To diet for
Dubbed the ‘new Atkins’, The Thin Commandments is the latest sensation sweeping the States. Viv Groskop gets an appointment with the doctor behind the craze Photography by Rob Howard
The counter at Burger Heaven heaves with triple-decker chocolate gateaux and fist-sized muffins. The modern diner with white leather stools is dominated by Wall Street lawyers in Armani overcoats shovelling down coleslaw. And take-out customers that walk out with an array of creamy salads in containers the size of punch bowls. Let’s just say, the place doesn’t exactly feel diet-friendly.
But according to New York’s latest diet guru, it can be. Dr Stephen Gullo, a fiftysomething psychologist and author of best-selling diet book The Thin Commandments, has devised a way of eating which means that even Manhattan’s finest delis are not off limits. Follow Dr Gullo’s instructions at Burger Heaven for example, and you can order the Caesar salad with grilled shrimp – just make sure the parmesan dressing stays on the side – or the turkey burger with coleslaw. (I can report that this is delicious – if a tad dry.)
At Starbucks, you should eat the boiled egg lunch box (not so delicious). If you have cravings, find substitutes: try Walden Farms supermarket range for a great calorie-free chocolate syrup.
Dr Gullo’s discreet office is a few blocks away on the Upper East Side. This is where he sees an exclusive list of clients – 15,000 that he’s accumulated over the past 30 years – who pay $1,500 (£1,030) for an initial visit and $350 (£240) an hour afterwards. He pampers them with therapy sessions, personal motivational CDs and a lot of attention. “For the first two months, he called me every weekend just to see how I was doing,” coos one client.
Dr Gullo has been dubbed the new Dr Atkins: his methods are the latest fad for Manhattan’s dieting classes. Although he advises on what supermarket products to choose and which menu items to order, he is less about what you eat and more about why you eat. People love his reverse psychology, which is really designed to stop you from eating altogether. Take his rules for parties: Drink something you hate then you won’t finish it. Wear tight clothes. Eat GG CrispBreads [a sort of Ryvita] before you go out – you can eat the whole pack and still lose weight.
Sitting behind a desk piled high with chocolate protein biscuits and calorie-free peanut butter, he recites his mantra. “I’m a diet shrink. And I don’t care if my patients are crazy as long as they’re thin and happy. It’s about learning how to be a selective gourmet in a world full of food.” All his clients – which include Hollywood celebrities and Saudi royalty (he is famously coy about names) – have one thing in common: they have dieted but over time still stayed fat. “The diet industry has a 95 to 97 per cent failure rate,” Dr Gullo fumes. The trick is not losing weight, but staying healthy for life: “I have studied the three to five per cent of people who lose weight and keep it off.”
In a butter-soft suede jacket, pinstripe trousers and patent loafers so polished you can see your reflection in them, Dr Gullo is the picture of a peculiar sort of pinched Manhattan perfection. He has battled his own weight issues all his life, he says. He has given up pizza until the age of 80 because he can’t control himself around it. “I’m going to leave this world in a pizza truck,” he laughs.
Clockwise from above: Viv gets her commandments from diet guru, Dr Stephen Gullo, in his Manhattan office; a tasty recommendation; what the doctor orders at Starbucks “I grew up in a house in New York where we made our own bread and our own pasta. That’s when I learnt that taste is king.”
Dr Gullo himself has obviously become fabulously wealthy from his A-list clients: his duplex penthouse – with a roof garden and a Perspex bridge which links to the building next to his office – has just been voted one of the 12 most stylish in New York. He has Italian roots and says his family has been involved in importing food for 11 generations. Because he grew up surrounded by food, he has always been fascinated by people’s behaviour around it: who eats sensibly, who overeats and why. He studied psychology at Columbia University and is essentially still a therapist: the clients on the couch just happen to talk about food.
He re-programmes his clients to adopt the habits of people who don’t have a problem around food. “I aim to change not their size but their attitude, so that they feel not deprived but liberated from a life of failure.” Most diets fail because they don’t take personal history into account, he says. “It’s not about how many calories there are in one cookie, it’s about how many cookies you eat. You need to ask yourself: what is your history with that food? My mission is to break the patterns left over from childhood – that the cookie is the treat. There are no good or bad foods. I have to save people from how they behave.”
He suggests that if you have a “bad history” with a food (ie. you can’t stop eating it), you need to “box it in or box it out”. Boxing it in means making rules: you only eat that food in moderation at weekends or at birthday parties, for example. If you know you won’t follow the rules, you need to box it out: exclude it completely. He says it’s like Ulysses in the Greek myth: “He had to strap himself to the mast of his ship to avoid the song of the Sirens.” We need to do the same thing: know what our temptations are and take steps in advance to avoid giving into them.
He admits that his methods are not for everyone – they’re only for people who have tried diets and failed. “If you can do moderation, you don’t need me,” he says. “If this were simply about diet, we could all buy a book and lose weight in 90 days and keep it off. But it’s not about what to eat – it’s about how to stop eating.” This is why his menu suggestions are usually high on protein, low on carbs: they fill you up and distract you from ordering the more fattening things on the menu.
“People don’t come to me to lose weight,” he adds. “They know how to lose weight. They come to lose their problems around food. I have many brilliant patients – including a Nobel prize winner – but they have all lost the ability to say no.” This is where the self-motivation talk comes in. He personalises his CDs around the life of the client. Here’s an extract from one recorded for a member of the Saudi royal family addicted to the chocolate chip cookies he was denied as a child: “Were you born a prince to be ruled by a cookie?” And for a banker who loves Italian food: “Did you make it to the Forbes list to be bankrupted by your health?”
After an hour with Dr Gullo, I feel brainwashed – and very hungry. I head out to buy some of his recommended goodies: substitutes for the chocolate chip cookies he has accurately predicted I love (“the worst food for overeating”). Round the corner at trendy food store A Matter of Health, I fight with a Tina Fey lookalike for the last of Dr Gullo’s favourite GG CrispBread, 12 calories per slice and 50 per cent fibre. Do they taste good, I ask? “Oh no,” she replies, wide-eyed, “But they’re great for weight loss.”
Viv Groskop stayed at hip boutique hotel, The Dream Hotel, in New York, which can be booked through Thomas Cook Signature (tcsignature.com)
Star diets
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The Full-Fat Diet
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The Acai Berry Colon Cleanse Diet
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