Nancy Sorrell - What I ate this week

Daily Mail "Femail" regular feature. June 25, 2009

I love these celeb interviews on what they eat during a typical week mainly because they enable us to blow apart the calorie theory. (This is the statement: To lose 1lb of fat you need to create a deficit of 3,500 calories). Working on the basis that an average woman needs 2,000 calories a day (a busy celeb probably needs more), we can see what should be happening to the person's weight over time.

This diet diary was Nancy Sorrell's and her calorie intake for the week came to 9,784. (How can any calorie count be so precise?!) Assuming that Nancy needs 14,000 calories per week, according to the ridiculous calorie theory, Nancy has a deficit of 4,216 calories each week. Assuming that this is a typical week, Nancy should be losing (4,216*52/3500) = 62.64lbs per year. That's four and a half stone - each and every year, if she keeps this up. Yes - that means she'll weigh nothing within 2 years - that's why I call it the ridiculous theory.

The tragedy is that it is the basis of all current diet advice. Everything stems from this and the simple slogan "Eat less/do more" derives directly from it. Frightening that obesity has gone up most dramatically over the past 30 years - the time during which we have been pushing this theory most vociferously.

My money is on Nancy staying a very similar weight and having to maintain this calorie restriction (because the body will have gotten used to the lower fuel intake) and yet another poor woman starving to prove the calorie theory doesn't work.

Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight!
Zoe Harcombe, Author, Nutritionist & Obesity Researcher