A Diet You Can Stick to

Eat what you want when you want - just be sure not to eat more than you need

The novelist and historian Gillian Tindall once read a diet instruction that advised her not to eat when she was not hungry. She responded crossly: "But of course I don't!" However, she then remembered her mealtimes - and a whole array of mince and roasts and fish and sensible puddings passed before her inner eye.

I remembered this while trying a wicked regime of only eating what I wanted when I wanted it. That is something usually only possible for those who live alone, and if the Observer consents to print this heresy, it may be the most comfortable "diet" regime ever.

Balinese women, I once read, just eat small treats of food whenever they feel like it and stay slim and beautiful - it always struck me as the best possible regime - though I don't know if they worked this diet out in terms of chocolate biscuits, hard-boiled eggs, bananas and peach iced tea with or without a stiffener of Scotch - with which, I am delighted to say, I have recently lost well over half a stone.

The one thing I'm sure of is you can't actually do two diets at once: nibbling a small amount of what you really like best is one thing; crunching your way through a mound of low-calorie healthful greens is another. So try to do them both and you'll end up just the way you were before - in other words, thinking you'd better avoid full-length mirrors and buy bigger clothes.

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Photo: Step on to the scales: how long will you stick with your New Year diet? Photograph: PA