Gillian McKeith wants women to forget the flab and start feeling fab. And for this nutritionist, the formula for getting fit is simple: eat whole, healthful foods that nourish the brain and the body.
McKeith, well known in the U.K. for her hit TV series You Are What You Eat, says eating nutritious foods is the key to getting a spring in your step and mucho mojo under the covers.
On Tuesday, McKeith’s new show, Eat Yourself Sexy, premieres on W Network. Using her self- professed no-nonsense approach, peppered with her own Scottish slang, McKeith storms into the homes of 13 overweight women from the GTA to show them how to eat themselves sexy.
McKeith says she is able to crack sugar addictions, meat lovers’ cravings for hamburger and persuade veggie haters that greens are good.
“If you eat the right foods, get moving and have fun, you will feel good about yourself,” she says. “And when you do, you can strut your stuff down the street.”
We ask McKeith about the links between eating well and feeling sexy – and if it can really be accomplished in just eight weeks.
Q: How do you define sexy?
A: Sexy can mean a lot of things, but from my experience it’s believing in yourself. It’s not so much what you look like, but having confidence, inner confidence.
Most of the ladies, when they first come to me, don’t like themselves. They tell me they hate the way they look and hate everything about their bodies. I tell them they’ll have to work hard to get to a place where they can look at themselves and like what they see.
Q: Is that why Eating Yourself Sexy is the ultimate goal? And not Eat Yourself Skinny?
A: I don’t care about the skinny part. Women need to stop weighing themselves and stop becoming fixated on how many pounds they’ve lost that day. That creates a negative relationship with food. If you eat the right foods, your weight will eventually take care of itself.
Q: What links eating well with feeling sexy? Anything to do with chocolate, oysters or other aphrodisiacs?
A: If you eat food with a high nutritious component, you are going to feel better. Food affects mood. Food affects how you think. Food affects how you feel. And food certainly affects how you look.
I know from my ladies – I’ve been doing this for 20 years – if someone is eating rubbish, they feel like rubbish. They’re tired, lethargic, they have all the ailments of the day. And when they switch the other way (to eating healthy food), these ailments lessen or eradicate, they have more energy, they feel better.
Q: What are the top foods women should have in the fridge to go from frump to fit?
A: First, I will say, Canadians don’t eat as much rubbish as the British. (laughs). That is one observation I have made. There are lot of Canadian ladies who eat badly, but they are not as bad as the British.
Q: So what is non-rubbish food?
A: It’s foods in their whole form, foods that have not been adulterated. I’m teaching women back-to-basic cooking … So it’s fruits, veggies, beans, grains, seeds, nuts, legumes, fish, seaweeds even, really highly nutritious foods.
Q: You promise sexiness in eight weeks. Is that possible for the average woman who has to juggle work, kids and cooking dinner every night?
A: You may not reach your ultimate goal in terms of weight loss in eight weeks. But what is possible is feeling better about yourself, having the tools for lasting change and definitely a start on losing weight.
Q: What do you find is the biggest challenge for “your ladies?”
A: Emotional eating. If something bad happened or something didn’t go quite well, they use cakes and cookies and doughnuts and chocolate drinks to make themselves feel better. It might make them feel better for two minutes, but then they’ll feel worse afterwards.
Q: What is the piece of advice you find people use right away to get sexy?
A: Drinking water. I don’t meet anyone who drinks water in Canada. Not one woman (on the show) drank water. They all thought it was an incredible piece of advice because it was so simple.
A lot of ladies didn’t like cold water, so I suggested they drink it warm with a squeeze of lemon, lime or any other type of fruit.
Q: More than food goes into feeling frisky. What else do you advise women do to ramp up their sexiness?
A: You have to start to move your bodies. And the best thing is to do it with your partner. On the show, I got the ladies into all different forms of dancing, everything from salsa to flamenco to belly dancing to hip-hop.
Q: How do you know your formula for Eating Yourself Sexy works?
A: Every woman told me that their mojo has gone into overdrive. And, of course, being Canadian, everyone was very polite about the whole thing. One lady went bright red.
I’ve got to take their word on it, you know, I’m not going to go and check on them. (Laughs.) One couple didn’t even have a door on their bedroom. Can you imagine? It was because there was nothing ever going on. Let me just say this, there is a door now.
Eat Yourself Sexy premiers Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. on W Network.
Torstar Syndication Services
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