This book is dedicated to frustrated dieters everywhere who have been diligently eating those ‘healthy foods’ and figuring they were just doomed to be overweight. May this book set you free.

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION: HOW THE VIRGIN DIET CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE

PART I. HOW ‘DIET’ FOODS ARE MAKING YOU FAT

1. Food Intolerance: The Hidden Cause of Weight Gain

2. How the Virgin Diet Can Work for You

PART II. 7 FOODS TO AVOID

3. Gluten Gone

4. No Joy in Soy

5. Dump the Dairy

6. Pluck the Eggs, Corn and Peanuts

7. The Sweetness Trap

PART III. THREE CYCLES TO LOSE WEIGHT FOR GOOD

8. Cycle 1: Elimination

9. Cycle 2: Reintroduction

10. Cycle 3: The Virgin Diet for Life

11. The Virgin Diet Meal Assemblies and Restaurant Guide

12. The Virgin Diet Recipes

APPENDIX: THE VIRGIN DIET SHOPPING LIST

SOURCES

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

So much synchronicity went into the development of this book!

First, I want to thank the amazing science team at Metametrix Clinical Laboratory who helped me realize the impact of low-grade food reactions. I was so fortunate to be able to educate doctors throughout the country on how food sensitivities could be causing a myriad of health issues and then see the side effect that pulling these foods out had on their patients’ health: rapid weight loss! I kept seeing the same food reactions coming up over and over again, along with the same benefits, which helped me realize that this was a powerful weight-loss tool!

I want to shout out to Chef Leanne Ely, who tracked me down on Twitter. When I told her about how I pulled people off these foods but couldn’t find good recipes for them, she jumped right in and developed them, proving deliciously that cooking and eating this way could be done!

To my pals at Discovery, TLC and Shed Media, it was a blast working with you on Freaky Eaters, and I am thrilled to be a part of Transformation Diaries. Dr Mike Dow, I hope we get to be the dream team again sometime soon, and thanks for the amazing hookup to Celeste Fine! Andrew Strauser, you are my casting angel – I so appreciate your continuing to find these amazing opportunities for me. And to my manager, Greg Horangic, thank you for making the deals happen!

To my brilliant literary agent, Celeste Fine, you convinced me that this was the book and made it all happen, from hooking me up with my incredible writing partner, Rachel Kranz, to bringing me to the team at Harlequin, who I fell in love with from the moment I walked in the door. I felt like I had come home! I feel so fortunate to be working with my amazing editor, Sarah Pelz, and the whole team at Harlequin has been incredible. I am so honoured that you chose me.

Big kudos to my publicist extraordinaire, Barbara Teszler, for helping me get the message out to millions. You are the pitch genius. Mike Danielson at Media Relations, you are brilliant with your connections and ideas. And Jason Boehm, thanks for stalking me – what did I do before you? You are not only my social media genius but also my second set of eyes into all that is going on in our world. To my attorney, Darryl Sheetz, thanks for always having my back and keeping me safe out there in the business world!

I am supported everyday by an incredible team at www.jjvirgin.com. Susan Tafralis, you are my rock and my number-one support system; I couldn’t do it without you. Thanks to Mary Ann Guillory, who keeps me in line with my shoe habit and makes sure the money is flowing in the right direction; to Traci Knoppe, who handles all things technical; Patsy Wallace and Jason Boehm, my rock star health coaches; and Julia Zaslow, who is an absolute genius in marketing and strategy.

Another big shout-out to all of those who help me continue to nurture my business, including my current business coach, the amazing Brendon Burchard. I feel so blessed to be working with you. Dr. Daniel Amen, you are my role model and so genuine and generous – I adore you. And thanks to Ali Brown for opening my eyes to the power of the online world as my first real business coach and one of my dearest friends. Thanks also to Lisa Sasevich for teaching me how to package and position my work so people will take action. To my sweet friend Marcelle Pick of Women to Women, your work on stress and food sensitivities was so helpful in putting this book together. Kaayla Daniel, thanks for jumping in at the 11th hour with brilliant information. Suzanne Somers, of course I have to include you here, as your courageous work continues to pave the way for all of us. To all of my amazing and courageous pals in the integrative health field who are getting the word out there and taking the bullets for ‘going against the grain’, you are all such inspiration and support for me.

To Jackie and Habib Wicks at PEERtrainer, I love you guys and am looking forward to carrying this message out to the world with you. Ditto Hooman ‘the great’ Fakki of H2 Wellness and all of my pals at Thorne Research, especially Willie McCamy – we are just getting started, dudes!

And finally to my sons, Grant and Bryce: Thank you for your patience, support and love. You are ultimately why I am doing all of this. You are my ‘inspired why’ I feel so blessed to be your mom. John Virgin, thanks for being there to let me do what I needed to do to make it all happen. I so appreciate you. And to my mommy, I know you still aren’t totally sure about what I do (besides travel a lot), but don’t worry, I have a great boss who won’t be firing me anytime soon! Thanks for setting me up to be the strong, confident woman I am.

Melanie was a 40-year-old brand manager who had been struggling with her weight for the past 15 years. She was the classic yo-yo dieter, always losing the same 10 pounds and then always gaining it back. Lately, though, she had started gaining back more than she lost, first an extra 15 pounds, then an extra 20. When she came to me, she was beyond frustrated – and not at all sure that I could help her.

“Look,” she told me during our first consultation, “I know what you’re going to say, but please don’t say it. I don’t binge. I do watch what I eat. I count every calorie I put into my mouth. Yes, I eat in restaurants occasionally, but I always have just a salad or maybe some grilled fish. I live on low-fat, low-carb foods, I never let myself have dessert, I exercise five times a week and I don’t even drink! But here I am, 20 pounds overweight, bursting out of my clothes and my skin is breaking out. I’m just a mess.”

“Okay,” I said, thinking that Melanie was just the kind of client I love to work with. Like me, she was a no-nonsense gal who didn’t waste time, and I knew she would respond well to my particular brand of ‘tough love – with love’.

“Just answer three questions,” I said. “First, do you drink milk or eat yoghurt?”

“Every day,” she said proudly. “Nonfat only, of course.”

“What about eggs, including egg whites? Ever have those in your diet?”

“Every day,” she repeated.

“And soy – tofu, soy sauce, edamame – is that something you eat as well?”

“Every day,” she said a third time, awaiting her gold star.

“Okay, so here’s the problem, Melanie. A lot of these so-called healthy foods are actually not good for you. And believe it or not, they can cause you to gain weight.”

We were having a phone consultation, so I couldn’t see Melanie’s face, but I could imagine her surprise because I’ve seen it on the faces of thousands of people I’ve worked with – the weight-loss clients I advise, the healthcare professionals I speak to, the physicians I help to educate about diet and nutrition. Sometimes I think it’s America’s best kept secret: Supposedly healthy foods can actually cause you to gain weight.

“The problem,” I explained to Melanie, “is a condition known as food intolerance.”

“Wait a minute,” Melanie said, interrupting me. “Are you telling me I’m allergic to food?”

Even though Melanie couldn’t see me, I shook my head. “Food allergies are a very specific condition. They’re one type of immune system response – usually very fast and very intense. Food intolerance is usually slower and more subtle. It’s an umbrella term that covers a lot of different ways that your body might have trouble digesting food.”

I explained to Melanie that sometimes food intolerance (FI) is a preexisting condition. You might have been born intolerant to certain foods, such as dairy products or gluten – a protein found in many grains, breads, pastas and baked goods, as well as in many processed and prepared foods. Or you might have developed food intolerance later in your life. Sometimes it’s set off by stress, which disrupts your body’s functioning in several different ways. You might have developed food intolerance from eating too much of the same food every day. If this is a food that your body is reacting to, it can lead to a buildup of immune complexes that set off a myriad of symptoms. Food intolerance might result from many other causes, including a condition known as leaky gut, which itself can be set off by infection, antibiotics, radiation, heavy metals and a host of other causes, including, again, stress. (We’ll look more at the causes of food intolerance in Chapter 1.)

In some cases, food intolerance is permanent. There may just be some foods that will present you with lifelong problems. Fortunately, in many cases, food intolerance can be overcome. If you stay away from a food long enough and repair your system with healing foods and supplements, you might be able to tolerate the problematic food later on.

