The Oxo Diet

That stuff is practically pure salt, yuck! Maybe all that salt sort of dehydrated the weight off him.

Has Mr Kay had his blood pressure taken lately? Oxo is full of sodium. I used to drink a similar vegetable bouillon when I was dieting but soon learned that this was not wise.

So.......... what is his maintenance plan?

Sounds like no maintenance plan to me!

just another fad diet.........

Ew, and it is the block kind of bouillon? That is full of hydrogenated fats too...

Also, where is the protein? Fruit, vegetable, and bouillon that contains 1g of protein?

So...this is just another liquid diet. Sure it works wonders while on it, but once he reaches his "goal weight" and wants to start eating foods regularly again, he will gain just as much weight back, if not more. Since he is in essance, starving his body of the nutrients that it really needs, when he starts eating food his body will hoard these fats and nutrients and store as many as it can (in the form of fat).
So I'll just stick to vegetable, fruit, and exercise.
At least that way I'm not starving my body of essential nutrients.

When I first started trying to lose weight, I'd drink bouillon cubes for snacks, but then realized how much sodium I was consuming!

NOT A GOOD IDEA!!!

I think bouillon cubes should only be used as soup base or to flavor vegetables (I pour the broth over frozen vegetables instead of using water).

If I remember right, pasties are pretty high in fat and calories. Pretty much ANYTHING you'd eat instead of one of those would probably have fewer calories and less fat. I'm not sure why he didn't just eat say, oatmeal for breakfast instead of a pasty. Boullion cubes are gross anyways. They're loaded with salt and I doubt they'd make a decent "soup".

I just wonder how one goes from eating sugary, fatty, yummy pastries to drinking salt broth. I agree with Spectra - at least oatmeal will give you a similar mouth-feel as pastries.
Hey - maybe that John guy on the Dr. Phil House should try this diet!! (grin)

You have all highlighted the problems with all soup based diets (such as the 3 day diet, cabbage soup etc).

Protein poor and very high in sodium.

Pasties seem pretty much like a really large pie.

But I read his dad ate that, so it is an emotional thing. I like to eat sardines with crackers because I remember eating the same thing with my grandfather. I can just picture us eating sardines and how special I felt to be having a snack with my grandfather. It's good that he has found a low calorie thing that satisfies his hunger and his emotional connection to his father. Who knows, he might be buying the low sodium variety of OXO broth! He's eating it with vegetables anyway, so it has to be better than meat pie!

I have used bouillons to make soup they are like five calories per cube and that is a lot less calories than a pastry. Though I doubt I could live on a diet like this. It seems a bit unbalanced.

I use salt in my food and I am fine.
Salt is not bad for all people but too much salt can help the body hold on to water

It's not salt itself that is bad for people, but the processing of it, just like any food product. Most salt is extracted by heat and then treated with chemicals to make it free-flow, absolutely no nutrients are left in it. I personally use solar-dried sea-salt, but I doubt OXO uses that to make their stock-cubes.

I'm planning on getting some Celtic sea salt one of these days. It's not so much the amount of sodium itself but rather the ratios of different minerals. The problem is we're eating a lot of sodium with eating a lot of other minerals.

correction at the end: without eating a lot of other minerals

I use the fat-free bouillon packets to flavor foods like vegetables and soup, but living off the stuff to me makes as much sense as "I lost weight by only eating fruit, vegetables, and mustard". It is a condiment.

Just to clear up any misconceptions..."pasties" are meat and gravy-filled deep fried pies. They are sort of like those deep fried Hostess pies, but filled with lots of beef and gravy instead of fruit. "Pastries" are like donuts or whatever. The average "pasty" has about 800 calories, easily. They're like a handheld pot pie. Donuts probably have around 300 or so calories.

Pasties do not have gravy in, they are made with chipped up potato, beef and swede, and salt and pepper in a shortcrust pastry, this is the Cornish pasty.

Thanks Annie - I was just about to add that - and they are not deep fried either, but oven baked.

Yes that is what the wikipedia article Jim linked says as well.

