Many women, of all sizes, live in a state of perpetual anxiety about their food consumption. Does the
same fate await Britain's men?
Chris Hill doesn't eat bread, biscuits, crisps or chocolate. When he drinks alcohol, which is rarely, he
orders vodka, lime and soda, never beer. Cakes and pastries are similarly avoided, as are pasta and cereal.
Instead, for breakfast, the 26-year-old procurement manager has a pork chop or piece of fish, usually salmon, with eggs and vegetables. Lunch is a chicken salad, and dinner is meat or fish with more vegetables.
Hill has been eating this way since April 2012, when he embarked on a low-carbohydrate diet to lose weight. Back then, he weighed 18 stone which, at 5ft 10in, gave him a body mass index (BMI) of 36.1 kg/m2, well past the obesity threshold of 30.
"I was self-conscious," he says now. "People would make remarks. If I went to the beach, I'd wear a vest."
His slimming regime of choice was the Paleo diet. Named after the pre-historic palaeolithic era, its premise is: if they didn't eat it 15,000 years ago, we shouldn't now. The reasoning – that our digestive systems haven't evolved as quickly as methods of food production – is secondary to the result, which involves a diet rich in meat, fish and eggs which promises to shed pounds, fast. Championed by the American nutritionist Dr Loren Cordain, it was Google's most searched-for diet of 2013.
Like many diets, its healthfulness is controversial; the British Diatetic Association warns that cutting out grains "raises the potential for nutritional deficiencies".
Nevertheless, it worked. Today, Hill is a muscular 12 stone and has a healthy BMI of 24.1. He still follows the diet – with the occasional treat – and works out at the gym, a mix of weight-lifting and rowing, for 45 minutes a day, four days a week.
"It has inspired me," he says. "At first it was strange, but I'm used to it now. I'm much fitter and happier."
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