I have written six books to date:

1) Why do you overeat? When all you want is to be slim (2004)

This book answers that million dollar question and it introduced The Harcombe Diet for the first time and the three conditions that cause insatiable food cravings. It was the book that changed my life and I hope it changes yours. You may enjoy reading this, as the original. However, Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight: The Harcombe Diet was written in 2008 to effectively replace Why do you overeat?

(This book has been translated into Greek and is available in Greece).

2) Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight: The Harcombe Diet (2008)

The original version of Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight was published by Accent Press in the UK and it looked like this:

The very early versions looked like the picture to the left. The later editions (2010) had “Best-selling book on amazon” added on the front cover and a picture of me and a picture of the recipe book on the back cover. That’s how you’ll know how early your copy is!

This one is out of print as of July 2011.

We changed publishers in July 2011 to Columbus Publishing Ltd and the picture below shows the new book and cover. If you want our flagship diet book – the best seller, which has helped over hundred thousand people to lose weight – this is the one to get. So, if you have the option of buying a copy of ‘the green book’ or the one with me on the cover – the most up-to-date book is the one with me on the cover.

This has been the cover for the USA, Australian and NZ version of Stop Counting Calories all along, so this is the one to buy in any of those countries.

Rights for Stop Counting Calories were sold to Russia in 2010 and they have a different cover altogether!

FAQ) I have the old Stop Counting Calories - is it worth me getting the new one?

A) I’ll tell you the main changes to help you decide – about one third of the book has been completely rewritten:

- The Q&A section is the major change. It was really difficult to find questions in the green book and we now have these 80 pages organised alphabetically, so that you can find the answers from Agave Nectar to Xylitol really easily. We have new questions on chocolate, cholesterol, eggs, time-of-the-month and the key new sweeteners (don’t!) I’ve included the list of Q&A’s in the new edition of Stop Counting Calories at the end of this post (Appendix 1), so that you can see if this new section would help you. Any club subscribers who have library access will find all these Q&A’s (and many, many more) in the club, with a handy search for your convenience.

- Part 2 is new – this goes into my latest research on why counting calories has never worked and never will. It includes the amazing story from The Obesity Epidemic: What caused it? How can we stop it? where I asked the seven main UK diet and public health bodies where the calorie theory comes from and what their answers were!

- The Phase 2 chapter has a new section at the end sharing my learnings from working with clients. All about weight loss, plateaus, should you stay on Phase 1 longer and so on.

- The testimonials are all new at the front – taken from our on-line club members, who have very kindly shared their names, so the accolades are now much more personal.

There are other small updates throughout, but these are the main ones.

3) Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight: The Harcombe Diet Recipe Book (2008)

This was the original accompaniment to the 2008 diet book. It became known as ‘the blue book’ and the picture is on the left:

This one is out of print as of July 2011.

4) The Harcombe Diet: The Recipe Book (2011)

This is the new accompaniment for the new recipe book and the feedback has been fantastic! It has Andy’s and my recipes from the first recipe book and over 100 new ones. There is far more emphasis on Phase 1 recipes and only a few classic Phase 3 dishes. We’ve made sure we have covered the classics from mushroom stroganoff to French onion soup to gravy to Harcombe friendly burgers. Mayonnaise, chips, cauliflower cheese are all in there. There is a wonderful section on curries, with an authentic Indian base recipe and then adjustments for the range from Korma to Dhansak. Andy and I have written this one together and we are thrilled with it.

One of the best bits is the new structure and index – it is structured by Phase, so that you can go to the section for the Phase that you are currently on and see all your vegetarian, fish and meat options. The index at the back is so much better – we took on board some feedback about the other index and we think you’ll love this one. So, if you have the option of buying a copy of ‘the blue book’ or the new one – there’s no contest!

FAQ) Is it worth getting the new recipe book if I have the out-of-print one?

A) I would – it is just the perfect accompaniment to the diet book for anyone cooking real food from scratch.

