The diet of a lifetime

Low carb, low fat, low calorie ... you've probably tried them all. But throw the word 'low' into the mix and your loyalty to any eating plan is not likely to last long enough to lose weight and keep it off.

The Pyramid Diet is an exciting and rewarding diet which has lifetime sustainability. It is also the most balanced diet to date: you can eat carbs and you can eat fruit! It is also adaptable to any social situation: you can still go to your local Chinese restaurant, as long as you follow Danni's recommendations as to what to order.

It is based on a simple, easy to follow, 3-day cycle:

day 1: high carbs

day 2: low carbs

day 3: no carbs

By rotating your carbohydrate consumption, you keep your metabolism elevated. Danni also tells you which days are best for cardiovascular and resistance exercises if you want a bikini body in time for the beach this summer.

Effective and achievable, The Pyramid Diet provides dieters with the structure they need and allows them to eat the food they love. The weight is over - welcome to a new you!

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Introducing the Pyramid Diet

The Pyramid Diet is a rotational eating plan, which offers a structured, lifetime approach to food. It is probably the most balanced diet to date, and works on a principle of varying the amount of carbohydrates we consume every day. Contrary to popular modern belief, depriving your body of carbohydrates can actually lead to a significant slow-down in your metabolism. So you will learn how to rotate your carbohydrate consumption to keep the metabolism elevated. Your body doesn’t have time to adjust to high carbs or low carbs, so it keeps your metabolism working hard to keep up with the changes in your nutritional intake. The Pyramid Diet works, therefore, because it keeps your body guessing! It provides you with all the essential macronutrients your body needs, but staggers the intake of carbohydrates to continually stimulate your metabolism and keep it working efficiently.

Carb-cycling is not a new concept. It is something athletes have used to their advantage for many years. I have simply formulated a structure that is easy to understand, easy to follow, and – most importantly – helps you to lose weight and keep it off.

The path you’re about to take will see you on the road to sustainable, healthy and proven weight-loss, through a method which can be adapted accordingly once your desired weight is reached.

The Ground Rules

It’s All About Carb-Cycling

To begin with, as you will be basing much of your food intake around them, I want to address the ongoing debate surrounding carbohydrates. Followers of popular low- or no-carb diets are led to believe that carbohydrates are the enemy. In truth, they are an essential source of energy and the only form of fuel used by the brain. Severe carb-depletion can lead to fatigue, nausea, mood-swings, breakdown in muscle tissue, weakness, dizziness and bad breath.

If that’s not enough to convince you to include a healthy amount of carbs in your diet, you need to know that the majority of weight-loss achieved by cutting carbs is simply water-loss. For every one molecule of glycogen (carbs) our body stores, it stores three molecules of water. So cut the carbs and the water will drain out of your body. Increase your intake again and the water-weight will follow.

On the Pyramid Diet you will have some days on which you can eat carbs and others on which you cannot. Because of the sudden changes in water retention caused by this method, carb-cycling does lead to weight fluctuation. You need to store this information now and accept it, in order to avoid the temptation of banishing carbs altogether in search of a fast ‘solution’.

Before you dial the local pizza delivery, I’m afraid to say a meat-feast and chips or a hot dog with onions are not on the menu! Processed carbs such as white bread, doughnuts, white pasta and crisps are strictly forbidden. As you learn more about how the plan works, you’ll be glad you banished these ghastly foods to the bin for good.

Now I want to introduce you to the structure of the Pyramid Diet and tell you a little about how it works. It is based on a simple, easy to follow, three-day cycle:

– Day 1: High-carb day
– Day 2: Low-carb day
– Day 3: No-carb day

Think of the Pyramid cycle as a little like interval training on a treadmill. Most of us would prefer to alternate 3 minutes running with 3 minutes walking for half an hour than do 30 minutes solid running. Think of the no-carb day as the sprint, the low-carb day as the jog, and the high-carb day as the walk in the park. Make sense?

Similar methods are often adopted by body-builders and competitive athletes because it allows them to get their bodies to the desired weight or appearance by making simple adjustments to the rotational plan. For simplicity, though, I recommend you stick to the three-day cycle for at least the first three months, or until your desired weight is reached. You may then wish to make amendments to the pattern, which we will discuss in greater detail later on.

And don’t worry: while it may appear complex at first, knowing the protein and carb contents of different foods will soon become second nature. Once you’ve familiarized yourself with them, making choices when you’re out and about or on holiday will be much more straightforward than calorie or points counting. And the crucial thing is, so long as you stick to your Pyramid parameters, you will never regain the weight you’ve lost. It really is as easy as that!

‘How much weight can I lose?’ I hear you ask. There is no limit to what you can achieve through adopting the Pyramid method, but as a guide you can expect to lose 2–4lbs of fat per week. Note that weight-loss will be fat, not water, as would happen on a purely low- carb approach. What’s more, the Pyramid is easy to stick to, as it doesn’t deprive you of foods such as bread and pasta.

Having said that, we all like a bit of a challenge when we embark on something new. Whether that something is a new job, new relationship or indeed a new diet, we’d become bored very quickly if things were all plain sailing. So if you’re thinking the Pyramid sounds like a piece of cake, fear not, it takes commitment and dedication to stick to the cycle correctly.