The Kensington Way: A Diet and Weight-loss Book

Cover of The Kensington Way

The Kensington Way by Stephen Twigg, a holistic health practitioner who counts the late Princess Diana among his clients, is a weight-loss program that relies on combining specific foods, rotating food choices, and using mind-body techniques – such as affirmations – to transform you from fat to fit.

The right food combinations—fish or poultry with vegetables, for instance – take off pounds, Twigg contends.  Conversely, the wrong ones – like proteins coupled with starchy carbohydrates—keep them on.  Likewise, he says, all the foods you eat should be on a five-day rotation, except for fruits, vegetables, and yogurt, to eliminate the toxins in the body.

Is this brilliant science – or sheer nonsense?  “Whenever you put limits on what you eat, it leads to weight loss because you eat fewer calories,” Cheryl Rock, PhD, RD,

 Family and Preventive Medicine professor says.  “But this plan isn’t healthy because you’re likely to miss lots of nutrients.  There’s little guidance on portion control – and no scientific evidence that food combining works.  The food-rotation concept is another trick to make you not eat stuff you’d normally eat.  The whole thing is amazingly unscientific.”