5) The Obesity Epidemic: What caused it? How can we stop it? (2010)

You can find out lots about this book on this site. The whole introduction is on the site for free, all the reviews, summaries of each chapter, some research I have done since this book came out. Arguably the most useful bit – the 400 references from the book are on this site, with click throughs to the source where possible to make your own research as easy as possible.

This is not a diet book – it’s an academic book answering the question that is the book title.

6) The Harcombe Diet for Men (2011)

We are so excited about this one. It is at the printers now and is due out in the autumn. Advance copies will be available for our on-line club members, as ever. Here is the cover:

And the words on the back describe what it’s all about:

No More Mr Fat Guy!

You want to lose weight – fast
You’re not prepared to go hungry
You want to eat steak, pasta, cheese and the good things in life
You want the odd drink
(Some days, to be honest, quite a lot of drink)
You’ll exercise only if you want to
You won’t count calories or anything else.
Oh, and you want all of this in just a few pages…

So here it is – The Harcombe Diet® for men:
Real food, unlimited quantities and rapid results;
Just 3 simple rules – to get you to your ideal weight and keep you there for life.

“I read 4 pages and lost two and a half stone – I figured I’d better not read much more!”
John Davies

We think busy women (aren’t we all?!) are going to love this as much as men. It’s the slimmest book you’ve ever seen – just 80 pages, which is just about the smallest book you can properly bind. Everything you need to know about the diet and conditions is covered in c. 40 pages and then the rest covers optional stuff: why we don’t worry about fat or cholesterol, how to eat out and lose weight, fitness and nutrition etc. It’s really straight talking and probably takes little more than half an hour to read and then you know everything you need to know about weight loss.

Please note – The Harcombe Diet itself won’t change. If you have already got Stop Counting Calories, you don’t need this book. It was designed for those who would never read a 350 page diet book. You may, however, like it as a pocket size reference book rather than searching through the bigger book. It’s a great summary of The Harcombe Diet.

That’s it for now! We hope that this helps.

Very best wishes – Zoë & Andy

—————————————————————————————————————————-

Appendix 1 – Q&A’s from the 2011 Columbus Edition of Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight:

Questions & Answers

This section has been substantially revised since the first edition of this book. As much of the book is in a question and answer format, we have taken out the questions covered in earlier chapters to avoid repetition.

This has enabled us to include many new questions, every one of which comes from followers of The Harcombe Diet. There have been so many questions that we are now able to establish a clear Top 10 most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s). We have put (Top 10) in brackets next to these questions, so that you know you’re not alone in asking this one.

We have put all questions in alphabetical order so that Sweeteners, Sweet potatoes and Soy(a) will be under S and Caffeine under C, as examples. There is also an index at the back of the book to help you further. We hope that the following pages answer any queries that you may have. However, if your query is not answered here, we have literally thousands of questions asked and answered in our on-line diet club www.theharcombedietclub.com.

A – Addiction (2); Agave Nectar; Alcohol (2); Avocados
B – Bacon; Benefits (of doing this diet); Bingeing (& Starving); Butter
C – Caffeine; Calories (3); Candida (4); Carbohydrates (2); Cereal; Cheese; Chewing gum; Children; Chips; Chocolate; Cholesterol; Constipation; Corn Flour; Couscous; Cravings (4); Cream; Crème fraiche (& fromage frais)
D – Dairy Products; Diabetes; (Candida) Die-off; Diet Drinks; Drinks generally (2)
E – Effort; Eggs (2); Eyesight
F – Falling (off the wagon); Fat (4); Food Intolerance (by country); Fruit; Fruit teas
G – Gravy; Grazing
H – Healthy; Honey; Hummus
I – Insulin; Insulin resistance (Syndrome X)
J – Jam (preserves) (2)
L – Lemon
M – Mascarpone cheese; Meat (2); Medication; Milk; Mixing (2); Moderation
N – Nuts (& Seeds)
O – Olives; Olive Oil
P – Pain killers; Pasta; Phase 1 (staying on Phase 1 & going back to Phase 1); Potatoes; Pregnancy; Protein; Pulses
Q – Quorn
R – Real food; Recipes
S – Salt; Sausages; Smoked food; Snacks; Soy(a) milk; Stevia; Stock cubes; Sugar; Sweet corn; Sweeteners; Sweet potatoes
T – “Time-of-the-month”; Tinned tomatoes; Tofu
V – Vegetables; Vegetable crisps; Vegetable juice; Vinegar; Virtuous & Vicious circles; Vitamins
W – Water retention; Weight loss (2)
X – Xylitol
Y – Natural Live Yoghurt (NLY) (4)

