I’ll admit, I don’t really follow the diet and exercise routines of the Duchess of Cambridge. I know she diets and I know she exercises a lot, but I’ve found that the British tabloids go way overboard in connecting Kate to particular trainers, diets, fitness routines, etc. Maybe Kate really is a fad dieter. Maybe she really does work with like five different trainers. Or maybe the British tabloids just make stuff up. Well, this latest story doesn’t seem to be made up – Emma Thompson claims she dropped two dress sizes by following a program designed by Kate’s personal trainer and dietitian, Louise Parker. The diet is said to be “no fad diets” and you don’t have to gnaw on kale and chia seeds all day. Yay?

In less than flattering terms, she once described herself as having a ‘great big zonking bottom’. But it appears that Emma Thompson’s behind is, well, very much behind her the double Oscar-winning actress dropped two dress sizes in six weeks thanks to Kate Middleton’s personal trainer. The 57-year-old thespian has embarked on an ‘anti-diet diet’ – involving no fad foods such as chia seeds, kale and gluten free items – with the help of the Duchess of Cambridge’s dietitian, Louise Parker.

Costing £4,500 for a six week intensive course, which sees clients training six times a week for 90 minutes at a time, Miss Thompson lost around 8kg, going from a size 14 (US 10) to 10 (US 6). Unlike many clean eating regimes du jour, the petite mother-of-three trainer’s method includes bacon sandwiches, cheese, steak burgers and – in the particular case of her Hollywood devotee – even the odd glass of picpoul de pinet.

In the foreword to her healthy eating tome, The Louise Parker Method: Lean For Life: The Cookbook, Thompson writes: ‘Louise is the only one out there I trust – she’s not holier than thou, yet somehow miraculously gets my reluctant arse into gear and sometimes even keeps it there. I love that her method is NOT a diet – and is genuinely sustainable – so I can have my glass of wine and manage to avoid spending the rest of the week eating cheesy Wotsits. She toughens me up without driving me round the bend with kale juice and the more depressing style of sprout. She just gets it. We all use her, because she’s discreet and funny and that’s really important.’

In addition to daily resistance workouts – alternating weights with more graceful, balletic moves – Miss Parker, who worked with the Duchess of Cambridge following the birth of Prince George in 2013, prescribed a bespoke nutritional dietary plan for the actress. She was also weighed weekly using bioelectrical impedance scales which measure body fat and muscle.

Under four key ‘pillars’ – well-being and sleep, diet, intelligent exercise and mental positivity – the fitness guru, who goes by the moniker the ‘fitness magician’, is on call around-the-clock for her VIP devotees. Miss Parker says: ‘Basically I’m on a mission to top people being organically overweight; that is, eating gluten-free, nut-free, dairy-free, paleo-friendly, chia seed-this and cacao-that things, thinking they’re doing all the right things. Instead, they’re simply getting fatter, and it’s madness.

[From The Daily Mail]

Ah, so Kate used this method after giving birth to George? That’s interesting. As for the whole no-diet thing… I actually agree with the theory that elimination diets are not doing anyone any good. If you have a real gluten or dairy allergy or intolerance, then by all means, eliminate. But to do it as a dieting trick? No. That being said, the fitness part of her method sounds a lot like Tracy Anderson’s method. Also: it’s crazy to me that Emma Thompson is writing forewards to dieting books.

PS… I saw Bridget Jones’s Baby over the holidays and not even Emma could save that dreck.

Photos courtesy of WENN.