“So,” I told Melanie, “if food intolerance is your problem – and it certainly sounds as though it might be – there is a quick, simple solution. All you have to do is drop the top 7 high-FI foods – the 7 foods most likely to cause food intolerance. In 7 days, you can lose up to 7 pounds and look years younger. What do you say?”

Melanie might have been surprised, but she didn’t let it slow her down. “Absolutely,” she said, as quickly as I’d thought she might. “Let’s get started.”

If you wanted to be your skinniest self and follow the healthiest diet in the world, what would you eat? Egg-white veggie omelettes? Greek-style nonfat yoghurt? Low-calorie whey protein shakes? A soy-based veggie burger on a whole-wheat bun?

That sounds like the regimen that famous trainers and A-list stars follow, doesn’t it? But what if I told you that I’ve been a sought-after fitness and nutrition expert for over 2 decades and worked with thousands of clients, including some of Hollywood’s hottest bodies? And what if I told you what I told them, which is that many of these supposedly healthy foods could actually be making you fat?

Well, that’s exactly what I am going to tell you. So listen up, because I’m about to share with you the secret to weight loss.

It isn’t calories.

It isn’t fat.

It isn’t protein.

It isn’t even carbs.

Sure, those things can be important. But you can count them, cut them, skinny them and swap them all you want, and you won’t lose weight if you’re eating foods that your body can’t handle.

The key to weight loss is avoiding and overcoming food intolerance.

You won’t lose weight if you’re eating foods that your body can’t handle.

Food intolerance is a series of physiological responses that your body has to certain types of food. They aren’t the same as allergies. Most people test negative for food allergies, but most people have at least one type of food intolerance, and many have several.

Food-intolerance symptoms vary from person to person, but the most common include bloating, wind, indigestion, fatigue, mental fog, irritability, moodiness – and weight gain. If you’re eating foods that your body can’t tolerate, you’re likely to gain weight, feel crummy and look years older than your actual age.

Most people ignore their bodies’ responses to the foods they eat, or maybe they search for ways to mask the symptoms. But weight gain, bloating and fatigue are not just annoying facts of life. They are your body’s way of telling you that you’re eating foods that aren’t working for you. Until you get rid of the foods that your body can’t handle, load up on healing foods and supplements and give your body a chance to recover from what you’ve unknowingly put it through, you are likely to gain weight, retain weight and suffer from premature ageing. Not a pretty picture.

Maybe your body is stressed because of your daily diet’s high content of sugar, artificial sweeteners and processed foods, which tend to contain lots of high-FI soy, corn and gluten. Or perhaps you’ve maintained a seemingly healthy natural, low-fat and low-carb regime but have never realized that all of your healthy efforts are being sabotaged by high-FI yoghurt (even nonfat), eggs (even omega-3-rich) and grains (even whole). Either way, if you weigh more than you’d like and look older than you’d prefer, you are most likely struggling with food intolerances.

How can you tell? Let me ask you what I ask my clients:

 Have you tried unsuccessfully to lose weight?

 Is what you used to do to lose weight no longer working?

 Are you a yo-yo dieter?

 Do you frequently experience discomfort after eating, such as bloating, wind or indigestion?

 Can you only lose weight by starving yourself or exercising like a maniac – or possibly not even then?

 Are you feeling and looking older than you should?

If the answer to even one of these questions is yes, you’ve likely been eating too many high-FI foods: problem foods that are likely to trigger food intolerance. What’s the solution? Stop eating high-FI foods and replace them with low-FI foods: foods that are unlikely to trigger food intolerance. If you can cut out the top 7 high-FI foods for just 3 weeks, you’ll see weight loss and beauty results that will have you looking and feeling terrific.

Hey, if those old low-fat, low-carb or high-protein diets had worked for you in the past, you’d already be at your ideal weight and peak vitality, right? There’s a reason that approach to food doesn’t work – and there’s a reason that the Virgin Diet does.

I often joke that most of my clients are allergic to diets. And in a way, they are, because most of the foods that people eat when they diet – egg whites, nonfat yoghurt, tofu – can set off food intolerance that keeps the weight on, even when you cut the calories.

The ‘allergic’ part is my joke, because food intolerance and food allergies are not actually the same thing. However, they are very closely related. They’re both responses to an apparently harmless or maybe even a healthy food that can involve one or more of your body’s systems, including your digestive system and your immune system. High-FI foods not only make you feel tired, unfocused and moody, but they’re also the hidden cause of weight gain, weight-loss resistance and premature ageing.

The good news here is that your fat is not your fault. It’s your body’s way of responding to the foods it can’t handle – foods you may have been eating precisely because you thought they were good for you!

Luckily, there is a solution: the three-week Virgin Diet solution. For just 21 days:

 Stop eating the 7 major high-FI foods.

 Focus on low-FI foods that will give your digestive system a break.

 Load up with healing foods and healing supplements to repair the damage.

Right away, you’ll lose the bloat, finally start losing weight and look years younger. You’ll look and feel so terrific that you might even make some lifelong changes in your diet.

Food intolerance isn’t a fixed condition; it’s more like a dynamic response. Foods that you were able to tolerate a few years ago might be problematic for you now. If you clean high-FI foods out of your system and take some other healing steps – all of which I’ll walk you through – then you may eventually be able to eat foods that are causing problems for you now.

The first step, though, is to get those high-FI foods out of your system and give your body a chance to chill out. After a 21-day break, I’ll have you add some of the healthier high-FI foods back into your diet, and we’ll find out if you can tolerate them. If you can’t handle them right away, you may be able to in 3 months, or 6 months or perhaps a year. But before we can add them back in, we have to take them out.

A lot of my clients are sceptical about this elimination process, at least at first. They just can’t believe that such apparently healthy foods as yoghurt, whole grains and edamame are causing such severe problems, especially when they don’t cause any noticeable ill effects after eating them. That’s because food intolerance is such a subtle reaction. Allergies are swifter and more dramatic. A peanut allergy can strike after one tiny bite of peanut. Your throat closes up, you can hardly breathe and the conclusion is pretty clear: stay away from peanuts.

Food intolerance is sneakier. If you enjoy a delicious bowl of nonfat yoghurt and berries today and break out in acne 2 days later, you’re unlikely to make the connection – but I’m betting that it’s there. (See Chapter 5 for more information on the strong link between dairy and acne.) Likewise, if you have some whole-grain cereal this morning, you might not even realize that it’s the cause of your fitful sleep tonight. You probably won’t realize it until you eliminate gluten for a few weeks and start sleeping like a baby.

Like I said, high-FI foods are sneaky. They work slowly, subtly and after long delays. The only way to find out how they’re affecting you is to cut them out for at least 21 days. If your skin clears up, your hair perks up and your energy levels rise, maybe we’re onto something here. And if you drop up to 7 pounds in 7 days, I think you might say that we’ve figured out your problem.

Allergy specialists are quite familiar with elimination diets: food regimens in which a possibly offending food is removed from your diet and then gradually reintroduced a few weeks later. If you can introduce the problem food easily, then you either weren’t allergic to it or you’ve moved past the allergy. If reintroduction causes symptoms to flare up, then you’ve found a food that your body can’t handle, at least not right now.

The Virgin Diet works the same way. We take out the foods that might be causing you problems. We will then reintroduce some high-FI foods – eggs, dairy, soy and gluten – back into your diet. If you tolerate them well, terrific! If you show symptoms, out they go. You can give them another try in 3, 6 or 12 months when your system has had more time to heal and recover. I am going to encourage you to keep the sugar, artificial sweeteners, corn and peanuts out of your diet for the long haul (or at least 95 per cent of the time), but let’s deal with that once you recognize how amazing you feel without them! Right now, just focus on the fact that this is only for 21 days. And you can do just about anything for 21 days.

You can do just about anything for 21 days.

For our first step, the key is to avoid moderation. We need literally zero quantities of gluten, soy, dairy, eggs, corn, peanuts, sugar and artificial sweeteners. That’s the only way to stop stressing your system.

What are the benefits of temporarily eliminating high-FI foods?