1)    The incredible weight loss, which many people achieve in Phase 1, is not sustainable. Much as I would love for you to lose several pounds every week, week in week out, it is extremely unlikely to happen. Candida and Food Intolerance cause significant water retention and, if you lose over half a stone in five days (as regularly happens), much of this will be water and this can only be lost once. As long as you keep these two particular conditions under control, there is no reason for this water to return, and this weight loss really does count – you can drop a clothes size, or even two, in a matter of days and look and feel so much better.

2)    On the subject of water vs. fat loss, weight is weight. The human body is approximately 50% water, so you are always going to lose water as you lose weight. So long as you don’t lose water in an unnatural way, with diuretics, if you are normally hydrated and you weigh less than last week, you have lost weight and you will feel and look slimmer.

3)    There is no formula on earth when it comes to weight loss. The “to lose 1lb of fat…” formula in Chapter 2 absolutely does not work (ask the next person who says this to you where it comes from and what the evidence for it is – they won’t be able to tell you). If you had found something that gave you sustained 2lb a week weight loss, you would have lost 104lbs in the past year (and the year before and the year before that) and you wouldn’t be reading this book. I’m really sorry if I am the one breaking this to you, but there is no formula.

Hence, sadly, I genuinely cannot predict what your weight loss will be on The Harcombe Diet. I can share with you numerous testimonials from people who have lost a great deal of weight and kept it off. Many come to say that the weight loss is almost a bonus – what they love even more is the freedom from food addiction and cravings and the incredible energy and wellbeing that they have.

I can share that people comment time and time again that a pound lost on this diet is gone for good – because you have not slowed your metabolism, there is no tendency for you to put on weight the minute you start eating ‘normally’, as happens on other diets. Your whole concept of normal eating will become a lifelong commitment to nourishing your body with real food and cheating when you want to and getting away with it.

Check out Facebook, Amazon and YouTube for comments about the diet. You will find lots of inspiring stories of people who have lost stones and are wearing their target size jeans for the first time in years. Posting such as “Bought the book, it’s a super read, I have lost 2 stone 2lbs in 5 weeks” (YouTube) make my day! Follow the rules and you will lose weight and you will keep it off. However, no one on earth can tell you how quickly you will reach your natural weight.

4)    Phase 1 vs. Phase 2 is up to you. Phase 1 is the fastest weight loss plan I have come across, but Phase 2 delivers better on the practical and enjoyable characteristics of a diet. There is a trade off between faster weight loss with a more restricted plan and steadier weight loss and a more varied plan – the choice is yours and you can flex between the two from week to week, to suit your lifestyle. If you want to stay on Phase 1 for longer and find it OK for your lifestyle – do so.

5)    If you did well on Phase 1 and then don’t lose any weight for more than a couple of weeks in Phase 2, this can pretty much only be due to something you have re-introduced in Phase 2. You need to be quite analytical and look at everything you have added back in and see if you have added in anything that could have started to ‘feed’ one of the conditions. Wheat would be my first suspect. I have yet to meet someone who does not feel better and lose weight faster staying off wheat until at least close to their goal weight. Things that ‘feed’ Candida and Hypoglycaemia are the next suspects – fruit, whole grains – any substantial increase in carbohydrates into your diet can have an impact if you are very carb sensitive. Re-read Chapter 7 on Phase 2 and follow the advice for the three conditions really carefully to make Phase 2 work for you.

