Getting clean: I must cut the CRAP – caffeine, refined sugars, alcohol and processed foods

Eating patterns interrupted by pregnancy can spiral out of control once the baby arrives – one way to combat it is to join the ‘clean eating’ crew at a place like Bodyism

Standing at the cafe at Bodyism gym next to all the gluten-free cakes I couldn't eat while on their 14-day clean and lean detox (Anna Wallis)

I had a baby nine months ago. Until recently I was eating as if it was Christmas every day. Not particularly unhealthy stuff like Fanta and crisps but, for my small frame, I am overweight. I didn’t snap back into shape like celebrities do on the pages of the Daily Mail. I didn’t erase all trace of being pregnant within days of giving birth like Victoria’s Secret Model, Candice Swanepoel. It’s quite the opposite for me. In fact, I got fatter. Wearing maternity jeans long after my baby is born is not a good look.

I got sick of strangers asking me when the “next one” was due – I looked bigger around my waist than a lot of women do full-term. But whether or not I’d had a baby was not the issue anymore. I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin and I had to do something about it.

I’ve had a weird relationship to food ever since I can remember. For most of my twenties and early thirties, I was skinny. Running on adrenalin and caffeine, I never felt insatiable hunger. Then I hit my mid-thirties and started to comfort eat, albeit vegetarian food. When I found out I was pregnant, I totally let go: pizza, spaghetti, baguettes with cheese, almond croissants and Magnum ice creams. It might not sound like a travesty because I was pregnant but the problem was I couldn’t stop.

I felt so powerless that I started to wonder if I was addicted to sugar. There is a lot of sugar in fruit, low-fat foods and chocolate.

Training with personal trainer Matt Bevan at Bodyism (Anna Wallis)

I did a trial hour at my local Virgin gym, pounding away on the running machine until I felt sick. But I never paid the annual subscription fee – luckily. I had no idea that overdoing exercise after having a baby would increase the chance of injury and stress on my system. With all the changing hormones of pregnancy and breast-feeding, which loosens joints, muscles and tendons, it could have been pretty messy.

Then I walked into Bodyism, a boutique gym, offering bespoke private training and classes – it’s situated in a building that used to be a Post Office, near where I live in west London.

It looked terribly pretentious at first but I was taken aback at how welcome I was made to feel while buying a “Body Brilliance” shake, billed as a “supermodel’s secret weapon”. It tastes like chocolate but “nutrient-proofs” your diet. It has all the benefits of eating a nutritious green salad. Wow! It was like I had arrived in heaven – even though it costs £6.50 per shake, which is a lot more than a packet of Minstrels.

I signed up to Bodyism – it’s not just a gym but a “clean and lean” lifestyle which can cost up to £22,000 a year for full access. It has branches in the Maldives, Capri and Turkey – a new one just opened in Dubai.

Australian founder James Duigan and his team have trained celebrities including Lara Stone, Elle Macpherson, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Hugh Grant and Emila Clarke, as well as Victoria’s Secret models. I prayed I wouldn’t see them while I worked out because the studio is very intimate.

The Body Brilliance shake is billed as a supermodel’s secret weapon at Bodyism because it “nutrient-proofs” your diet (Anna Wallis)

The programme of Bodyism results in a long and lean body. This is achieved through mindful exercise, a clean and lean diet free of toxins, and plenty of sleep (impossible with a baby waking up to be fed every few hours).

To be clean, I had to cut the “CRAP”: caffeine, refined sugars, alcohol and processed foods.

It’s hard to wave goodbye to chocolate, pasta, rice, ready meals and breakfast cereals. Food should be organic or locally sourced. The clean crowd use coconut oil to cook at high temperatures, which makes everything taste of coconut, even scrambled eggs, and the aim is to drink a minimum two litres of water a day. Cashew or almond milk replaces cow's milk. Swapping salt for the pink Himalayan version is essential. Paleo bread, made from coconut or almond flour and raw honey, rather than sugar, is a better alternative to a loaf of Hovis.

The philosophy is that toxins keep the body in a fat storing state so by removing the toxins it allows the body to naturally drop any excess body fat. I thought, “Ok, let’s give it a whirl”.

I’d heard about the clean-eating debate and whether to cut out several food groups at once was advisable, so I asked Duigan for his thoughts on the matter, which I was aware could cause fireworks in the clean-eating world.

I learn it’s all about cutting down or ridding my diet of processed carbohydrates, refined sugar, alcohol and caffeine

“Ruthless young bloggers have turned ‘clean eating’ into a dangerous, obsessive, restricted fad, where they are dressing up their eating disorders, with a green juice,” he said. “We believe in nourishing the body. Rather than count calories, we change the way you eat – your attitude towards yourself and your body – to be kind to yourself. They are hijacking a really wonderful message.”

To kick-start the whole process, I spent 14 days on Bodyism’s “Clean and Lean” detox, which is the staple protein diet. I don’t eat meat so basically I eat fish, grilled or cooked with leafy green vegetables at lunch and supper. It’s important to start the day with protein, so I have eggs with spinach. I can have two snacks – a handful of blueberries with almonds or cashew nuts to keep my blood sugar levels balanced or organic humous with a handful of vegetables.

Extraordinarily quickly I stopped craving sugar on this food plan and could go for ages without food after one of their nutritious shakes as a snack. The “Serenity” supplement at night, which is mixed with almond or cashew milk, tricks you into thinking you have had a sweet treat, when in fact it’s full of goodness, with only 30 calories per serving.

