Welcome

Jacques Fricker

Rapid and Healthy Weight Loss Publication date : March 1, 2000

When they begin to follow a weight-loss programme, dieters always seem to be in a hurry to see rapid results. There may be various reasons for their impatience: personal, social, medical, or simply because they need the gratification of seeing the excess kilos being rapidly shed.
The weight-loss programme proposed here should encourage the most impatient of dieters: in three to eight weeks, the average weekly weight loss is 1.5 kilos for women, and 2 to 2.5 kilos for men.
Jacques Fricker offers an alternative to the usual high-speed weight-loss programmes that are so often unhealthy. Most dieters are already familiar with the dangers of the so-called “fasting” diets, where only one type of food is permitted: the consommé diet, the grapefruit diet, the grape “cure”. But other diets — such as those consisting of high-protein meals-in-a-pack, which can be purchased in supermarkets and chemists — may also prove to be ineffectual or poorly adapted, especially for dieters wishing to lose only a few kilos. Drastic measures, such as stomach stitching, should limited to cases of severe obesity.
Fricker’s weight-loss programme could be described as a “natural high-protein diet” since it is based on real nutrients such as protein, fruit, and vegetables (excluding starchy vegetables), and it aims at rapid weight-loss without completely upsetting the dieter’s eating habits, and without any health risk.
In order to be effective, this diet must be followed by a less-restrictive programme of weight stabilisation, which must be followed over a longer period of time. Fricker gives a rapid outline of the programme here; it is described in greater detail in his earlier book, Maigrir en Grande Forme. The goal is not simply to lose weight, but to lose it without endangering one’s health and without gaining it back.

Jacques Fricker is a doctor and nutritionist at the Hôpital Bichat, in Paris. He worked for several years on high-protein diets in Professor Apfelbaum’s department at INSERM.