6)    Plateaus – because there is no formula that can predict weight loss, there is no way of knowing how much will be lost each week. Some people do find that they plateau – even for a few weeks (this is rare), but then they suddenly start losing steadily again and a month later almost another stone has gone. Plateaus are so frustrating and my heart really does go out to people who are sticking so well to the diet and who don’t get the reward that week – but the reward does come. We just can’t predict when – boy do I wish I could. I know I can take away cravings and I know that Phase 1 works for everyone who has tried it. I just can’t guarantee you will lose weight every single week, week in week out.

Consider this, though: the majority of my success stories have been doing calorie controlled diets for at least 10 years and they had reached the point where they had stopped losing a single pound, despite trying to survive on 1000-1200 calories a day. They try Phase 1, lose 5-10lbs in a week and never look back. You will get there and you will be eating really healthily in the meantime and will no longer be hungry and exhausted.

7)    I have developed a theory, working with clients, that weight loss is as much about overcoming fat storage as it is about encouraging fat burning. I really believe that the bodies of long term calorie counters are trained to store fat and we need to re-train the body to stop storing fat. The best way I have found for doing this is to have clients eat three substantial and nourishing meals a day and to eat these as regularly as possible. The body then knows when the next fuel is coming and quickly learns that it doesn’t need to store fat any more. I am really pleasantly surprised how quickly the human body responds positively to healthy eating and how rapidly it starts to work with you.

To accompany this principle, I cannot recommend strongly enough (I do repeat this so often in the book) – limit snacking and avoid snacks altogether if at all possible. If you really are hungry between meals try to eat more at meals, so you are not hungry and/or stick to carb free snacks if possible. Whenever you eat a carbohydrate, the body goes into a glucose/insulin/fat storing environment and you want it to be in a fat burning environment, to use up your love handles. The less often you eat carbs, during the day, the better. Carbs and insulin really are the secret to weight loss.

Breakfast:
…is porridge just about every day. Made with whatever milk is in the fridge (usually real stuff) or boiling water. The amount is large – approximately 100g of dry oats. (WATCH OUT: Having the same thing every day can tempt food intolerance unless your immune system is good).

Lunch:
… is usually a huge salad – lettuce, cucumber, peppers, cherry tomatoes, celery, fennel, beetroot,  alfalfa sprouts, bean sprouts and then the calories (energy) come from farm shop cole slaw (no sugar), 3-4 cheeses (e.g. cheddar, edam, ementaal cubes, feta – whatever is in the fridge) and cottage cheese in the middle. With 3-4oz cheese and at least 3-4 table spoons of olive oil, the calories should be more than 700-800. This is a great Phase 2 fat meal. (Andy took a photo on 26/8/09 of our normal lunch salad – see below). I weighed the bowl before and after and the actual food weight is 500g (just over 1lb). In the winter we tend to have the same salad, but with a bowl of soup as well – to warm up. We have the salad first and then the soup, or it doesn’t work!

Every now and again I really fancy bread and Andy and I will share a whole loaf of farm shop granary, or whole wheat, bread and one of the recipe book soups. No butter though – dunk instead. (WATCH OUT: Wheat intolerance is the most common intolerance that I come across – you will do better staying off wheat altogether until you’re close to goal weight and then only cheat with it rarely after that).

If I’m out – I’ll have a sandwich, like a brown bread cheddar ploughman’s. If I want to avoid wheat and I’m out, I’ll have a decaf whole milk cappuccino from a coffee shop (the real milk is so much more satisfying) and 100g (85%) dark chocolate and/or a sugar free, wheat free, sweetener free cereal bar (there are a couple).