1. Relief of symptoms. Many of my clients never even realized they had symptoms until they cut out the high-FI foods. Perhaps your ‘normal’ is to feel exhausted, stressed out, cranky and hungry, and you think it’s because you’re scrambling to meet deadlines, stressing over your parents and fighting with your boyfriend. Maybe … or maybe your life feels so out of control because high-FI foods are undermining your ability to sleep deeply, concentrate well and handle difficulties with good, calm energy. I’m betting that cutting out the high-FI foods will bring you to a whole new normal: energized, cheerful, calm and satisfied. If dropping high-FI foods made you feel that good, would you do it? What if you could finally lose that extra weight and look 10 years younger as well?

2. Rapid weight loss and anti-ageing benefits. Even if you’re not experiencing symptoms, high-FI foods are almost certainly behind your struggles with weight loss. And if you feel that you’re looking older and more tired than you’d like, there’s a strong possibility that high-FI foods are the culprit. Drop the high-FI foods, drop up to 7 pounds in 7 days and look years younger. That’s my promise, and I can’t wait for you to take me up on it.

If you eliminate a high-FI food and then reintroduce it, you’ll know instantly if it’s been causing you trouble because any symptoms you have will be through the roof. I had a client who had never realized that she’d been struggling with egg intolerance. When she cut out eggs, she lost 10 pounds in 3 weeks without even trying. Then, when she ate an experimental plate of scrambled eggs, she got so sleepy that she almost passed out. Eggs had been making her tired, fat and old before her time. It was only when she gave them up that she figured it out.

Have you ever heard the story of the lobster who didn’t realize it was being cooked because the water just kept on getting warmer and warmer? That’s how a lot of my clients are about eating high-FI foods. That’s how I was, too. One day I woke up and realized that I had gained 10 pounds, had developed a bloated waistline and was struggling with mental fog and fatigue almost all the time. I hate to admit it, but I also looked 10 years older. How had this happened? My symptoms had developed gradually, and I had simply learned to live with them.

When I cut out high-FI foods, my new normal was terrific. I lost all the weight I had gained, and I looked young and glowing again. Problem solved, right? Then I took one tiny bite of egg – by accident, it was lurking in a sauce – and I almost doubled over with cramps and bloating. Suddenly it looked like an alien was growing in my stomach.

The Virgin Diet is the key to losing those stubborn pounds – and all those extra years. If I want to keep feeling good, looking young and staying slim, I stick to the Virgin Diet. Now you can follow the Virgin Diet and get the same great results.

Like most people, you’ve probably longed for your old figure and your younger metabolism. You’ve chalked up your leaner friends’ skinny jeans to luck and genetics. You’ve tried every fad diet and superfood, hoping to resemble the Hollywood stars who look better at 40 than they did at 20, seemingly by magic. And you are reluctantly accepting a fate of an ever-expanding waistline as part of ageing.

You can stop gaining weight and lose the pounds simply by eliminating the bad foods.

Well, what if I told you that fat is not your fate? I’m almost 50 years old, and I put most younger women’s bodies to shame. Better yet, so do my clients. You can stop gaining weight and lose the pounds you’ve packed on over the last decade simply by eliminating the bad foods. Time makes you wiser not wider, and you have probably spent a lifetime of moderately consuming the wrong foods and gradually undermining your body’s ability to maintain or lose weight. The fewer wrong foods you eat, the leaner you will be. By eliminating all the wrong foods for 3 weeks, you can drop up to 7 pounds and look years younger by next week.

Let’s get one thing straight: even if you’ve been on a dozen diets and struggled unsuccessfully to lose weight, the Virgin Diet can work for you. In fact, the more trouble you’ve had with losing weight and keeping it off, the more likely it is that food intolerance is at the root of your problem. Ironically, trouble with previous diets probably makes you a better candidate for success with the Virgin Diet. If they didn’t work, food intolerance was very likely a big part of the reason. Heal that problem, and off come the pounds.

The more trouble you’ve had losing weight, the more likely it is that food intolerance is your problem.

Does pulling high-FI foods from your diet sound like an impossible task? Believe me, I get it. I hated the thought of giving up my favourite high-FI foods. I wondered how I’d live without my occasional slice of sourdough bread and my beloved breakfast omelettes. I couldn’t believe I’d ever be happy without that inch of foamy milk on my caffé Americano. The irony is that you usually crave the very foods that are hurting you, and eat them every day.

Now that I live on a low-FI diet, I feel happier, healthier and more energetic than I ever have. My mind is clear and focused, and I love the way I look. My life has been much easier to navigate without high-FI foods, and I promise, yours will be, too. In just 3 weeks, you’ll reverse your weight gain. You’ll look and feel at least 10 years younger. And you’ll be able to safely reintroduce the foods that your body likes.

The Virgin Diet can work anywhere with anybody, no matter where you live, how often you eat in restaurants or how frequently you travel. I travel a lot of the time and rarely have time to cook, but when I’m home, I like to make dinner for my kids. I’m not the Queen of Cooking, but I am the Queen of Meal Assembly. I’ve stuck to the Virgin Diet everywhere in the United States, including some tiny towns too small to even have a full-sized grocery store.

In Part III of this book, I’ll show you how to create delicious low-FI meals (including plenty of easy, crowd-pleasing recipes) and how to maintain the diet when you travel, eat in restaurants or cook for your family – even for picky eaters! You can prepare low-FI foods for your family, and you can prepare them on a budget. You don’t need access to special health-food shops and you don’t need to eat weird or unusual foods. All you have to do is cut the wrong foods out of your diet and replace them with the foods your body likes.

So don’t worry about sticking to this programme. Whatever your situation, I know you can make it work. Just give me 21 days, and you are going to be blown away by how great you feel.

I’ve been working with weight loss and food intolerance for more than 20 years. I’ve helped hundreds of physicians expand their knowledge of nutrition and weight loss, and I’ve helped thousands of men and women lose weight. Some of my greatest success stories can be found throughout this book. Clients who have struggled with their weight for years suddenly begin losing weight almost without effort – as long as they leave high-FI foods out of their diets. People who have suffered from acne, arthritis, joint pain, mental fog, fatigue and a dozen other complaints suddenly lose their symptoms. Their skin clears up, their hair looks shiny and full of life and they appear 10 years younger. That is their success story – and it can be yours.

It was certainly Melanie’s. After 21 days on the Virgin Diet, she lost 10 of her target 20 pounds without any reduction in calories or change to her exercise routine. A few weeks later, she lost the other 10 pounds and was feeling stronger and more energized than she had in years. She no longer had to stress over calorie-counting or obsess over the scale. She just had to leave out of her diet the foods that her body couldn’t tolerate.

“You know, it’s funny, JJ,” she said the last time we talked, “now my friends all want to know what I’m eating to look so terrific.”

“That’s great,” I answered. “What do you tell them?”

Melanie laughed. “I tell them it’s what I’m not eating that’s made all the difference!”

Kathy Miller

Age 56

Lakewood,

Colorado

Height: 1.7m

Starting Weight: 21 stone

Waist: 126cm Hips: 150cm

Current Weight: 19 stone 7 pounds

Waist: 104cm Hips: 140cm

Lost: 1 stone 11 pounds

My problems with weight go back to when I was about 6 or 7 years old, thinking I was fat. I started dieting when I was about 13 years old. My mum took me to the doctor for diet pills when I was 16 years old.

Over the years, I’ve tried just about every diet known to man, but the weight kept creeping on. Every time, it was the same: I would lose a few pounds and gain it all back plus some. At 40, I weighed more than 22½ stone. I knew I had to change my life, but I wasn’t happy, and I found comfort in food. And I had a lot of medical problems. First, I suffered from a pinched ulnar nerve. Then at age 42, I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, or ADD. A couple years later, I was diagnosed with asthma. After years of being hospitalized for asthma attacks and gaining almost 6 stone, thanks to medication and depression, I was told by my pulmonary doctor that I had gastro-oesophageal reflux disease, or GORD, which was exacerbating my asthma. This was the first time I realized that the foods that were causing me to be fat might also be the foods causing these other serious illnesses and disorders.

