FAT.

With the relentless advance of the “festive season” I’m fretting about the inevitable increase in the surplus avoirdupois that I am already dragging around. (There is a good reason for using Imperial measurement when dieting – pounds are easier to lose than kilograms.)

Atkins was easily the most effective diet I’ve ever tried. The pounds flew off like shit from a shovel; I felt fantastic and was told that I looked pretty damn good, too. It looked as if I had truly found a magic formula to eat endlessly while morphing into a sylph. Then I developed an alarming heart condition, and a cholesterol level of 10.5. “Don’t worry!” advised the Low Carb brigade. “High cholesterol doesn’t do any harm! It will sort itself out.” Yes, but what if it does, and what if it didn’t? Would these strangers from a forum mourn my demise? Would they even notice if “French Lady” stopped posting? Maybe the cholesterol and heart condition were simply coincidental, but Russian roulette wasn’t really my game.

It is a bitter, but fundamental fact that the only way to lose weight is to put into your body less calories than you take out.

Fitday is a clever website which takes the headache out of planning and tracking weight loss. It’s fun and easy to use and like the best things in life, it’s free. It’s much, much more than a calorie counter, and I highly recommend looking at the site.

Another excellent resource is Nutrition Facts which tells you everything you could possibly wish to know about every food you could possibly name. Free, and again very highly recommended.

But once the weight is lost, what happens next? It usually manages to regenerate itself in time, much like a lizard regrows a lost tail. Who wants to be calorie-counting for the rest of their life? I think the No S Diet may be the answer, although I haven’t tried it yet. The principles are really simple:

There are just three rules, and one exception:

• No Snacks
• No Sweets
• No Seconds

Except (sometimes) on days starting with ‘S’ – Saturday, Sunday (tough if English is not your mother tongue and “special” days such as birthdays, national and religious holidays.

Now, I’ve just had a look at the calendar for December 2007. Great news! Christmas Day falls on a Tuesday. So by starting the diet on 21st – a Friday – you can enjoy a run of five whole S days – Saturday, Sunday, Christmas Eve – which is obviously a special day – Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Then there are only Thursday and Friday before Saturday, Sunday, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. So that’s nine “Specials” out of twelve days.