweight ­- denial. None of these is a cure­-all, but some are easier than others.”

Richard with Spicks and Specks mates Josh Earl and Ella Hooper.

Richard with Spicks and Specks mates Josh Earl and Ella Hooper.

5. WEIGHT WATCHERS

The grand­-mamma of the weight loss business

They’ve been around so long, Betty from Mad Men even had a crack at it when she was Woah! Fat Betty, Bam-a-lam.

Its latest innovation is the Pro Points system, which makes counting calories blindingly easy. The balance of carbohydrate, protein and fibre in any particular food item is distilled into a (hopefully) single digit number. Ladies get about 49 points a day to eat (I got sixty, because I’m a big strong man) but you can increase your points allowance with exercise! I want a cake =­ I’m going for an hour­-long walk. Easy maths.

Fresh fruit and veggies are an absolute zero, so if you are craving a snack, you won’t dent your points balance with an apple or a carrot. As exhaustive as their database of food items is, there is always something in a food court you can’t find on the app. I used a basic rule of thumb ­a Big Mac was 13 points, so I’d just put down anything I didn’t know as 13 points. Here’s a scary stat: two-minute Mee Goreng noodles are nearly 20 points. That’s a third of your daily allowance. Stay away!

If you need encouragement, the weekly meetings are a great opportunity to talk to other people struggling to get on top of things. Downside is a hefty monthly subscription fee, and the online support staff are simply awful – the main reason I quit the program; my many queries and complaints were met with either silence, or an irrelevant cut­-and­-paste email.

4. MICHELLE BRIDGES 12WBT

She has a unique ability to make you feel like you can do anything

The 12 Week Body Transformation (12WBT) by Michelle Bridges is entirely online. Unlike Weight Watchers, which lets you eat what you like and exercise as much or as little as you like, 12WBT tells you what to eat, and when, and exactly which exercises to do.

Bridges fronts up a slew of videos that not only tell you how to do the exercises, but she also tries to leap those mental hurdles that are keeping you on the couch. She has a unique ability to make you feel like you can do anything, and if you are looking for positivity and motivation, Bridges is the woman for you.

My only problem with the program was the fact that all of the recipes, while delicious and satisfying, were designed for 2 (or more) people. Nobody wants to come on a diet with you, no matter how delicious the food, so you either end up eating double portions, or attempting to halve a recipe (which never works, because you always forget to halve one ingredient, and it’s invariably the one that tastes like kak).

3. LITE ‘N’ EASY

It starts to feel like a groundhog day diet

I always poo­h-poohed Lite ‘n’ Easy because it seemed like the diet for the laziest of people ­ who couldn’t be bothered cooking or going to the shops. It’s true, you do get an entire week’s food delivered to your door, and it is, for the most part, quite tasty. You will lose weight almost immediately, because there’s no licking of beaters or tasting sauce to make sure it’s seasoned.

But it’s not great over the long term, because you become resentful of the prescriptive snacks. There is plenty of variety in the food, but after a month or so, it starts to feel like a groundhog day diet. “Oh really? Those seaweed rice crackers with salsa again? Ugh.”

Having said that, this was the diet that I lost the most weight on. I was, at the time, training 10 or so hours a week in a swimming pool, doing a reality TV diving competition, so the weight might move a little slower if you’re sitting down playing Halo for ten hours a week.

You’ll need to motivate yourself to do your own exercise, but as for eating plans, this is the easiest. If anything, it should teach you about portion sizes. One piece of toast, a thimble of muesli, things we don’t even notice we’re eating too much of.

2. PERSONAL TRAINER

They’re everywhere at the moment

It’s one thing to join the gym, and then have that heinous guilt every time your direct debit shows up in your bank account, and you realise you haven’t been there for yet another month. It’s madness.

Booking in with a personal trainer means you have an appointment at the gym. Like an appointment for a hairdresser or the dentist. If you don’t like your trainer, don’t worry, there are probably about fifty others at your local gym, or a gym near your work, or at the local park! They’re everywhere at the moment.

If the cost is putting you off, I want you to imagine how much it will cost you for elective knee surgery, or how long you will have to wait, after your joints give out under all the weight you’re carrying. Not to mention how much time you’ll have to have off work for major heart surgery. Then how much will you be out of pocket?

As you get to know your trainer, you may be able to work out a bulk discount – buy up a stack of sessions, book in at the same time once or twice a week, and you can’t cancel.

1. PSYCHOLOGIST

Once you deal with upstairs, downstairs should follow.

The major reason we are all overweight is not the seductive power of a fast food chain, nor is it because we’re a nation of lazy fatty boombahs. It’s because we all need help upstairs.

Extreme obesity and anorexia are not so different from one another. We feel sorry for people who are anorexic or bulimic, believing them to be in the grip of a terrible disease, but as soon as we see someone who is obscenely fat, we sneer. We think “why doesn’t she just do something about it? Why is she going into KFC?!”

The sooner we realise that eating beyond the point of satiety is a mental illness, the sooner we will be able to cure our poor nation of its crippling obesity epidemic. Remember I told you earlier about the Weight Watchers points plan? You only get 50 points a day. Do you know how much a glass of wine is? Six points. One bottle of wine, in strictly caloric terms, is more than your allowance for dinner. We are not only a nation of over-eaters, we are a nation that over­-indulges in alcohol. Why is that? Go and see a doctor or a psychologist and find out.

If you’re worried about the expense, see your GP, tell them you’re eating and drinking too much, and ask for a referral, so that Medicare can help you out. It’s that easy. Once you deal with upstairs, downstairs should follow. You need to fix your head before you can even think of dealing with your arse.

See Adam on the all-new Spicks and Specks on ABC1 every Wednesday at 8.30pm. He’s a Team Captain alongside Ella Hooper and host Josh Earl.

This article first appeared on Five of the Best.

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