If drinking alcohol is your dieting downfall, how about trying a diet that promises to keep the kilos off while you drink French Champagne?
is actually a thing for ‘normal’ people (not just supermodels and celebrities regularly popping bottles of champers in music videos and at product launches). It’s a real weight loss plan that promises to be luxurious and opulent while also controlling the calories you intake each day.
It sounds quite regal. But is it too good to be true?
According to its creator, the idea of the Champagne diet works because you don’t deprive yourself of alcohol while following it.
“The Champagne diet is about celebrating our lives, our bodies, and our health, every day,” says Leyba on her website. “The Champagne Diet’s mission statement is simple: live your most effervescent life, celebrate yourself, and always leave room for a glass of champagne.”
In order to adhere to its rules, have one glass of Champagne a day. Of course you can opt for sparkling wine if you can’t afford the French variety every day but it’s important to choose a dry sparkling at around 90 calories a flute.
It's important to put this calorie count into perspective to understand ‘why’ a diet featuring Champagne encourages weight loss. Xccording to champagne is a lower calorie option than beer or wine: a schooner of beer (around 425mls) contains 143 calories and a contains about 125 calories.
The Champagne diet is about celebrating our lives, our bodies, and our health, every day.
What do you eat?
You can’t just drink champers on this weight loss plan - after all, it’s still a diet.
In addition to having just one glass a day, you are meant to consume a calorie-controlled diet involving hearty foods eaten mindfully in smaller portions.
In series two of , airing on Monday 5 November at 8.30pm on SBS, Dr Xand Van Tulleken follows a dieter – Kate – trialling the Champagne fuelled method of weight loss to see if it works.
“I'm afraid this is not a diet about drinking champagne all day, but a strictly calorie controlled diet that asks us to slow down, glamorise our meals and be conscious of how and what we eat,” Xand says in the show.
“The diet promises sustainable weight loss, but only if you don't get carried away with the bubbly.”
Exercise is essential during this diet. You should only eat low fat and low sugar foods and cook all dishes from scratch. Organic food is recommended.
Hearty steaks, carby potatoes, green vegetables and fish fillets are also okay. However, you shouldn’t consume ‘diet’ products or highly processed foods.
In the show, café cook from The Diet Testers – Stacie Stewart – demonstrates a diet dish that would suit Kate’s new eating plan. She prepares a piece of Turbot fish, poached in Champagne and serves it with a fennel salad, caviar and a sprinkling of dill.
Caution: spoiler alert
Kate’s diet doesn’t create dramatic weight loss effects. As Xand explains on the show, that’s because Kate went beyond one glass of champers a day and broke the ‘low calorie’ dieting rules.
There’s little to no evidence backing up the weight loss effectiveness of the branded Champagne diet for all people. So how do you know if it will work for you?
The important thing is to look past the diet’s glossy marketing promises. At the end of the day, this diet is a low calorie weight loss plan that integrates one low calorie glass of alcohol – in this case it is Champagne – a day to keep people who find it too hard to cut all alcohol out of their diet on the straight and narrow.
Just like most diets, the low calorie diet may not work in the same way for everyone, even if you stick at it and follow the rules closely.
According to a , published earlier this year in low calorie diets may help men to shed the kilos more than they will benefit women.
The study involved more than 2,000 overweight people with pre-diabetes who followed a low-calorie diet for eight weeks.
The results showed that men had larger reductions in a metabolic syndrome score - a diabetes indicator, fat mass, and heart rate.
Women, however, experienced more potentially negative effects such as losing more lean (non-fat) mass and lowering their levels of 'good cholesterol'.
The new five-part series of The Diet Testers starts on Monday, 22 October at 8.30pm on SBS. Watch each episode on Mondays at 8.30pm or stream from after broadcast.
Follow the conversation on social media: #SBSAustralia
Watch the episode now on SBS On Demand:
