Читать книгу Freedom from the Diet Trap: Slim for Life - Jason Vale, Jason Vale - Страница 9

I wish I was joking, but it is perfectly true. This really is ‘Extreme Dieting’ and I believe the most dangerous ‘food movement’ (or non food movement) on earth. It isn’t actually called ‘The Fresh Air Diet’, but ‘Breatharianism’. It is a lifestyle popularized by an Australian woman called Ellen Greve, or Jasmuheen, as she is better known. Greve claims she hasn’t eaten since 1993; yet, she admits ‘she drinks herbal teas and confesses to the occasional “taste orgasm” involving chocolate or ice cream’.

She claims not to eat the food but simply every now and then get the ‘taste’. The fact that three of Greve’s followers have starved to death while adhering to the Breatharian way of life, doesn’t appear to dissuade her. In 1999 the Australian television programme 60 Minutes tested her ability to live on ‘prana’, the ‘Light Of God’. After just four days, Dr Berris Wink – president of the Queensland branch of the Australian Medical Association, urged her to stop the test. He wanted to stop the test because, according to Dr Wink, Greve’s pupils were dilated, her speech was slow, she was dehydrated and her pulse had doubled. Funny how when tested she couldn’t live without food or water for four days yet claims not to have eaten anything since 1993! Believe it or not she’s not the only one at it either. One Wiley Brooks, who heads up ‘The Breatharian Institute Of America’, is equally as bats in my opinion and there are many, many more. This is obviously the ultimate diet and I am amazed they haven’t been shut down. How on earth can you encourage people to ‘live on light’ and not be accountable if anything happens to them? In a world where the holy grail appears to be a Size Zero, surely these people need bringing to book.

Clearly ‘Breatharianism’ is beyond extreme and obviously mental, but I think we have all been guilty of trying some pretty ludicrous diets over the years. But why do we do it? Why do we jump on one diet after the next, regardless of how irrational they are? In truth, don’t we already know exactly what we need to do in order to drop the weight and get healthy? Wouldn’t it be fair to say that you could write down at least ten different ways to lose weight that – if you followed them – would all work? Could you not also design yourself an exercise programme that – if you followed it – would make you lean and fit? I think that we are intelligent enough to realize that if we ate nothing but cabbage for three weeks we would lose weight (and most of our friends probably) and that if we ate loads of fruit and veg and drank the fine juices they contain, we would all be extremely healthy.

I knew exactly what to do to get into shape and get healthy, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t. What I didn’t know was how to stop eating crap and be happy about it. I knew how to stop eating rubbish and be miserable about it – I had a Gold medal in that one – but how the hell do you change what you eat and be happy about it? The problem is, we have all simply been going about it the wrong way.