Low-sodium and very-low sodium powdered broth mixes are available through a company called Redi-Base in New Jersey. I have a whole repertoire of sugar-free/low-carb hot drinks that I use as a way of dealing with hunger when I'm dieting but like most people have said here, the bouillon one buys in the store is full of sodium. The Redi-Base products are practically salt-free which means that that are quite flavorful and I have been using them for years now.

How about the everything diet where you eat the full spectrum that centers on fish, fruits, vegtables and nuts, as well as lean (but still has SOME fat) meats, some liquid fats and fiber. Plus, add some red meat in your diet. Red meat gives you red blood cells. So eat it once a week, like I do. I have a nice sirloin steak, which is lean, but not lean, lean. You need some saturated fats for vitamins D and A absorption.

The key is: moderation. Hoever, anything that contains hydrogenated oils should be strictly forbidden. And keep your omega 3:6 a 1:1 ratio.

Those things are full of MSG, why would anyone want to base their diet around MSG?

Whoever said pasties are 'deep fried' doesn't know what a pastie is!

Anyway if he this guy found a way he could lose weight, surely that weight loss is better than not.

As far as salt content goes, there is loads of sodium in other foods that he probably was eating.

For all we know this was drastic reduction in sodium for him.

And since no one here knows if he needed to be on a reduced sodium diet or not, what's the big deal?

I like how everybody is an expert when it comes to dieting and yet we have the most overweight society ever. Do as we say, not as we do.

Sky, I think everyone agrees that people need protein to live. There is all this debate as to how many grams that is, but nobody has ever suggested humans can be healthy on less than around 40g a day, for a man. He would need about 80 OXO cubes to get 40g protein a day, so it is safe to say his diet was NOT a healthy one. So we should be going "Good for him" cause he traded his obesity diseases for nutritional ones, but now, he looks thin, so he is automatically healthy or something?

I personally don't care about sodium. I have really low blood pressure. But it is still a diet made out of fruit, vegetables, and a condiment.

You are right Jan.

I do however agree with you on the people whose problem with the diet is what he is consuming (too much sodium) and not what he is *not* consuming.

Either way you slice it, that guy was a few years away from dying anyways, and to say he lost 200 pounds.. well at least he looks alot more healthy.. put it that way.
If I remember rightly, reading this in the paper.. he made himself beef oxo broth in particular, and surely he must have been getting some protein in him or I figure he wouldnt have been able to exercise that much at all :S.

Pasties, you can get them in all sorts of differant fillings: 'All Day breakfast', 'Cheeseburger', 'Steak bake', 'Ham and cheese'.. practically anything.. and theyre all around about 800 cals or more..
I mean crikey.. I remember having a Lasagne pasty a couple of years ago!.

So all I can say is whatever works for him.. and Kudos!

Vic, 2 cubes of beef bouillon, the amount that should be dissolved in 500ml water, contain less than 1 gram protein. Just because it has beef flavoring, it doesn't mean it contains protein. I doubt he was getting 80 cubes a day. That would be 40 liters water. He'd die from the water alone if he were.

I'm not knocking his weight loss, at all. I just think there are healthier ways that can achieve the same result. However, I refuse to follow the "whatever works for a person" mindset. We get tons of teenagers here recommending things like eating just a pack of jelly beans a day to lose weight, and they weigh like 90lb, so hey, "it works for them". I'm not saying it is the same case with this guy, but it might get impressionable young people living on bouillon and vegetables. It is not a good idea.

Very good point on the protein!

Oh how the sodium content of many low calorie foods depresses me.

I love salt. I love salty foods.

Has anyone here made their own broth? I wonder if you could pull off a broth using chicken bones, vegetables, and tons of stuff like dill or rosemary, garlic, thyme, and so on. I wonder what it would taste like. I should give it a shot. I wonder what you'd wind up with, without using salt, or using a lot less salt.

One thing I like to use is soy sauce, which as you know, almost violates the laws of physics with how much sodium is packed into such a small amount (this shocks even people who are not really health conscious).

