Joanna Hall - The No Carbs after 5pm Diet - With the new step counter plan

You may benefit from lowering elevated cholesterol levels.

You will be fitter.

You will feel back in control.

You may enjoy better sleep.

Many people have reported having better sex!

Everyone who has completed this programme with me has lost inches and felt fantastic.

“Lots of people have noticed the change in my body shape – I feel so much more sexy!”

This diet is about getting results and making it work for you and the life you lead. It is a focused eating and walking plan designed to help you lose weight and inches, especially around your middle and waistline.

I am also concerned about you keeping the weight off long term. The National Registry of Weight Loss in Denver has compiled the details of people who have lost over 60 pounds in weight and kept it off for five years. And what is it that has helped these people succeed?

They eat fewer than 2,000 calories a day.

They average an hour of moderate-intensity physical activity each day.

They don’t follow fad diets or high-protein diets.

The principles of the diet and exercise plan are simple to put into practice. You’ll soon see how they work and how easily they can be slotted into your life. The menu plans in Chapter 5put all the diet principles into practice for you, but are flexible enough to adapt to your own preferences.

“I loved the flexibility and the fact that the plan is not a rigid regime where you have to eat this food at 11am and that food at 4pm.”

The exercise plan is based on walking and five tummy exercises. That’s all – you don’t need a gym membership, expensive exercise kit or flashy trainers, just a pair of comfortable walking shoes and enough space on the floor to do your exercises. And absolutely anyone can do it – I promise you.

The diet runs over 28 days. You can follow the 28-day plan strictly or take a more relaxed weekly approach, depending on what suits you. Throughout the book there are tips from me and many people who have followed the diet successfully, so you need not feel you are alone. The question and answer section in Chapter 12addresses frequently asked queries. You’ll also find lots of advice in the question and answer section of my website, www.joannahall.com

“The most important thing for me has been the fact that it isn’t really a diet but more of a lifestyle change.”

Being successful does require a little prior preparation. In the following chapters I’ll outline how the plan works and how you can prepare for it. The easy-to-follow five-day countdown in Chapter 7not only helps you get organized before you commence your 28 days to success but also gets you into the right mindset. This is vitally important and, in my experience, can be a deciding factor to you achieving your goals.

You deserve the best opportunity to have a fitter, healthier and slimmer body, but many individuals don’t give themselves the right starting platform for success. They doubt their ability, feel guilty for taking the time out to feel better about themselves, or base their programme on previous diets that have been too rigid and impossible to fit in with their life. My whole programme is geared towards helping you achieve success whatever may be occurring in your life. Navigating the challenges life throws our way are all part of the programme. How you handle these and still achieve success is part of you feeling confident about the diet and about yourself. I call this building a Template of Success.

These little challenges can so often throw us off course, despite our good intentions. We can give up, thinking the time is not quite right, promising to start again soon. But the right time never seems to come, leading to feelings of frustration and building a Template of Failure, feeling you will never succeed. If this sounds like you, don’t panic. ‘Stop a Lapse Becoming a Collapse’ in Chapter 11will keep you on track. You may also want to look at my book Drop a Size for Life , as this contains my seven-step approach to getting you in the right ‘head space’.

I have written this book exactly as I run the programme, with tips and advice from me and my clients along the way. This should help you stay the course and feel the benefits my clients have experienced, and also make you feel you are not doing the diet alone. However, doing the diet with a friend or partner can be a real bonus, helping you get over the little hurdles and keeping you on track.

You can set up a little system with your buddy – why not text or e-mail each other your daily step totals, or set up a standard text message such as ‘Carb Curfew successfully completed’ when you have had your supper.

Before starting the diet, people tend to anticipate that they will find it easier to implement either the exercise or eating principles. Once they get into the diet, however, they soon see how clear and simple both principles are to put into practice. You may find it best to buddy-up with someone who feels they will find it easier to implement the principles you expect to find harder. This matching will give both of you a boost when your motivation drops.

“At first, John was quite obstructive and ordered Indian takeaways. But after a year of seeing me stick to the suppers in the evenings and thinking before I ordered in restaurants, he has now embraced the diet. Also, as much as people were telling me I looked good and had lost weight, they were telling him he had put it on! So by following Joanna’s Carb Curfew he has since lost about two stone.”

Just about anyone can apply the exercise principles, so why not buddy-up with a family member. They don’t have to live near you; arrange to e-mail or text each other your step tally. The pedometer is such a simple device that you can get the whole spectrum of the family involved: your children, parents, aunts and uncles. And because the targets are designed first and foremost to improve your health, everyone wins!

When my female clients start doing Carb Curfew meals, many of them cook a few potatoes or some pasta or rice for their partner, thinking they will want it. What is interesting, though, is that the men soon see and feel the benefits of Carb Curfew, and naturally start to apply it themselves.

“I did the plan with my friend and found having a bit of competition between us helped spur us both on. It worked well. We’d compare steps we did each day, and what lunch we had eaten. It gave me motivation when I needed it.”