By this time I was back up to just over 21 stone and housebound. I was so fat! I was embarrassed to be seen. I felt like a complete failure. I was on three daily medicines for asthma, a nightly antacid, an ointment for eczema and bottles of ibuprofen for joint pains. I had to wrap an elastic bandage around my knee every day to manage the pain.

When I tried to diet, the results were frustrating until I read about JJ’s Virgin Diet. Her explanation of food intolerances described everything I was feeling. I took the symptoms test and marked almost everything with the highest score. Right then, I committed to the plan. After just 3 weeks, I lost 11 pounds, including a couple inches off my waist and hips. I cleaned up my shopping, my kitchen and my health. As it turns out, I am gluten- and dairy-intolerant. And much of the food I thought was healthy really wasn’t.

I learned how much I have poisoned my body over the years. Now I don’t have cravings for sweets; fast foods; or fatty, starchy, high-carb foods. I am satisfied with whole, clean, natural foods. My asthma symptoms are so much less than before that I almost don’t need the medicine at all. My eczema spots are all but gone now. I can take walks without pain. I don’t have headaches. I have not had any indigestion since my second day on the plan. My ADD seems to be non-existent. No more brain fog. No depression. I have energy that I haven’t had in years. Most of all, I have hope.

I have learned for the first time what to eat, why to eat and when to eat. I feel so much better! This programme saved my life!

Leslie was at the end of her rope. She’d been to every doctor in the Los Angeles area, and nobody could help her. As it happens, her stepmother is Suzanne Somers, an expert in health, beauty and fitness. Suzanne knows all the gurus, besides being one herself. But none of them could fix Leslie’s problem. Leslie was nearly 3 stone overweight. It didn’t seem to matter whether she ate or not. She had this chronic bloating thing going on – in fact, she got more and more bloated as the day continued, no matter how little she ate.

I loved Leslie on the spot. She’s adorable. And I was struck by how much she was already doing the right things – and how little any of them were helping her.

“What’s going on, JJ?” Leslie asked me. At this point, she was beyond frustrated. “You’ve got to help me out, because nobody else has ever been able to.”

I felt a lot of sympathy for Leslie, who was working so hard to lose weight – and with so little result. She exercised and was very careful about counting calories and controlling portions. But as I tell all of my clients, your body isn’t a savings bank or a calorimeter. It’s a chemistry lab. Counting calories and measuring portions just isn’t enough. You have to know how your body is responding to the foods you eat. And Leslie’s body was telling her that she wasn’t eating right.

I suspected that Leslie’s problems stemmed from food intolerance. She had been eating a high-FI diet for years, including all the supposedly healthy choices: eggs, tofu, whole-wheat bread, whey protein shakes. She lived on fizzy diet drinks and caffé lattes with skimmed milk. Sometimes she’d treat herself to some corn chips and salsa. That made at least 6 of the 7 high-FI foods right there: eggs, soy, gluten, dairy, artificial sweeteners and corn. All she was missing was sugar and peanuts, and when she occasionally ate desserts or processed foods (which are often made with peanut oil), she was consuming those, too.

“Look,” I told Leslie, as gently as I could, “you can be doing all the right things – exercise, careful eating, the works – but if you’ve built up a food intolerance or messed up your digestive tract, even the right things can’t help you. Right now, your immune system is on high alert, and it’s overreacting to many of the foods you eat. Until we get your immune system to chill out, you won’t be able to lose weight.”

Food intolerance is one of the most frustrating conditions I know. All of a sudden, you can’t lose those extra pounds, even when you are eating and exercising exactly as you always have. Sometimes you might even be eating less and exercising more – and you still gain weight! How unfair is that?

The best way to get Leslie’s immune system back on track was to cut out all 7 high-FI foods and increase her intake of low-FI foods. Once her immune system wasn’t jumping into hyperalert and flooding her system with inflammatory chemicals, her digestive system would have a chance to heal. I also suggested my special Virgin Diet Shakes as a source of protein. Along with the healing foods and healing supplements I recommend, the Virgin Diet Shakes would help reverse inflammation, reducing all those ‘protective’ chemicals that were causing Leslie’s body to gain weight, ageing her skin and hair and sapping her energy. In 7 days, I promised Leslie she would lose the bloat and look years younger. The Virgin Diet was the key.

In fact, that’s exactly what happened. When I saw Leslie a few weeks later, she was so excited that her words kept tumbling over each other. “I’ve lost more than 10 pounds already, and I feel so hopeful about the other 30! Look at my skin. It hasn’t looked this good in years! My friends keep asking if I was away on holiday. At work, they know I wasn’t, so they’ve started a rumour about me having a new boyfriend. I can’t believe how good I feel!”

I was so happy for my client because she had finally stopped accepting the weight gain, exhaustion and premature ageing that she had come to believe was her lot in life. Instead, she was losing weight, feeling great and looking 10 years younger. Terrific was now her new normal. It can also be yours.

So, what’s the first thing I’d like you to do on the Virgin Diet? I hope you’re sitting down because my first piece of advice might shock you: stop counting calories.

That’s right, I’m suggesting that you stop counting calories because your body is not a savings bank or a calorimeter. It’s a chemistry lab. Although the total number of calories counts, it is only part of the story. The source of the calories matters far more. If your calories come from foods that are causing your body trouble, then it almost doesn’t matter how much or how little you eat. Even moderate intake of problem foods sets up your body for weight gain. And as we’ve seen, those problem foods are not just biscuits, cakes and sugary fizzy drinks. They include artificial sweeteners and fizzy diet drinks, low-fat yoghurt, eggs, soy and whole grains.

Your body is not a savings bank or a calorimeter. It’s a chemistry lab.

Now here’s the key to the Virgin Diet: when it comes to weight loss and healthy eating, moderation doesn’t work.

Why? Because weight gain among the non-obese is generally gradual, averaging almost a pound a year as the result of only moderate changes in diet and activity. Yes, if you binge for months on crisps and ice cream, you’re going to put on weight quickly. But that’s not how most people gain weight. They continue eating their normal diet, with maybe just a tablespoon of butter here or a few extra biscuits there. Before they know it, they’ve gained a pound a year, which adds up to almost 1 stone in 10 years and almost 1½ stone in 20 years. It looks like age itself is the problem, but it’s not. It’s that pound a year that caused all the trouble.

Moderation doesn’t work.

In other words, the average 30-year-old who consumes a moderate caloric diet while eating the wrong foods will be 10 pounds heavier by age 40 for what may seem like no reason at all. And if at any point along the way that person tries to lose weight – usually by restricting calories – she’s going to find it very difficult to lose weight, keep it off or both.

Why? Because, you guessed it, your body is not a bank account or a calorimeter. It is a chemistry lab. Eating the wrong foods affects your body’s chemistry. Gaining weight affects your body’s chemistry. Stress and lifestyle changes affect your body’s chemistry. So, if you want to get that extra weight off, you have to heal your body’s chemistry.

TOTAL POINTS:_________

Your Food Intolerance Score:

1 to 5: Low-FI

Currently, you seem to suffer from few food allergies or intolerances, if any. I have found that most people feel and look better while removing high-FI foods and often are reacting to one or more of them whether or not they have any overt symptoms. You are reading this book because you want to make sure that you eat the best diet so you can keep feeling and looking lean and young.

6 to 14: Mid-FI

You consistently suffer mild or moderate discomfort and bloating with certain foods, but you do experience periods of relief. Over time, you have probably noticed weight gain even though your diet hasn’t changed. Your skin and hair may look somewhat dull, and you tend to feel more tired or stressed than you used to.

15+: High FI

Help! You can’t remember the last time you felt light and lean after a meal, and it feels as though your stomach is constantly bloated. You’ve done everything you can think of to lose weight, and it just hasn’t worked. Every time you look in the mirror, you think, How did I get so old? Why do I look so tired?

Okay, so here’s how I like to think of it: food isn’t just calories or fat grams or even a source of energy. Food is information. Each bite of food that you put into your mouth sends your body a message – maybe even several messages.

Food isn’t just calories or fat grams or even a source of energy.

Some of these messages relate to your blood sugar and insulin production. Some of them govern your feelings of hunger and fullness. Others concern your fat burning and metabolism, and still others involve your hair, skin, mood and mental functioning.