Dinner:
… is sometimes a black tie meal out (I’m on a few boards). I always make sure they know I don’t eat meat (mostly I’ll tick the veggie box and sometimes just the non meat eater box – I do struggle to eat any animals!) I may get a goat’s cheese tartlet and then risotto and then a decent chocolate torte – anything tasty and healthy I will eat. I don’t eat things like white bread or boiled potatoes – they’re tasteless – what’s the point?!

At home I do tend to have a fat meal or a carb meal (I’ve just got so used to not mixing). A carb meal would be a large bowl of brown rice and stir fry veg or pasta (usually rice pasta) and a home made veggie sauce or nut roast (the version with brown rice in the recipe book). Portion again is c. 100g dry weight of the rice or pasta and then loads of veg and loads of olive oil. If I have a fat meal, it could be fish (which I have started trying to eat for my health). Andy usually cooks fish in butter. Or I have a veggie fat meal, which would be a cheese/aubergine/olive oil/tomato/courgette kind of concoction – all very Mediterranean therefore. We have loads of extra veg with whatever main meal we have – whatever comes in the organic box we get delivered each week from our neighbour, Paul.

I’ll sometimes ‘mix’ for a main meal – e.g. crispy baked potato (or two) & cheddar cheese or pasta with a mushroom cream sauce.

Andy (I often get asked this too) is a passionate carnivore by the way! He loves his lamb, steak, pork chops, kidneys, liver and all sorts, which I happily buy for him from the local butcher – I don’t object to meat in any way – I just personally don’t want to eat meat. The cat and dog also eat meat and fish (and anything else they can get hold of). They love living in a house that has cream in the fridge at all times!

Other:
I drink 4-5 large decaf coffees during the day and 3-4 beakers of water. At home the coffees are black and instant. If I’m out, I’ll have decaf whole milk cappuccinos from a coffee shop.

Here’s the fun bit – I eat at least 100g (550 cals) of 85% cocoa dark chocolate every day. Sometimes I have been known to eat 2 bars! I tend to have some mid morning (WATCH OUT: Avoid snacking if you want to lose weight) and then a couple of squares after lunch and dinner. If I’m working late in the evening I can get through a second bar!

I rarely have any desire for anything before bed. If I do, I’ll have some full fat live yoghurt. I sometimes have fruit first thing in the morning before the dog walk (I walk about 30 mins a day and swim about 3 times a month) and I’ll have fruit late afternoon if there is something in season that I really like (usually berries or cherries or English apples when they first come out).

Things I never eat:
Meat, biscuits, cakes, sweets, confectionery/milk chocolate, sugared cereals, bread with more ingredients than are necessary, tins of things that should not have sugar added (chick peas, kidney beans, tomatoes etc), 99.9% of things in packets! I also don’t drink alcohol, as I never managed to acquire the taste and it all tastes like vinegar to me! (This is not why I am slim – if you drink more calories than I eat in chocolate, you should be in a clinic!)

Things I never choose to eat (but I will eat at a dinner party/function, for example) are white flour, white rice and white pasta.

What I eat if I want:
Crisps: Kettle chips with two ingredients – potatoes and olive oil (not even salt) – as is recommended for Phase 3 in the book.

Ice cream: Haagen-Dazs vanilla, which has (in order) fresh cream, skimmed milk, sugar, egg yolk and natural vanilla flavouring – as is recommended for Phase 3 in the book.

ChocolateS: As opposed to chocolate. I will get really high quality chocolates, ideally hand made from individual shops, which use cocoa, cocoa butter, vanilla and other natural flavourings, real cream, nuts, coffee beans etc and minimal, or no, sugar or sweeteners.

Luxury dessert: The chocolate mousse recipe in the recipe book (p435) is my idea of heaven! I change the recipe to only have sugar to stiffen the eggs (not in the egg yolk part of the recipe) and I use only 85% cocoa chocolate bars – not even 70%.

Other good products: oat cakes (ingredients only need to be oats, olive oil and salt). Gillian McKeith cereal bars are pretty good (handy if you’re on the run all day). Bananas – if you’re not very carb sensitive, the banana is nature’s own little gem in a wrapper. I do like dried apricots, but they are too high carb for people with Candida, or Hypoglycaemia or trying to lose weight.

Supplements:
I take one Centrum Performance multi vitamin and mineral tablet whenever I remember. In the week before my period I eat more dark chocolate! Supplements are not necessary, but I think of them like an insurance policy – have one just in case.

I’ll try and scan in my last BUPA MOT results. When they analysed my diet they were horrified by the fat content and when they saw the blood test results they suddenly went quiet! I’d love to tell them I used to put on weight eating 1000 cals a day!

A study of more than 1,500 dog owners and gym goers found that the average gym goer covers 468 miles per year and the average dog walker does 676 miles per year. That’s 208 more for the dog walkers! Dog owners apparently walk the equivalent distance of Bangkok to London over their pet’s lifetime.

Dog owners are also more likely to stick to their routine, as the dog doesn’t let up until you take it out!

If you can offer a good home to a dog and commit to walking him or her regularly, this could be the biggest win win ever – for your stress levels and overall health and for that of your new best friend!

I have so many communications with people who say they’ve gained or lost a pound overnight and they are either pleased or upset and I advise people NOT to weigh every day because natural variations in the body’s weight are so common, that you are not getting an accurate picture. The best option for weighing is once a week – at a regular time of day and, ideally, naked. If you have not lost as expected, try weighing again the next day to see if this was a short term variation, but weight loss should only be even close to accurate from one week to the next.

To illustrate how much someone of even normal weight – not on a diet – varies, I decided to weigh myself every day for a month. I have been 7.12-8 stone for c. 15 years and therefore consider myself a pretty constant weight. When my beloved cat died I lost all interest in eating for a few days and dropped to 7.9-7.10 and then returned to 7.12-8 stone as soon as we got another rescue cat and I fell in love with him. Andy and I went to Jamaica for our wedding/honeymoon and the resort happened to be holding an epicurean food festival at the same time. What luck! I ate some of the best food I have ever tasted in my life, didn’t worry much about keeping fats and carbs separate and returned home a couple of pounds over 8 stone and then returned to normal within a couple of days. This is the whole principle of the natural weight – something that your body naturally tends back to.

So, here we go! (I have a set of Tanita ‘serious duty’ scales – for clients – so this is as accurate as I can get. All dates are for September to October 2009):

Thur 17 September   7.13.0 (last day of my period)
Fri 18 September   7.13.4
Sat 19 September   7.12.4
Sun 20 September   7.13.6
Mon 21 September  7.12.6
Tue 22 September   7.13.2
Wed 23 September  8.00.0
Thur 24 September   7.13.8
Fri 25 September   7.13.8
Sat 26 September   7.13.0
Sun 27 September   7.12.6
Mon 28 September   7.13.2
Tue 29 September   7.12.6
Wed 30 September   7.11.8
Thur 1 October    7.12.2
Fri 2 October    Away – sorry – there’s never a month when I’m not away for a couple of days
Sat 3 October    Away
Sun 4 October    Away
Mon 5 October    7.13.2
Tue 6 October    7.13.8
Wed 7 October    7.13.2
Thur 8 October    7.12.8
Fri 9 October     7.12.4
Sat 10 October    7.13.8
Sun 11 October    8.00.2 (first day of my period)
Mon 12 October    7.13.2
Tue 13 October    7.12.8
Wed 14 October    7.12.4

Extra test on one day:
On Thur 8th October, I braved the cold weather (in the interests of research!) to strip off every 2 hours, to show what happens during the day:

7am 7.12.8
9am 7.13.4 (after breakfast and going to the loo!)
11am 7.13.2 (had another large decaff coffee after breakfast, but wee’d lots too)
1pm 8.00.2 (after lunch – the food weighed c. 1lb)
3pm 7.13.6 (lots of water/decaf coffee and wees in the afternoon)
5pm 7.13.4
7pm 8.00.2 (after dinner – c. 1lb of food again)
9pm 7.13.8

Results:
There was only one occasion when, by sheer fluke, my weight was the same 2 days in a row (24-25 September).