I've figured out that I can cut the amount I use in half by diluting it with 2 parts water plus just a little, less than a teaspoon, of corn starch, using 1/3rd the amount of soy sauce in the end (the little bit of corn starch helps it stick to foods better too, rather than pool at the bottom).

Broth tends to have a more mild flavor though, so I wouldn't try the same thing.

A nice drop-in replacement for high calorie foods are these mixed green salads they sell now, often in plastic tubs. They generally have various kinds of lettuce, mesclun, and sometimes spinach. I generally use them as a bed for most of what I eat rather than starches like rice or noodles.

Why not just have a side of this with every meal you eat, and reduce the amount of fats and/or starches in the main course? If you somehow combine it with whatever else you're eating (I eat a lot of stir fried or steamed vegetables, so I just use it as a bed underneath), you don't even need to add any sort of dressing to punch it up.

Iggy, I do make my own chicken broth. "Chicken day" here at home consists of buying 16 chicken breasts, throwing the skins out, deboning them, them packaging the portions of skinless boneless breast and freezing. Then I lightly fry between half and one head garlic (depending on how fresh the garlic is - I put extra when it is older garlic that is not releasing oils anymore when you peel, less when it is fresher), about 2 chopped onions, and add the chicken bones and water to bring to a boil. If I have a bottle of cooking white wine open, I add half a cup of it to the pan. I add 1 bunch of chopped celery, and 3 chopped carrots, salt (I'm a bit of a salt addict too), and let it cook until the vegetables essentially melt, adding herbs at the last minute. I like to season with the celery leaves I separated earlier and dried in the oven and parsley, usually. Then I put that big pot in the fridge, cause some chicken fat will congeal at the top, even though it was just the skinless bones. I scoop out all the fat, then strain it so there are no pieces of bones.

To freeze, I usually fill empty cottage cheese containers.

I make beef broth too, using brisket. Now, since brisket is so fatty, I usually have to do the fridge thing to scoop out the fat twice. I do it once, heat it again, let it cool again.

Jan said:
Iggy, I do make my own chicken broth.

Thanks for the recipe...I'm going to give it a try, adding the herbs at the end as you suggest (which is smart since I imagine lots of heat just kills the taste otherwise).

Yes, for dried herbs it makes them taste like nothing, and for stronger fresh ones like parsley, it can make the whole thing taste like parsley juice, heheh. I learned that the hard way.

@ Jan..

I never said oxo cubes contain the adequate ammount of protein, I was saying he must have put in additives which you would typically put in soups/broths like real meat, kidney beans, soybeans, Lentils?.. Otherwise I doubt he would have had any energy to exercise (which he stated doing), and his muscles would have practically disintegrated, but on the picture he does look pretty healthy.

We havent even seen his recipes or anything just yet, all I have seen is:
"A British man has lost over 200 pounds by swapping pasties for bowls of Oxo broth.".
So theres no point in debating about what he has consumed when there is nothing specific about what he has, and I do imagine just 2 cubes of oxo is pretty boring..

He never mentioned anything about grains or any kind of protein though, just the cubes, vegetables, and fruit. So that is what I and others here are taking as his reference diet, and saying that no, that is not very healthy. It is salt, msg, artificial flavorings, and fruit and veg. Not exactly the 4 food groups.

As for energy, we have 80lb people here who still have energy to exercise while living on 1oz of jellybean a day, so the human body can take more abuse than you imagine. He could still be feeling ok without consuming any protein.

does this oxo diet actually work i am keen to try it as i wish to shed around 4 pounds for my holiday in august and need a speedy diet. ive heard this is a good one to try as the atkins and others ive tried prove to difficult and cost me a fortune in shopping bills. please help!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/6101556.stm

Everyone keeps going on about how damaging the salt is, a bit of salt is a lot less damaging than carrying 200lbs of extra weigh!! I think he is a heck of a lot more healthy now. My hat goes off to him, I wish I could stick to something like that.

"Caroline makes her husband's filling broths three times a day using two stock cubes, hot water and pepper. She also gives him three slices of wholemeal bread"
The only grains mentioned in his diet of broth.