This is why I say that not all calories are created equal. You might portion out a biscuit, a hamburger and a serving of cauliflower so they all have the same number of calories, but each of those three foods is going to send your body very different messages. And it’s the messages we care about, not just the calories.

Actually, it’s not just what you eat that gives your body information. It’s also how much you eat at one time, how fast you eat, what combinations you eat, how you feel while you are eating and even what you drink with what you eat. Every one of those things is important because each sends your body a message: burn fat or store it; build muscle or lose it; slow the ageing process down or speed it up; create steady, sustained energy or crash and burn within the next couple hours. Don’t worry if this sounds complicated: I have laid it all out for you. All you have to do is live by the Virgin Diet Plate and follow my rules of meal timing, and you will be golden. The Virgin Diet is designed to send only the right messages to your body – 24/7 for 21 days. I’m betting that you’ll like the feeling so much that you’ll keep sending all the right messages for a long, long time after that.

Not all calories are created equal.

Food allergies are actually rather rare, but they get all the bad press because they are responsible for the really dramatic food problems that we hear about, such as the child who takes one bite of a peanut and then has to be rushed to the hospital. Food allergies trigger special antibodies in the bloodstream known as immunoglobulin E, or IgE, the most aggressive defence system our bodies have. Among other chemicals, IgE antibodies release large amounts of histamine, a substance that causes swelling, mucus, congestion and all the other symptoms that you would normally modify with an antihistamine.

It’s the swelling reaction that makes food allergies so dangerous. In severe cases, the throat and airways become so swollen that they cut off the air supply, making you unable to breathe.

Even without such deadly responses, however, aggressive IgE antibodies generally produce quick, dramatic reactions, appearing within minutes or even seconds after the offending food is consumed. Other allergic reactions include rashes, urticaria (hives), itching, eczema, nausea, stomach pain, diarrhoea, shortness of breath and chest pain, as well as bloating, nausea, cramping and stomach ache. Because much of our immune system is located in the gut, food allergies tend to wreak havoc with digestion.

Now, at this point, you might be thinking, But I don’t have any of those symptoms, and I feel fine after I eat. If that’s your response, terrific! You probably don’t have any food allergies. Most people don’t. But most people do have food intolerance, so let’s take a closer look at that.

Food intolerance is an umbrella term that covers three ways other than food allergies that things can go wrong: true intolerance, food sensitivities and food reactions.

Some people’s bodies simply have trouble tolerating certain foods, such as gluten (found in many grains, pastas, baked goods and processed and prepared foods), lactose (found in dairy products) or MSG (monosodium glutamate, a form of salt used as a flavour enhancer in many processed and prepared foods). Usually, this is because the intolerant people are lacking a specific chemical or enzyme that they need to digest the food. This is simply a genetic problem, and there isn’t much you can do about it except to avoid the foods. The good news is that on the Virgin Diet, you will avoid these difficult foods, which will make it easier for you to lose weight, look younger and feel healthier.

Like allergies, food sensitivities are a type of immune reaction, but they mobilize a different type of antibody than food allergies do – not IgE, but its cousin, immunoglobulin G, or IgG. These IgG antibodies produce symptoms, too, but they act more slowly than IgE antibodies. Whereas allergic reactions are swift, food sensitivity symptoms don’t appear until several hours or even a few days after you’ve eaten, making it very difficult to link them to the problem food.

Food sensitivities keep your immune system fired up on a chronic basis.

Here’s another way in which allergic responses differ from sensitive ones: allergic responses are acute, whereas sensitivity responses are chronic. In other words, an allergy is a specific response: your immune system is activated, it flares up, it sends out its aggressive battery of IgE antibodies and, hopefully, it calms down. Food sensitivities, by contrast, can keep your immune system fired up on a chronic basis because you keep consuming the foods that set them off. If yoghurt, eggs, soy milk and whole-wheat bread are a frequent part of your diet – and especially if you’re eating them every day – your system is overwhelmed with problem foods, and your immune system never really calms down. This creates a number of problems, particularly inflammation, as I’ll explain a bit later. But first, let’s play food detective. Here are the typical symptoms of food sensitivity. Do any of them sound familiar to you?

 Digestive trouble, such as bloating, wind, constipation or diarrhoea

 Sleep issues, such as fatigue, insomnia or waking in the middle of the night

 Congestion, sneezing and coughing

 Muscle aches and joint pain

 Dark circles under your eyes

 Dull, lifeless hair

 Skin problems, including acne and rosacea

 Mood problems, such as lack of focus, brain fog, depression, anxiety or irritability

 Poor or unsteady energy

 Weight gain

 Premature ageing

If you’re struggling with any of these symptoms, you are almost certainly struggling with food sensitivities and perhaps with other types of food intolerance as well.

Food sensitivity is incredibly common. It affects at least 75 per cent of us and is a major factor in weight gain and weight retention. Again, the good news is that the Virgin Diet will help you cope with your food sensitivities, first by pulling problem foods from your diet and then by healing your system so you might eventually be able to tolerate some of those foods.

When you load your body up with too many carbs or too much sugar, you’re setting yourself up for blood sugar spikes and crashes. This in turn messes with your insulin response – your body’s attempt to move sugar out of your blood and into your cells. Your insulin response works best when your blood sugar levels are nice and steady and in the ideal range. The Virgin Diet supports this process and helps you avoid food reactions by having you eat ideal amounts of clean, lean protein; healthy fats; non-starchy veggies; and high-fibre, low-glycaemic carbs every 4 to 6 hours. Yes, pulling the top 7 high-FI foods is important, but so is the timing of your meals and the combinations of foods you eat. Consuming something sweet or high-carb – a piece of cake, a handful of dried fruit or even a glass of orange juice – causes your blood sugar to spike and messes with your insulin response. As you’ll see in Chapter 7, artificial sweeteners can also create adverse reactions. Anything that interferes with blood sugar and insulin response disrupts your stress hormones – all of which makes you more likely to gain and retain weight.

Food intolerance produces a host of symptoms, which is bad enough. But it also causes a number of interrelated problems, each of which makes all the others worse. One of those problems is inflammation, a major cause of weight gain and weight-loss resistance.

Ironically, inflammation is a necessary by-product of any intense immune response – that is, it’s supposed to help your system heal. When your body is invaded by a toxin, bacteria or a virus or traumatized by a wound, your immune system swiftly triggers a cascade of healing and protective chemicals that rush to the site. You can think of your immune system as an ambulance that comes roaring to the rescue after an accident.

But suppose the ambulance driver is so anxious to reach you that he crashes right through the side of your house? That’s inflammation – the negative side effects of the healing process.

Inflammation puts on the pounds in a number of different ways.

The four classic inflammatory responses are redness, heat, pain and swelling, symptoms that are easily visible when the injury can be seen. Think of how a cut on your finger turns red and how warm and tender the skin becomes, or imagine how an insect bite on your ankle might swell. Those reactions occur inside your body, too, when a high-FI food triggers an immune reaction. Your digestive tract becomes inflamed. If you frequently eat foods that inflame your system – either foods to which you’re sensitive or foods that contain inflammatory fats (e.g., dairy, eggs and corn) – then you’re likely to suffer from chronic low-grade inflammation. And you’re running the risk of weight-loss resistance and obesity.

Inflammation puts on the pounds in a number of different ways:

 Chemical changes. Inflammation makes your body resistant to key chemical messengers that help you burn fat, tolerate stress and normalize your appetite and cravings. For example, inflammation keeps your body from ‘hearing’ cortisol, the key stress hormone. As a result, your cortisol levels rise, stressing you out, storing fat around your waist and causing you to crave carbs. Cortisol also lowers your serotonin, the feel-good brain chemical that helps you feel calm and optimistic and sleep well. Eventually, your body gets tired of producing all that excess cortisol, and your levels drop, causing you to feel sluggish, unmotivated and fatigued.

 Inflammation also creates resistance to leptin, the hormone that regulates feelings of hunger and fullness. Leptin resistance means that leptin can’t get into your cells. This makes you hungrier, so you eat more, well past the point where your brain would normally be signalling ‘enough’.

