Keeping a food diary is a very accurate way to establish your current eating habits. Start a full week before you plan to commence dieting. Write down everything you eat and drink (be honest!) throughout the day. Look at what you’ve written down, and after a few days you should be in a position to see where adjustments could be made.

Patently if your record shows a higher consumption of alcohol or fatty foods than you’d realised, you might begin by reducing those initially. If what you’re eating is mainly healthy, then maybe you’re just eating too much of it. Whichever one is closest to your situation, what’s in the diary will reveal a lot.

List the changes you plan to carry out over the next seven days. Include an eating plan, and the exercise you will take. Under the food heading, write a list of ‘banned’ foods, and ‘weekend only’ food. And then write down the food you can eat in generous amounts.

If you can’t imagine going without any beer or wine, then decide which two days you will permit yourself to have a maximum of two small glasses. Ban all sugary drinks. When it comes to exercising, commit to paper your intended regime, noting which days of the week you will be doing it.

Accurately weigh yourself the morning your regime starts. Repeat this procedure every week, and make adjustments if appropriate. And write down how heavy you are at the beginning of each week.

A plan such as this will allow you to manage your weight loss programme and adjust it to suit yourself. Your diary is a working document – make notes about how each day has gone. Don’t forget to be honest about how much exercise you’re taking. Write it all down! A diary is a very simple way to monitor your progress – and a remarkable tool for staying with the program!

However, this won’t give quick fix results. It will take a little time, but within a month you’ll start to feel more energised and maybe less out of breath. Try to exercise patience, and do persevere. Motivating yourself over a long period has it’s challenges – but if you concentrate on the prize instead of the price it becomes much easier.

If you do get demoralised with your results, analyse what’s been happening. It’s possible your programme needs some adjusting. Additional physical activity can help you catch up. A brisk walk several times a week can be done at any time of day.

Feel good about every pound you lose. Your efforts will be much more sustainable if you do. A whole new wardrobe isn’t a good idea until your desired weight is achieved. But you could spoil yourself with a pamper session when you reach a mini-goal.

Doctors talk about our body mass index when they refer to weight issues. If our index shows we come in above 18.5 and below 25 then our body mass is appropriate. An index greater than that reveals we have weight issues that could need dealing with. What’s more if we take that figure over thirty we’re defined as obese – over forty and the definition is morbidly obese.

To work out your own index – You’ll need to know your weight and height in kilos and metres respectively. Your index is your height squared, divided by your weight.

So your figures might look something like this: You’re 1.45m tall (1.45 x 1.45 = 2.10). Your weight is 68 kilograms (68 / 2.10 = 32.38). The above illustration plainly shows that with those stats you would be designated obese.

Unless we restrict highly calorific food to high days and holidays, the weight will stay put! Smaller, higher fibre lower fat meals will help the body to metabolise the fat stores that have previously built up.

You should avoid crash diets which usually end up with you either feeling ill or giving up in desperation. Dietary regimes that propose a calorific consumption of no more than 1,200 a day are what we consider crash or ‘miracle’ diets. These ‘quick fix’ options are not real solutions. Weight that comes off quickly usually goes back on quickly as well.

Healthy dieting that will make you fitter for life can take months. If you consume around five hundred calories less each day than you normally eat, you can expect to lose up to two pounds a week in weight. So not the un-realistic promises fed to you from the instant remedy brigade, but a real solution to help you stay out of the danger zones.

Fat-laden food tends to contain the highest calories. So the easiest way to drop the calories is by cutting out fatty food. To stay satiated, eat more grains, and enjoy liberal amounts of veg and fresh fruit. You’ll soon start to notice the health benefits associated with this change.

Trying to eat fewer meals to preserve calories doesn’t work. (Snacks become too irresistible when the hunger really bites!) Really, you’ll do yourself more favours if you have four or five little meals spread throughout the day. Starving yourself actually makes it more difficult to lose weight. Your metabolic rate (which affects your body’s ability to lose weight) is assisted when you nourish yourself little and often.