Eddie McGuire started the intensive diet programme based on Chinese herbs in May, describing it as "extreme". Photo / News Corp
Australian media heavyweight Eddie McGuire shed 15kg in just three weeks ... by not eating.
McGuire started the intensive diet programme based on Chinese herbs in May, describing it as "extreme".
For the first two weeks he drank three cups of herb tonic a day in place of meals.
In the third week he was able to introduce half a cucumber and a meagre 50g serve of chicken into his daily meal plan.
McGuire - who hosted Who wants to be a Millionaire? - says his new slimline look has been noticed.
"Every fat bloke in Melbourne has rung me about it," he laughed.
"When you get to my age (52) you get home at night, you are tired, you have been going since 4.30am in the morning and you think, 'I will train tonight,' and then suddenly you want to see your boys and your wife, or the kids need support with their homework, or they want to have a kick of the footy, and invariably you just run out of time," McGuire said.
"And I have probably been the classic case of the person who has put on one-and-a-half kilos a year for the past 10 years and suddenly you look out the window one day and you see a fat bloke looking back at you and you realise it is a mirror."
McGuire chose the 101 Wellbeing Program by Dr Shuquan Liu, the same as used by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull several years ago, as part of a health overhaul.
McGuire admitted the first part of the programme was "pretty intense."
It is a diet that is unlikely to find favour with the medical profession.
"You are provided with these Chinese herbs, about half a cup, you get to drink three of them a day, and some water, and a couple of cups of tea and that is it," he said.
"I did not eat for two weeks, and in the third week I was allowed to have half a cucumber before 1pm and 50 grams of chicken, which in the past would not have got stuck in my teeth.
"It has taken all the heat out of my body, I feel great, I did not feel tired at any stage, and did not actually even feel hungry, believe it or not."
The extent of McGuire's transformation was best illustrated last month on a Friday evening where he was seen hosting an episode of Millionaire Hot Seat recorded several weeks ago on Channel 9 at 5pm and then a matter of hours later was live in the Fox Footy studio debating the football issues of the week.
McGuire said the challenge was now to maintain his new weight.
"The next stage for me is to get myself physically fit again and keep the discipline up and make sure I don't plonk it (the weight) back on."
Writer Brigid Delaney underwent the same detox programme and wrote about her experience
The most difficult thing I've ever done is go two weeks without food - not a morsel, not a skerrick, not a crumb.
I'd been living in New York, indulging in burgers, fries and bourbon. It was winter, my clothes were tight, my skin looked rough.
I yearned to feel healthy again. I didn't feel sick - more just sub-optimum, lethargic; aching joints on the inside, a coat of grease on the outside, spotty and paunchy with bloodshot eyes. My mood was low. 'Don't put me on Facebook!' I had to say more than once, as friends took my photo. I needed to lose about 20 kilograms to get back into a healthy weight range. I needed to reset my body and my life.
Around this time, a curious opportunity landed in my inbox. It was a magazine assignment. Would I be interested in writing a first-person account of a controversial detox that lasts for 101 days? In 2011 Malcolm Turnbull and his wife Lucy emerged after two weeks on the fast, supported by Chinese herbal medicine. His weight loss was so dramatic, people initially speculated he had cancer.
In response, warnings were issued about extreme fasting. The Australian Medical Association's vice president, Dr Geoffrey Dobb, said starvation and herbal tea was not the answer to losing weight. "Any rapid weight loss can be followed by a rebound if people are unable to sustain the program they have entered into."
The regimen is not for the faint-hearted. It starts with no food for fourteen days, before moving on to small amounts of solids: half a cucumber on the first day, 50 grams of poached chicken the next (think the size of three fingers), then an egg on the third day, then back to the cucumber. Repeat the cycle for the next sixty days. Black tea and water were permitted. The Chinese medicine - a mixture of herbs - was to be taken orally, three times daily. The herbs give you around 250 calories a day.
I returned to Australia and signed up to the programme. The night before I started detoxing, I had one final splurge. Holding a detox party with a group of friends, I had five or six glasses or wine, some champagne, cigarettes and around 2am, a burger.
In my initial appointment I was weighed and had a procedure called cupping. Staff at the fasting clinic told me that the discolouration around my back after the cupping showed that oxygen was not reaching my vital organs because the internal fat inside my body was crushing them. The detox, I was told, would shrink the internal fat, restoring my organs to optimum working condition.
Days one to three without food were tough. The liquids kept me feeling full, but without meals to prepare, plan and enjoy - I was left a bit unmoored. I was tired, crabby and lacked energy. I hid in my room while my flatmate cooked delicious smelling food and once, when I went out to buy tea bags, I ended up trailing a man who was carrying a box of pizza - the smell driving me crazy.
In the first week, I was plagued by headaches, low level aches and pains, deep fatigue and boredom. When I slept (sometime for 14 or more hours) my dreams were vivid and strange. I thought about food constantly.
So what was going on in my body in the early stages of the detox?
On the first day, six to twenty-four hours after beginning the detox (known as the post-absorptive phase) insulin levels start to fall. Glycogen breaks down and releases glucose for energy and these glycogen stores last for roughly twenty-four hours. Then gluconeogenesis (literally meaning 'making new glucose') occurs in the next twenty-four hours to two days. This is when the liver manufactures new glucose from amino acids. Glucose levels fall but stay within the normal range - providing you are not diabetic. This is the body using the last of its sugar supplies up before it switches into ketosis - the fat-burning mode beloved by body builders, anorexics and paleo devotees.
Amanda Salis is the Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, who leads research and multidisciplinary clinical trials at the Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise & Eating Disorders. Her research focuses on understanding and circumventing the body's adaptive responses to continued energy restriction, a phenomenon she terms the 'famine reaction'. She says the reason I am sleeping so much is that "your body goes into conservation mode when you are fasting. There is not enough fuel to enable your muscles to move. Neurochemical changes are occurring in your brain, also making you feel lethargic. It's like being hit by train."
On day two I discover I had lost a kilogram already - an even, satisfying one kilogram.
On day three I lose almost two kilograms - so that is almost three kilograms in three days.
The rest of the first week was torture. It felt like having a really bad flu. On the fifth night I was woken by chest pains that made me fear I was having a heart attack. (Associate Professor Salis later tells me, that when starving the body will feed off muscle, even bone. The heart muscle is not immune from being catabolised.)
By day five without food, there is no hiding from the truth: I smell bad. Really bad. Not sweaty, but like something that's been left in the bin too long and is rotting. When I cry, even my tears smell bad.
By week two I am still losing around a kilogram a day, but miraculously my energy is returning - even though I'm still not eating. My skin and eyes are sparkling, my hair shiny and my clothes were loose. My brain feels like it has switched from dial up to super fast broadband. I feel sharper.
Yet, there is still the hunger. Most nights I wake up around 4am, starving.
Such a regimen is, obviously not sustainable. I did a modified version of the detox for another 87 days and lost 14 kilograms.
Unfortunately when I went back to eating and drinking normally (not excessively, just normally) - all the weight came back on.
Would I do the detox again? Probably not - they were two of the toughest weeks of my life.
- Brigid Delaney's book on the wellness industry, including fasts and detoxes, is called Wellmania
- This article written in conjunction with Fiona Byrne from the Herald Sun
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