 Finally, inflammation keeps your body from responding properly to adiponectin, which helps regulate blood sugar and body fat. Add up all these responses, and you get weight gain.

 Insulin resistance. Insulin is a hormone that moves sugar out of your bloodstream and into your cells. When I say, ‘sugar’, I don’t just mean the sweet white stuff that sits on the table. I mean the starches found in grains, the fructose and glucose found in fruits and vegetables and the lactose found in milk. These sugars enter your blood, where they are meant to provide energy for your body and brain, as long as insulin helps move them into your cells.

 But when you are consuming too much sugar (in the form of sweets, starches or dairy products) or when your system is inflamed, your body secretes too much insulin and keeps the insulin in your bloodstream longer than it’s supposed to. After a while, your cells can’t ‘hear’ all that excess insulin. Your insulin receptors stop responding to the insulin, and your blood sugar remains high. You may eventually have trouble manufacturing enough insulin, putting you at risk of developing diabetes. Meanwhile, you can’t use that extra blood sugar for energy, and it ends up getting stored as fat.

 In addition, all that excess insulin in your blood tells your body you have enough sugar around for fuel, so it doesn’t need to burn stored fat. Insulin resistance basically slams the doors to your fat cells shut. Insulin resistance also makes it nearly impossible to lose weight. And inflammation virtually guarantees that you will suffer from insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance slams the doors to your fat cells shut.

 Fluid retention. Inflammation doesn’t just help you hold onto your body fat, it also causes you to retain fluids so you feel bloated and heavy.

 Digestive problems. When inflammation rages through your intestines, your digestive system can’t operate efficiently. If you have an imbalance of gut bacteria, with more bad bacteria than good, you will actually extract more calories from the food you eat and store them as fat. If your gut wall is damaged and leaky, you will struggle to be able to absorb your nutrients. The result is that even though you are eating, you still feel hungry and unsatisfied because your body can’t get what it needs from your food.

 Loss of energy. Inflammation causes you to feel sluggish and fatigued. If your body is inflamed, you are not going to feel like moving much, so you become even more sedentary. The less active you are, the more resistant to insulin you become – and the vicious cycle continues.

I hope you’re beginning to see why I told Leslie to pull out of her diet any high-FI foods that might be causing an inflammatory response. The fastest way to gain weight that you can’t lose is to allow your body to become inflamed. And the fastest way to drop those extra pounds is to remove the sources of inflammation and let your body heal. That’s what the Virgin Diet is all about.

As we just saw, inflammation causes you to gain and retain weight in several different ways – and those extra fat cells don’t just sit there, either. They release more inflammatory chemicals, creating the mother of all vicious cycles. Inflammation can lead to obesity. And fat – especially belly fat – releases inflammatory chemicals called cytokines, which are messengers that your body uses to start the inflammatory process. So your fat cells are producing more inflammatory messengers, and all that inflammation is making you gain more weight, and then your fat is basically making you more fat! How unfair is that?

Fat releases inflammatory chemicals called cytokines.

So all that extra fat you might be carrying around is not benign, like a backpack. It’s more like carrying a bomb in your backpack. It’s why I want you to lose fat quickly and lower inflammation quickly by pulling the 7 high-FI foods from your diet.

Following the Virgin Diet will also help you overcome insulin resistance. As part of the programme, you’ll eat every 4 to 6 hours and stick to moderate portion sizes of clean, lean protein; healthy fats; high-fibre, low-glycaemic carbs; and non-starchy vegetables. (I go into more detail about the programme in Chapter 8.) This is the fastest way I know to get your blood sugar levels balanced and your insulin working efficiently once more.

Inflammation doesn’t only create insulin resistance. It also creates leptin resistance, which makes it even harder for you to lose weight.

Leptin is a hormone that responds to how much you’ve eaten and signals the brain that you’ve had enough (satiety is the technical term). Leptin also helps burn fat by cueing your metabolism to run faster when you have extra fat to burn and slowing down your metabolism when your body needs to hold onto fat. You can see how our ancestors might have needed this hormone to help adjust their metabolisms depending on whether food was plentiful or scarce.

When leptin is working well, you eat until you don’t need any more food and then you stop. When your system is leptin-resistant, you have a lot of leptin circulating in your blood, but your brain can’t ‘hear’ it. You end up with too much leptin in your blood and not enough in your brain. That’s the situation for the vast majority of overweight people. As a result, they experience increased hunger, food cravings and weight gain. Even though they’re overweight, their bodies believe they’re hungry and go into a state of fat storage.

If you want to lose that extra weight, you have to heal the leptin resistance. Healing inflammation will go a long way towards getting your leptin working properly again. And pulling the high-FI foods is key.

If you want to lose that extra weight, you have to heal the leptin resistance.

Meanwhile, if you keep eating high-FI foods, you continue to feed the problem. You might think you are making healthy choices with your nonfat yoghurt, omega-3–rich eggs and low-fat soy milk, but every bite of high-FI food is potentially triggering an immune response that could flood your body with inflammatory chemicals and start the whole cycle over again. So basically, any time you eat a problem food, you’re setting yourself up for weight gain.

Any time you eat a problem food, you’re setting yourself up for weight gain.

All of the top 7 high-FI foods are potential sources of inflammation, which is why it’s so important to pull them from your diet. Once you do so, your inflammation will disappear, your symptoms will disappear – and those extra pounds will disappear, too.

There is another factor that might be making you fat and old before your time: poor digestion. When digestion works well, it is a beautiful thing, but when it’s out of whack, it can be a huge contributor to weight gain.

Bacteria, also known as flora or gut flora, is crucial to good digestion. Believe it or not, we have more than 500 species of different bacteria in our gastrointestinal tract. In fact, we have more bacteria than we have cells. Most of that bacteria is good for us; it helps break down food, absorb nutrients and keep our immune systems primed. Some of that bacteria is bad – the kind that attacks our cells or produces toxins.

The key thing with gut bacteria is making sure that we have the ideal amount of good bacteria that we need. So, focus on promoting the good bacteria that will help support your gut immune system and keep the bad bacteria at bay.

How do you do that? First, protect your good bacteria. You might want to take probiotics, which are supplements that support bacterial growth. If you take antibiotics, which kill a lot of good bacteria while they’re gunning for the bad, upgrade probiotics from ‘good idea’ to ‘absolutely essential’. You always want to follow any antibiotic treatment with a round of probiotics.

You can further support your good bacteria with prebiotics, which is soluble fibre that feeds your gut flora (for example, garlic, onions, asparagus and dandelion greens), and with fermented foods, such as pickled ginger, kimchee and sauerkraut. We also need good gut bacteria to make vitamin K, which is important for immune function.

There is yet another piece to the inflammation–immune system puzzle: eating high-FI foods can contribute to a condition known as leaky gut syndrome.

Leaky gut is pretty much what it sounds like. The cells of your intestinal lining (your gut) are supposed to be pressed up tightly against one another, creating tight junctions. These junctions keep partially digested food securely inside your intestines, where it belongs.

Sometimes, though, your intestinal lining is compromised, allowing particles of partly digested food to leak out into your bloodstream. Other problematic stuff can get out, too, including microbes, waste and toxins.

When these substances enter your bloodstream, your body treats them as foreign invaders and responds accordingly. Your immune system releases a cascade of inflammatory chemicals designed to neutralize the threat, which can also wreak havoc on your intestinal lining. As a result, you have a much harder time absorbing nutrients, which might even cause you to eat more – and gain weight.

Eventually, the poorly digested food combines with IgG antibodies to form large bodies known as immune complexes. These circulate through the bloodstream until they are deposited in various tissues, where they create localized inflammation. That’s how you end up with the symptoms we’ve talked about – the rashes, joint pain, headache, fatigue and skin eruptions.

All of these symptoms together can make you feel as though your whole body is breaking down. You might be tempted to think that this is what happens naturally as you age. It isn’t. It’s what happens when you suffer from leaky gut. If you’ve been eating the wrong foods for years, you’ll probably develop more symptoms over time, as the problem worsens and symptoms build up.

