Charles Saatchi has lost 4st. It's the most incredible weight change since Milla Jovovich put on 5st in the first trimester of her pregnancy, though of course a more obvious parallel is with his father-in-law, Nigel Lawson. Also married to a famously good cook, Nigel went from fatty to cadaver in about 60 seconds. It was amazing, and he was triumphant, but it wasn't actually terribly attractive. He had lost the flab, sure, but he did not look buff; he looked like he had something wrong with his lower intestine.
Saatchi has weathered the slenderising rather better, being somewhat younger than Nigel was, but he has still lost his jolly, seal-like sleekness (I mean the aquatic creature, not the singer), replacing it with something harder, greyer and, obviously, thinner.
But let's imagine you want to emulate Nigel and Charles. Let's say that you're tired of your seal-like sleekness. Lawson has actually written a book about how to do it. It's called the Nigel Lawson Diet Book (no sugar, no dairy, no alcohol, plus old-fashioned calorie-counting). His motto is, "If it isn't hurting, it isn't working", which is a subtle play on his motto as chancellor, which was, "It's hurting and it isn't working".
Saatchi has yet to spell out his secret, but "friends" of the couple - for which read, gossipy and disloyal people made up by the Daily Mail - attribute his new physique to four things. He's gone veggie; he's stopped eating bowls of cereal all day long; he eschews the Starbucks Frappuccino; and he won't let Nigella cook for him.
I'm going to stick my neck out here, and say I bet I know which is the deciding factor. A recent study suggested that vegans were on average 5lb lighter than omnivores, but it wasn't true of veggies, and even if it were, to lose 4st from the simple avoidance of meat would take about a decade and a half. I'm not even going to dignify the cereal and the milky coffee claims. This is the diet that for brevity we can call Spouse-Attack. It only works if you're married to a feeder, but I think we can safely assume that Nigella is one of those. You take all the power struggles, the intricate battles and wounds and scars attendant upon any partnership of duration, you concentrate on them really hard, and you focus that negative energy on refusing their food. It is amazingly effective; it's like Atkins, without the bad breath.
