The Harcombe Diet®
For Men
Published by Columbus
Digital Services Ltd 2011
www.columbuspublishing.co.uk
Smashwords
Edition
eBook ISBN
978-1-907797-17-0
Paperback ISBN
978-1-907797-12-5
Rev:170-20110804
Copyright © Zoë Harcombe 2011
The Harcombe Diet® is a registered trademark of Zoë Harcombe.
Zoë Harcombe has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of the author.
Cover design by Lewis Kokoc
The content of this book
is intended to inform, entertain and provoke your thinking. This is
not intended as medical advice. It may, however, make you question
current medical and nutritional advice. That’s your choice. It’s
your life and health in your hands. Neither the author nor the
publisher can be held responsible or liable for any loss or claim
arising from the use, or misuse, of the content of this book.
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
Contents
Introduction
What
is The Harcombe Diet®?
How
is it different to other diets?
What
can you eat?
Phase
1 - The five day ‘kick-start’ plan, for rapid weight loss
Phase
2 - The weight-loss plan, for eating real food, in unlimited
quantities, while losing weight and gaining health
Phase
3 - The way-of-life plan, for eating what you want, while staying at
your fighting weight
The
three conditions that cause overweight
“The
Viagra Principle”
Fitness
and nutrition
Eating
out and losing weight
Cholesterol,
fat and health (*)
Did
you know?
(*)
If you read just one of the optional chapters, this is the one
recommended.
The Glossary has simple definitions of all the terms
used in the book. If you don’t know your fats from your carbs, or
what insulin has got to do with your waistline, check them out.
The Harcombe Diet®
For Men
“We want to be slim.
Our motivation is not in question.
The
advice we are being given most certainly is.”
To find out more...
www.zoeharcombe.com
www.theharcombedietformen.com
www.theharcombedietclub.com
www.theobesityepidemic.org
Introduction
Men...
The human body is the true wonder of the world. We have 206 bones and all the muscles and ligaments needed to move this complex structure with suppleness, stamina and strength. Some men can run 100 metres in fewer than 10 seconds. Others can run a marathon in just over two hours. The heart is one of the most reliable pumps on earth. It will beat approximately 70 times a minute, 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for 76 years.
The average man is 5’9” and weighs 172lbs. On average, 43% of this is muscle, 14% fat, 14% bone and marrow, 12% internal organs, 9% connective tissue and skin and 8% blood. Water is in all of these body parts, from muscle to blood, so, overall, Mr Average is approximately 50-60% water. The largest organ in the body (steady on) is the skin - laid out flat it would cover a king size bed sheet. There are approximately 100,000 hairs on a man. Finally, and most importantly for the human race, man can produce 3,000 sperm a second and lose 200-300 million with each ejaculation.
Our bodies repair themselves and fight life-threatening infection. They digest food efficiently and manage their own waste production. We can fly to the moon, cause, or prevent, the extinction of other species, laugh, cry and play poker. We are truly remarkable. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the human being, however, is its survival mechanism - the body will do whatever it takes to keep us alive.
Man and our ancestors have been trying to store food and survive for 3,500,000 years and, only in the last few decades, has man been trying to lose weight. So, here’s a question - do you want this incredibly powerful machine, the human body, working with you or against you, when you’re trying to lose weight?
... and cars
If a car mechanic told you to drive from London to Edinburgh, with only enough petrol to get to Newcastle, let alone to flog the car even harder, so that it would only get to Nottingham, you would think he was mad and yet millions of people in the ‘developed’ world are deliberately trying to run their bodies on less fuel than they need, every single day.
The vast majority of diets are based on this advice - they’re trying to get you to eat less (diet) and/or do more (exercise). You wouldn’t do this to you car - why would you do it to your body?
... and not enough fuel
If you try to eat less the body doesn’t know you’ve started a diet, it thinks you’ve landed on a desert island and it switches into survival mode. It does three very powerful things to try to keep you alive. Sadly all three are the direct opposite of what you want to happen to lose weight:
1) Your body makes you hungry and sends out signals to make you eat (this alone will make you miserable and ruin most diets);
2) It uses up lean muscle and stores fat (when it thinks it’s starving, the body ‘dumps’ the part of you that needs the most fuel to sustain it - lean muscle);
3) It slows down your metabolism, so you need less and less food and can’t seem to lose weight no matter how little you eat.
You cannot afford to have your body fighting you when you are trying to lose weight. So, whatever you do, ditch any diet advice you can remember that told you to eat less, let alone do more. The Harcombe Diet is going to deliver the promises on the back cover, so, get ready to lose weight quickly, easily and healthily and keep it off.
Part One - For Starters
Chapter 1 - What is The Harcombe Diet?
I don’t know anyone who wants to be fat and yet two thirds of the UK population is overweight and one quarter obese. Why?
To
be slim, we are told that we just need to “eat less and/or do
more.” Quite specifically, the advice is:
“To lose 1lb of fat
you need to create a deficit of 3,500 calories.” (This is known as
“the calorie theory”).
So, why don’t we just follow the
advice? Why on earth do we have an obesity problem, let alone an
epidemic, when we so desperately want to be slim?
The Harcombe Diet is the result of twenty years of research trying to answer this question. The journey has taken me through thermodynamics, peanuts under Bunsen burners and more obesity journals than hot dinners. The conclusions have been staggering and The Harcombe Diet has incorporated all the findings:
1) The calorie theory is wrong.
I blow apart every aspect of the calorie theory in my book The Obesity Epidemic: What caused it? How can we stop it? (2010). One pound does not even equal 3,500 calories - not even close. We will not lose a pound each and every time we create a deficit of any fixed number of calories and nor will we gain a pound for a repeated surplus. Every obesity journal I have reviewed from the past 100 years proves this (although they don’t always conclude the same). I cannot find one single occasion when this 3,500 formula holds, let alone each and every time. I have also written to five government and two obesity organisations and none can provide evidence for this formula. Yet all continue to repeat it as a slogan in their literature and spoken advice and it has become folklore on the internet and in gyms world-wide.