Ironically, your body starts to crave the very foods that are making you sick. That’s because if you keep eating high-FI foods, your body keeps making antibodies to protect you from them. If you try to cut out a particular high-FI food, you have all these antibodies roaming around in search of it, ready to zap it with their special protective chemicals. These would-be protectors actually cause you to crave the food they’re longing to zap, setting you up for a vicious cycle of inflammation and weight gain.

Food intolerance can create leaky gut, but other factors can, too:

 Chronic inflammation

 Lactose intolerance

 Gluten as it triggers the release of the protein zonulin, which loosens the tight junctions in the gut

 A low-fibre, high-sugar diet, which lowers your levels of stomach acid and contributes to leaky gut

 Poorly digested food, which may be caused by speed eating or stress eating

 A compromised immune system or an autoimmune condition, such as asthma, allergies or rheumatoid arthritis

 Overuse of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS), such as aspirin and ibuprofen

 Infections, including viral, bacterial, yeast and parasitic

 Antibiotics

 Accutane (a form of vitamin A used to treat acne)

 Acid blockers

 Excessive alcohol consumption

 Cytotoxic drugs and radiation

 Exposure to heavy metals

 Exposure to moulds

 Exposure to toxins

If you suffer from irritable bowel syndrome or irritable bowel disorder, you almost certainly have leaky gut as well.

The major cause of leaky gut, however – and the one that’s been most challenging for me personally – is stress because it causes your gut to become more permeable. So if you’ve been going through an especially tough time or if your life is chronically stressful, those extra pounds (and unpleasant symptoms) might well be caused by both leaky gut and inflammation.

Leaky gut isn’t just caused by food intolerance, it also causes food intolerance. As undigested food leaks through those open spaces in your gut, it makes its way into your bloodstream, and your immune system goes wild. Eventually, even foods that you were not previously sensitive to can become problem foods for you. So, we’re looking at a vicious cycle in which leaky gut, inflammation and food intolerance all reinforce one another.

Here’s the good news: if you remove the offending foods, your symptoms usually vanish, and the excess weight starts to come off. Once you heal your leaky gut, you might even become able to tolerate foods to which you are now sensitive. And the really good news is that you can heal leaky gut and perhaps also overcome at least some of your food intolerance through the Virgin Diet. When you drop the top 7 high-FI foods and load up on healing foods, you give your body a fresh, healing start. Meanwhile, you’ll drop up to 7 pounds in 7 days and look years younger. It’s a win-win.

Much of the reason for our poor digestion is how we eat. We eat too fast. I tell people, “Be a slowpoke when you’re eating.” Put your fork down in between bites. You can improve your digestion by increasing your chewing. Chew more. If we eat with people who eat fast, we tend to pace ourselves with them, so eat with slow people.

Mindful eating is not just taking the time to chew. It is also being calm while you’re eating. Take time for your meals. Focus on what you’re eating and the company around you – and don’t eat while you’re doing something else that needs your focus, such as driving or working. Keep your mind on the food and the pleasure of sharing it. You’ll enjoy it more – and you’ll eat less.

I don’t want to gross you out, but now we need to talk about poops because they are a crucial part of digestion. Either diarrhoea or constipation can indicate that you have problems digesting your food, which could ultimately affect your ability to lose weight.

Many people don’t realize that they are suffering from constipation. When I say, ‘constipation’, I want you to think three things:

1. You’re moving your bowels less than once a day. Ideally, you should be going twice a day.

2. You’re having to really struggle. Ideally, everything should come out nice and smooth.

3. You’re producing poops that are tiny or don’t easily come all the way out. That is not good for your digestive tract or your overall health.

What is a poop you can be proud of? It is a well-formed poop that you don’t have to struggle with. It comes out fully – it doesn’t stop halfway through and leave you stuck. Nor does it dive-bomb to the bottom of the bowl. It sinks to the bottom of the bowl. It doesn’t mark things up.

If you have an oily residue or slick slides, you are not absorbing your fat well. If you have rabbit pellets or you’re straining, you don’t have enough fibre. If you have floating poops, it could be from excessive wind, produced by an overgrowth of bad bacteria lurking in your intestines.

Now at this point, you might be wondering why I’m putting you through this kind of gross science lesson. The answer is, because if you don’t eliminate properly, you’ll be bloated and fat and setting yourself up for a permanent problem with both indigestion and obesity.

Okay, I’ll get a little more gross and ask you to picture what would happen to a poop that just sat in the toilet for a few days. Ewww, right? Well, do you want that toxic mess sitting inside you? No, you don’t, and that’s why elimination is so important. If you aren’t having poops you can be proud of, you are holding a toxic mess inside your body every single day. That uneliminated poop is releasing toxins that are reabsorbed into your body, leading to bad breath, piles and acne, not to mention impaired digestion, inflammation and food intolerance. The net result is that you gain weight that you can’t lose, and you feel sluggish, tired and old before your time.

Those toxins are also putting a terrific strain on one of your primary detoxification organs: your liver. If you tax your liver with excess toxins, you could impair its ability to do its other critical functions, such as metabolize fat, which will ultimately make it more difficult for you to lose weight.

Maybe this isn’t the most pleasant topic, but it’s an important one – and what we focus on, we can improve. So at this point, I’d like to invite you to take my poop quiz.

Okay, so here’s the deal: none of these symptoms are normal, and you shouldn’t experience any of them regularly on a long-term basis. You might have symptoms that occur periodically because of stress, a transient parasite, bad food – some problem that your body handles and you recover from. But if you have any of these problems chronically, you need to address them. And you should be aware that the more questions you answered yes to, the more severe your issue is.

Now, here’s the good news: quite often, removing high-FI foods and adding in healing and low-FI foods correct most if not all of the problems. Here’s some more good news: the Improving Your Poops section can tell you how to fix any remaining problems.

Now that you see how important pooping is for getting rid of toxins, let’s talk about things that can help you poop better.

First, make time for it. Everyone has a rhythm. You will find your best time of day. For most people, it is when they get up in the morning or about an hour after they wake up and move. Make sure you have time for that. You may also need to have another bowel movement in the afternoon after lunch. Start to get used to what your body needs so you can set time aside. You need the right place to be able to do this, too.

Second, you need to have one to three bowel movements a day. They shouldn’t be urgent, and you shouldn’t have to run to the bathroom every time you eat. When you eat, it should stimulate some peristalsis in 30–60 minutes. (Peristalsis is the contraction and relaxation of your intestinal muscles to move food through your digestive tract.) But you should not be feeling the urgent need to run to the bathroom as soon as you finish your meal. If you pull all of the top 7 high-FI foods from your diet and your urgency hasn’t cleared up in a couple weeks, see your doctor.

Fibre definitely gives us poops we can be proud of! You need fibre to add the bulk to your stools. Here are the top 10 sources of fabulous fibre, so load up on these:

1 Raspberries (All berries are high-fibre, and these are the highest.)

2 Lentils

3 Nuts

4 Seeds, especially chia seeds and freshly ground linseeds

5 Kale

6 Quinoa

7 Avocado

8 Apples

9 Winter squash

10 Broccoli

You need to eat optimal amounts of fibre. The average person is getting only 5 to 14 grams of fibre per day, but I want you to get it up to 50 or more. You can’t do it overnight. Add 5 grams each day until you reach your goal – and make sure to drink more water as you do so.

In Chapter 8, you’ll find my instructions for drinking water. Water and fibre together make a nice sponge that will give you the bulk you need in your stools.

 Vitamin C: Start with 1 gram and increase as needed up to 5 grams each night.

 Magnesium: Start with 300 milligrams and increase as needed up to 1,000 milligrams each night.

If your poops become runny, back off the supplements a bit. Iron and calcium are constipating, so if you are taking either of these, you may need some supplements to offset those effects. I like to take vitamin C and magnesium at night to get things moving in the morning.

 Get things moving with exercise.

 Try drinking some hot coffee or tea in the morning.

 Sip some peppermint tea throughout the day.

 Throw two or three prunes into your shake.

 When you move your bowels, consider elevating your feet with a footstool – our toilets are just about the worst possible set-up for elimination.

If none of this is working, try cascara sagrada, senna, Chinese rhubarb and/or frangula (I prefer to use herbal blends of these) on a short-term basis. These are also great to take along if you happen to get constipated while travelling. You should only use them for a few days – don’t become dependent on them, as they may irritate the gastrointestinal lining long term with chronic use.

I know it’s hard to believe that the foods you’ve always thought were healthy are actually causing you to gain weight, feel lousy and look at least 10 years older. But trust me, I’ve had thousands of clients – from students to CEOs to top Hollywood stars – lose stubborn extra pounds, look 10 years younger and feel better than they had in years. The Virgin Diet is the key for me, for them and for you.

I’ve had thousands of clients lose extra pounds, look 10 years younger and feel better than they had in years.

If you’re feeling sceptical, leaf through this book, read some of my clients’ testimonials and see whether you recognize yourself in them. Most important of all, give the Virgin Diet a try. I’m only asking you for 21 days, and in return, I’m offering you a lifetime of feeling and looking your best.

Now, at this point, I’m going to give you a choice. If you’re totally on board with my reasoning and just want to get to the weight loss, jump right on over to Chapter 2 for a full explanation of what you’re going to be doing for the next 21 days and then turn to Part III to begin the Virgin Diet.

But if, like me, you don’t like simply following orders and prefer to understand how your body works, read on. In the next chapter, you’ll learn exactly how the Virgin Diet will help heal your body, and in Part II, you’ll find out just how the 7 high-FI foods are affecting your weight, your energy and your overall health. In other words, I’m going to give you the most useful chemistry lesson you’ve ever had in your life. This is the chemistry lesson that’s finally going to help you understand why you haven’t been able to lose weight before – and why you’re finally going to be able to lose it now.

Karen Bristing

Age 48

La Canada-

Flintridge, California

Height: 1.7m

Starting Weight: 11 stone 3 pounds

Waist: 79cm Hips: 104cm

Current Weight: 10 stone 2 pounds

Waist: 75cm Hips: 100cm

Lost: 1 stone 1 pound

I first heard about JJ Virgin through her book Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy: The 5-Step Plan to Sleek, Strong, and Sculpted Arms. I started implementing her programme immediately – and seeing results – then I signed up for her online newsletter and heard about the concept of the Virgin Diet.

I had never tried eliminating gluten and dairy from my diet, never mind soy, corn, peanuts and eggs. I had been trying to lose a stubborn 5 pounds for years, but I was never able to do it on the traditional ‘eat less and exercise more’ programmes. And believe me, I tried them all! I had even tried extreme exercise, getting up at 5 AM for a gruelling hour of outdoor boot camp. I did that for years!

I also fell prey to ‘diet’ foods that were full of chemicals and artificial sweeteners. I was working out and I thought I was eating right. But the stress on my body kept me from ever getting below that number I hoped to see on the scale.

Now, I am working out less, eating according to JJ and loving it. I weigh less than I have in 10 years. Not only did I lose the elusive 5 pounds, but also another 10 fell off my body for a total of 1 stone and 1 pound down! My skin is clearer, too. I found that as soon as I tried to add dairy back into my diet, my skin broke out. So dairy has stayed out of my life.

The great thing is, I really don’t miss any of those foods. I have much more energy. My breakfast shake keeps me full until lunchtime. I no longer need to have some sugar after lunch to keep me going, and I don’t feel the need for an afternoon nap anymore. I fit into all the clothes in my closet, although buying more jeans in a smaller size has been fun.

I am just so glad that I found this programme. I’ve recommended it to my friends, and I enjoy seeing their successes as well. All I can say is that it has changed my life.

Jenna was a market analyst who routinely worked 12-hour days and rarely took a full day off. She was in her mid-30s, and she was as compulsive about her workout schedule as she was about her diet. She never took a bite she didn’t plan, and she insisted on eating healthy, organic and lean foods. In fact, I would have to say that despite her demanding schedule, Jenna put about as much energy into staying healthy and fit as anybody I’ve ever seen.

Yet, for the past few years, Jenna had been struggling with slow but steady weight gain that didn’t seem to respond to her efforts to step up her workouts or cut back on her occasional treats. By the time I started working with her, she was more than 2 stone 2 pounds over her ideal weight – and just about frantic with frustration.

That was nothing, though, to how she reacted when I told her she would have to cut the 7 high-FI foods out of her diet. She didn’t mind losing the sugar because she had pretty much cut it out anyway, and she was fine with giving up peanuts and corn, which she rarely ate. She could even wrap her mind around cutting out yeast and gluten because she was pretty much avoiding bread, pasta and baked goods already. But when she thought about cutting out her soy-laden protein bars, her low-fat Greek yoghurt, her freshly squeezed juice and her veggie omelettes, I thought she was going to go ballistic. And when I told her that fizzy diet drinks were off-limits, she was literally speechless for 2 minutes.

When she could finally speak, she said just four words: “JJ, are you sure?”

“I am.”

Then she started to bargain with me. “Maybe I could have, like, one protein bar during the day? I don’t think they have much soy – and I really need a high-protein snack I can eat at my desk. And maybe if I’m really good about the other things, I could have yoghurt, like, twice a week? Or maybe three times? Ever since I gained all this weight, yoghurt and berries are just about the only dessert I ever get – and the berries are healthy, right? And maybe as a special treat, I could have, say, one omelette at the weekend, if I don’t use any butter and fry it in a non-stick pan? One omelette – that’s only two eggs a week. I won’t even use the yolks, just the whites! That’s reasonable, right? I mean, moderation in all things, don’t you agree?”

“Look,” I told Jenna, “I know it’s tough to cut out so much, and after 21 days you might be able to add some of these foods, like eggs or dairy, back into your diet. But if you want this diet to work, it’s got to be 100 per cent compliance for the next 21 days. You have to cut out every single one of the top 7 high-FI foods. I’m not talking 99 per cent, I’m talking 100 per cent.”

“But why?” Jenna asked, almost in tears. For a minute, she sounded more like a distressed little girl than the high-powered financial wizard I knew she was.

I explained to Jenna that if she wasn’t struggling with food intolerance, she would certainly have been able to lose her excess weight by now. So I had to assume that she was plagued with leaky gut, inflammation and digestive difficulties and that even small amounts of high-FI foods would make them worse. Jenna’s gastrointestinal tract and her immune system were not functioning properly, and her stubborn weight gain was the result. To heal her body, we had to heal her leaky gut, cool her inflammation and give her immune system a chance to calm down. Even a single bite of egg or a spoonful of yoghurt might be enough to undo all of her efforts.

Jenna reluctantly agreed to follow the Virgin Diet, and for the first 3 or 4 days, it was tough going. Her immune system was used to making antibodies that would zap the dairy, eggs and soy in her system, and now those antibodies were causing her to crave those foods intensely. For those few days, even though she was doing everything right, Jenna actually felt worse.

“Hang in there,” I told her when she called me in despair. “This reaction is a good sign. You wouldn’t be having such a hard time giving up these foods if you weren’t sensitive to them. It’s like with an addict; you know how serious the addiction is based on how tough the withdrawal symptoms are. Your cravings are telling us that we are totally on the right track, so just give it a few more days.”

By the end of week 1, Jenna had started to feel better – especially when she realized that she had lost 7 pounds. By the end of week 2, she surprised herself with how clearheaded and focused she felt. By the end of week 3, she was thrilled to discover that she had lost a total of 10 pounds – and looked younger than she had in years.

Drop the top 7 high-FI foods for 21 days, lose up to 10 pounds or perhaps even more and look 10 years younger. It’s easier than it sounds. And the results are soooo worth it.

The Virgin Diet is a 3-cycle plan. In the first cycle, you cut out all of the top 7 high-FI foods. In the second cycle, you rechallenge your system each week with one of the four most reactive high-FI foods: soy, dairy, eggs or gluten. You might be able to tolerate some or all of these once your system has had a chance to heal, or you might have to let them go, at least for now. Finally, for the third cycle, I’ll show you how to experience these benefits for life. Maintaining your weight and losing weight require different strategies, and I’ll set you up to maintain your healthy diet while you also incorporate the exercise routine and lifestyle habits that are most effective for long-term success. You’ll learn how to periodically check in with your body for food intolerances and why it’s important for your health to eliminate the top 7 high-FI foods once a year.

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