Next was getting into the mindset of exercising. Time for a “Body Oracle” with Mike Tanner, Bodyism’s head of learning and performance, to find out how my body functions and where I hold on to weight. Mike uses a weird metal contraption that pinches my body to measure body fat in different areas. I hold fat around my arms – “could be due to eating non-organic dairy” – and the belly button area due to stress. Fat on shoulders and hips suggests “too many carbohydrates” are being consumed.

Exercise at Bodyism is fun, but the price tag isn’t (Anna Wallis)

“We work on the basis of giving the body what it needs and it will return back to its natural lean state,” says Tanner.

I’d been warned about a couple of Bodyism clients who jumped into crunches and curls at regular gyms too early after having a baby and had a hernia. I checked in with my GP to make sure I didn’t have “diastasi recti” – the separation of stomach muscles – before doing any core strengthening work. After I was given the all-clear, I set to work with my personal trainer Matt Bevan, who got my “glutes firing”. The personal trainers look like they are from Storm model agency. At a few of the classes, expensive fur coats hang on pegs along the wall.

We took it easy – there is no full-throttle exercise plan – it’s all about stretches and lengthening the body and small bursts of cardio. Plenty of mini-band drills for glute activation, in which you wear a rubber band around your ankles, while walking across the room in a squat position.

I want to be lean not chunky after working out – this is the place where you learn to activate each muscle. Unlike normal gyms where your body gets used to the routine and it stops working, I have a huge variety of exercise at my fingertips in a tailormade plan – for me.

There is a list of amazing classes including Bodyism BluePrint (very full-on especially the Bodyism Warrior with Berti Holmes) which is a high-intensity, bodyweight metabolic class with lunges, squats and push-ups, on-the-spot sprints and jumping jacks, followed by a core and glute circuit.

Outside Bodyism in West London, with my daughter, Lola (Anna Wallis)

I tried Bodyism Pilates – again without machinery for more resistance and a much better pace for me. Then “Bodyism ballet boxing” and “acro-yoga” – in which I actually mounted the teacher’s legs to perform a pose in the air, resting on the soles of his feet.

Each class starts with shot of Berry Burn that “revs up” your metabolism. I actually felt like I was on speed and didn’t really notice how hard the classes were.

Bodyism offers one-to-ones too. Boxing with George Veness, who has fine-tuned the activity, brings down stress levels, speeds up metabolism and gives you an endorphin rush, with sharp muscle activation exercises thrown in.

“It means that when you’re boxing, your glutes, abs and thighs are firing on all cylinders,” he tells me as I jab him. In another personal training session I practice Jivamukti yoga with Melody Hekmat – a dynamic yoga that leaves me zoned out.

Attending this gym is not like anything I have experienced before. It is like being wrapped in cotton wool and gently led to a better place, with a seamless conveyor belt of fun exercise at your fingertips. I even had a massage with the infamous Polly whose deep tissue techniques are harder than anything you can imagine but it seemed to open me up, emotionally as well as physically.

I realised I hadn‘t “felt” much since stuffing my face with all those carbohydrates – now I felt alive and reinvigorated.

Boxing with George, while switching on muscles, is a very powerful form of exercise (Anna Wallis)

The trouble is, it all gets a bit hard on about day nine of the 14 day detox. When I see somebody eating a banana, I’m as desperate for it as a thirsty man is for water. But I remember the mantra: “It’s tough, it’s boring, it’s repetitive, but it gets results”.

I ended up relapsing that night while out to dinner with my dad. It went against every “clean and lean” rule, as if I had unleashed my carb and sugar cravings with the first bite of a prawn tempura.

Never one to give up after failing a detox, I decided to start from the beginning again and do another 14 days. Unfortunately this coincided with Christmas and it all went horribly wrong.

But then back in the gym by in the first week of this month, I stuck it out again. After weighing myself I am happy to have lost 4 kilos. Not only that, I feel energised despite the fact I don’t get much sleep with a baby.

These few hiccups landed me on the 14-day detox diet for far longer than I had anticipated.

The founder of Bodyism, James Duigan, always knew that he wanted to change people’s lives and it about was more than squats and lunges

I’ve finally given up the boring food plan of fish and leafy green vegetables to move on to eating “clean and lean”. I don’t think I have time to cook recipes out of Duigan’s Clean and Lean for Life: The Cookbook. And without the luxury of a chef, which most of Bodyism’s clients probably have, I’ve decided to try out the new healthy food delivery services that send you a box with breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and daily detox juice.

You still have to be a bit flash with cash to go down this route. The Detox Kitchen offers a protein package at £34 per day for five days which includes a delicious king prawn Thai green curry. Spring Green offers a light protein package at £39.20 per day for three days, and includes coconut and banana pancakes with chai berry jam and coconut yoghurt for breakfast. I’m going to have to learn to cook clean meals – that is the answer.

So I’m back to the grind of daily life but now that I’ve cooked the clean and lean broccoli soup and tried “courgetti”, rather than spaghetti, I will certainly try to stick to clean eating, as much as I can, even if I have one day off a week to eat what I like. And for those who can’t afford this gym, cheaper packages range from £1,320 to £5,000 a year but this only includes four to eight classes per month with personal training on top at about £130 per session. Duigan’s bestselling book, Clean & Lean Diet, allows you to follow the diet and exercises at home. They really do want to spread the message.