Celebrity Dieter: Lisa l'Anson
Thursday 25 September 2008
When it came to excuses as to why she couldn’t lose weight, former DJ and TV presenter Lisa I’Anson had perfected the art.
She’d say her podgy stomach was simply baby bulge after having her daughter, Deia. But there was one flaw in her reasoning – “baby” Deia is already two years old.
But in 2004, Lisa got a shock when she saw herself on Celebrity Big Brother after leaving the house. “I didn’t think I looked fat exactly, but I did want to slim down,” she says, diplomatically.
The papers weren’t so generous. One columnist even described her as: “Bovine-arsed Big Brother Friesian Lisa I’Anson”.
So six weeks later, she enlisted Closer’s team of diet and fitness experts and slimmed from 10st 10lbs and a size 14, to 9st 10lbs and a size 12.
And at 5ft 5, she never looked – or felt – better. “I haven’t been this thin since I was 19,” she said of the amazing results. “My confidence has rocketed!”
After having her first child, Dylan, Lisa slipped quickly back into shape without much work. “My marriage to Mark Van Lengen, a photographer, broke down after the birth,” she explains. “The stress stopped me from eating.”
But it was a different story with Deia, whose father is Amos Pizzey, 37, a music producer. “The 2st I put on while pregnant wouldn’t budge,” she says.
She admits it was partly due to her diet. “I’d eat a fried egg sandwich for breakfast, Chinese for lunch and a huge bowl of pasta for dinner, and I snacked on crackers with cream cheese. I felt hungry all the time and I carried on eating at the same rate as when I was pregnant.”
Her exercise routine was also to blame: “I did yoga every day and still do it three times a week. It’s great for toning up and relaxing, but it isn’t strenuous enough to boost my metabolism and burn off fat.”
As the months passed, she tried to cut back on calories, and even started running with Amos near her west London home. But her efforts failed. “Diets to me meant depriving myself, and I’d just eat more as a treat,” she admits. “I really felt like I deserved a snack after a run!”
Lisa – who’s been a vegetarian since the age of 15 after watching a TV programme about intensive animal farming – found Closer’s specially formulated meat-free diet easy to follow because it contained all her usual food, just cooked differently.
“I could still have eggs for breakfast,” she says. “But poached – not fried. The vegetables filled me up and I snacked on fruit and yoghurt.
“Not drinking alcohol was really tough. I slipped up a couple of times on girls’ nights out, but made up for it with an extra 10 minutes on the treadmill the next day.”
Lisa also had a motivational tool to trick herself into exercising harder. “Whenever I felt like giving up, I’d think about the beautiful silk Kenzo dress sitting at the back of my wardrobe,” she says. “I hadn’t worn it since I became a mum in 1997 and was desperate to fit into it again.”
She’s confident that she can keep the weight off this time, and is enjoying being a foxy 40-something. "With any luck I'll keep the weight off well into the future. And when my son's eighteen, I want all his friends to fancy me!"
If you want to shape up like Lisa, go to www.closerdiets.com and get your own personalised meal plan and all the expert support you need.