The lowest weight could possibly be ‘explained’ by the day before being unusually warm and sunny in the UK and I worked on my PC outside and could have dehydrated a bit.

The highest (non time of the month) weight is likely explained by me going to a black tie event on Tue 22 Sept and the veggie option was a pie – no kidding! About half a kilo in weight, this thing was the size of a normal dinner plate (there was no room for veg at all) and it was a white flour, pastry pie filled with cheese and spinach. The calorie/energy content was probably 1000-1500 calories. It was only moderately tasty but I ate the whole lot because I was hungry – after all the speeches we didn’t get scoff until after 9pm. I probably still had most of this pie in me when I weighed the next morning!

A woman’s hormones fluctuate more in a month than a man’s do in a lifetime! Hence we do vary at different times of the month – hormones affect water retention, appetite and all sorts. I don’t know a single woman who doesn’t ‘gain’ 1-2lbs, or more, just before her period and I am no exception. It drops off within a day or two or starting – that’s just part of being a woman. We get shoes and multiple orgasms so, hey ho!

The average weight, across the whole month, is 7.13.0. In the books I say that my weight is 8 stone (nice round number). I am more typically 7.12 – 8 stone, as the above shows, so the average weight during the month is bang in the middle of this range. The variation from this is + or – 1lb. This is less than a 1% fluctuation in a month (and it’s similar every month, every year and has been for years now). I think this is remarkably constant, but some of you see similar fluctuations in your own weight and tell me you’ve gained or lost a pound. I really hope this helps show that you haven’t.

Are these fluctuations normal? Absolutely! The scales (good as they are) are probably not that accurate to start with (I did learn something I didn’t know – the scales don’t bother with odd numbers for fractions of pounds. It’s always 13.2 or 12.4 or 11.8 etc – never 12.7).

What drives them? Quite simply – food and drink going in and waste products going out. The daily recordings (Thur 8th October) show how you can eat a good size meal and gain 1lb (because you have put 1lb of food into your digestive tract) and then ½ lb has gone in fluid extracted by the body from this food even a couple of hours later.

Did I feel any different on the highest and lowest days? Not at all during the month – none of my clothes felt any different (all this food in and out stuff is taking place largely in the digestive tract and that has no impact on the waistband). I felt a bit dopey after the white flour pie and the late night, but felt completely ‘normal’ again after a healthy breakfast. I do feel a bit different just before my period – I am aware that I am holding water on my thighs and boobs and really close fitting clothes can feel a bit too snug, but it comes and goes so quickly.

Moral of the story?
Don’t weigh yourself every day!

Please don’t take into account half pounds and 0.4 of a pound etc. This is anorexic style behaviour and doesn’t fit with having a healthy and balanced attitude to food and weight. Please don’t be that obsessive – it makes me want to hug you and say “start living your life, not recording your weight to within an ounce!”

Don’t panic if you ‘gain’ a pound – if you are following the ‘rules’ of The Harcombe Diet, you are so unlikely to have actually gained weight – this will be normal fuel and waste product ins and outs going on in the body.

Be prepared to plateau on any weight loss journey. The idea that weight loss follows a predictable formula is complete and utter nonsense (but you know that or, following a c. 1000 calorie a day diet, an average woman should lose 104 lbs each year, every year, year in, year out! That’s 7 stone 6lbs every year. Most of my clients are trying to survive on 1000-1500 calories a day and haven’t lost a single pound in years – the “to lose 1lb of fat, you need to create a deficit of 3500 calories a day” is a fairy story – and you know it.

Hope this helps!
Zoe x