Outline of the F-Plan Diet

Back in the early ‘80’s, fibre became a new buzz word thanks to the success of a revolutionary diet called the F-Plan.

The F-Plan Diet book, written by Audrey Eyton, British founder of ‘Slimming Magazine’, became an international best seller. For those who had tried and failed with other diets, the F-Plan promised something different – how to lose weight without going hungry.

Despite being the complete antithesis to modern diets such as The Atkins and Dukan, the principles of the F-Plan Diet form the basis of many modern dieting plans.

How Does the F-Plan Diet Work?

The F-Plan Diet is a high fibre, low calorie diet. It works on the basis that fibre is filling and takes longer to digest, helping the dieter feel fuller for longer. Also, insoluble fibre passes through the digestive system without being absorbed. This means it effectively has no calories. Furthermore, by combining low calorie with high fibre foods, losing weight while following the F-Plan diet should be that much easier.

But fibre has a lot more to offer. It takes longer to chew and processing fibre makes the digestive system work harder. This in itself helps burn more calories. Fibre also provides a host of health benefits.

The F-Plan diet provides guidance to help you decide on a suitable calorie total (typically around 1,500 per day) and you are recommended to plan your meals up to a week ahead. This is to allow you to shop for the food you need for the recipes you choose.

How Much Fibre Do You Need?

Currently, many people in western civilisations don’t eat nearly enough fibre. Government guidelines recommend a minimum of 18g per day, but many struggle to eat even 12g a day. The F-Plan Diet provides easy ways of boosting fibre intake up to 35-50g per day. And this doesn’t entail sprinkling spoons of bran onto all your food.

What Do You Eat?

The F-Plan provides dieters with a wide range of high fibre, healthy foods and recipes to eat. Typical foods include wholegrain bread, high fibre cereals such as All Bran, pulses, brown rice, lentils, nuts, vegetables, fruit with skin on and low fat food.

Foods to avoid include refined white breads, cakes, donuts, pastries etc, as well as full fat milk and cream.

Example Daily Menu

You are given a daily allowance of Fibre-filler (the recipe is included), half a pint of skimmed milk, and an orange and apple or pear.

Breakfast: Half a portion of fibre-filler with milk from the allowance.

Lunch: Lentil and Vegetable Soup, two F-Plan diet brancrisps, one apple or pear from your allowance.

Evening Meal: 85g lean ham with coleslaw, two tomatoes, watercress, cucumber, lettuce, wholemeal bread followed by 115g of grapes. The soup and coleslaw are made from scratch using the recipes in the book.

The calorie and fibre content is provided for each meal so you can easily keep track of your fibre grams and calorie totals for the day.

You should drink plenty of liquids while following this diet to avoid problems with constipation. Sugarless tea and coffee are allowed but only with skimmed milk from the allowance. Artificial or zero calorie sweeteners are allowed. Low calorie drinks and water can be drunk freely, while alcohol is restricted.

Are There Any Drawbacks?

One of the side-effects sometimes experienced when switching to a high fibre diet is an increase in flatulence. Most say the F in F-Plan stands for Fibre, but it could equally stand for filling or flatulence! However, this problem is usually short lived and should eventually subside.

Some people may experience constipation due to the high fibre intake. But drinking sufficient water should help avoid this problem.

How Much Weight Can You Lose?

Following this diet you should expect to lose an average of two pounds per week. And as with many diets, weight loss is likely to be faster during the first week which is usually a result of water loss.

Since the original F-Plan Diet Book was released, two partner books were published. These were the F-Plan Calorie and Fibre Chart and F-Plus. These were combined into The Complete F-Plan Diet to provide a comprehensive guide to eating a healthier diet.

Then, in 2006, Audrey Eyton published a revised version of the F-Plan diet called The F2 Diet.This was written taking into account recent medical discoveries and it subsequently claims to produce faster and more effective results.

See below for the Complete F-Plan Diet and the F2 Diet books.

© Diets and Calories 2012