Cambridge Diet
The Cambridge Diet was devised by Dr Alan Howard at Cambridge University in 1970. It's a diet that uses meal-replacement food packs that have all the recommended daily allowance of vitamins and minerals.
There are 5 steps to The Cambridge Diet, ranging from step 1, called Sole Source (around 500 calories per day) to step 5 (1,500 calories per day). Each step includes at least one meal-replacement food pack, which could be a nutrition bar, soup, mousse or shake.
The principle of the diet is that with the right amount of protein, carbohydrate, fat, very few calories and the recommended daily allowance of vitamins and minerals, your body gets all the nutrients it needs and uses its fat stores for energy, therefore burning fat. And because the diet is high protein you don't lose muscle mass or have cravings, like on other diets.
What happens on the Cambridge Diet?
You meet with a Cambridge Diet counsellor every week to buy food packs - you can only buy these from a registered and trained counsellor. You also meet to discuss your progress with the Cambridge Diet and talk about your issues and difficulties, if you have them. Some people talk to their counsellor about their emotional issues with food, weight and body image, other people just appreciate a few encouraging words - it's like having a diet coach.
Depending on what step you follow, you eat between three food packs per day (step 1, Sole Source) or one food pack with three meals and snacks per day (step 5), but this is still a balanced low-fat, low-calorie, lower carb diet. The step you start on depends on how much weight you have to lose and how quickly you want to lose it. All the steps involve eating less calories than usual, but step 1 and step 2 involve hardly any carbohydrates, which puts your body into a process called ketosis. Ketosis is when your body uses its fat stores for energy.
By Louise O'Connell
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Mike Scott, about 1 year
Hi, I did the Cambridge Diet some three years ago and reduced my weight by just under 12 stone. I am still maintaining it now and just want to say this diet changed my life and very strongly recommend people do it. I have started a website at www.nowillpowerrequired.co.uk where I talk about the mindset of dieting as it is critical that once you reduce weight you deal with the issues around why you got big in the first place. Anyway good luck to all and this diet is absolutely brilliant :-)
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Tim , about 1 month
Hi everyone. I've just registered to start the Cambridge Diet diet myself. I'm a fella, age 22, and need to lose about 3 stone. I'm pretty nervous about the whole thing as I know I lack willpower as much as the next person, but thought I'd give it a go, and by the reviews it's very effective. Whilst I don't mean to shamelessly plug my own site too much, I've decided to track my progress and thoughts on the diet on my blog which can be found on alpds.com/tjd. I'm gonna post pics too, which I'm bloody nervous about! Thanks, and good luck to anyone else that's considering this diet. It's not easy. -TjD
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