So January has rolled around again and about a berjillion of us have vowed to lose weight. Every time you pick up a magazine in January you will see one of the TOWIE lot telling you how they got their abs etc (never mind none of them work so they can spend all day in the gym if that’s what floats their goat), and we are all sitting here like fat messes finishing off the Christmas food so it doesn’t tempt us when we start our new diet, invariably, on Monday.

With all the fad diets around, it can be easy to be persuaded by a quick fix, like eating loads of cabbage soup will make you look like Caprice, but unfortunately there IS no quick fix. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you can stop wearing flowery Primark trousers 3 sizes too big and fit back into those Levi’s.

Here’s a few tips you don’t want to. but need to hear.

You need a BALANCED diet. 

Cut out carbs. East less meat. Bread and pasta are good. Bread and pasta are bad. There is so much conflicting information with each faddy diet. The Atkins diet and the Dukan diet would happily have us believe that carbs are the route of all evil and what cause us to gain weight. Cutting out fat completely is also advocated in some, but you NEED healthy fats (such as the fats you get from nuts and oily fish) as part of a balanced diet.

The truth is, if you cut out something completely out of your diet, your body will crave it more, as you are depriving it of nutrients it needs. Stick to a healthy, balanced diet for optimum weight loss. If you feel you might have over done the carbs at lunch, have less and some extra veg at dinner. Just be sensible, and remember having few too calories can have a detrimental effect on your health AND weight loss.

I found this website, which explains the balanced diet really well:

http://www.igd.com/our-expertise/Nutrition-food-and-farming/Healthy-balanced-diets/3383/Balanced-Diet/

You need to diet AND exercise. 

(Image from: www.2ndwindexercise.com/diet-and-exercise-better-together )

If you have done half hour on the cross trainer, surely, that means you are allowed to treat yourself to that Indian, right?

WRONG. The reason weight loss works better with diet AND exercise, is because people don’t realize how much they actually have to move to burn off what they have eaten. While dieting or exercising alone is better than nothing at all, it probably won’t have a great effect on your waistline in the long run. 20 minutes on the cross trainer will only burn off a mere bag of Quavers, so if you think about the fact that an Indian is about 1500 calories when all’s said and done you’ll need to do about 3 hours to burn off the whole thing. This is why you need to be watching what you put in as well.

I personally think My Fitness Pal is the best way to track what you are eating against exercise, their website is here: www.myfitnesspal.com/

You NEED to eat. 

(Image from: http://babyresource.com/getting-pregnant/boost-your-chances/conception-tips-top-tips-to-conceive )

You can’t just cut out meals all together. ESPECIALLY breakfast. Your metabolism is a well oiled machine that needs to stay oiled. If you cut out meals all together, believe it or not your body will go into ‘starvation’ mode and you will end up being even more hungry. A lot of people, like myself, favour the ‘little and often’ mode. This means your metabolism is getting a little work out of its own every few hours and is kept ‘on alert’ as it were. The more you use your metabolism, the quicker it gets.

Also, being ravenous by about 10am is about as fun as someone kicking you in the fanny. Even if it’s just a shake or a cereal bar, get some breakfast down you definitely.

You NEED to drink water (even though you will pee loads). 

(Image from: www.valheart.com/blog/rapid-weight-loss-and-injury-recovery-due-to-kangen-water

Not only does water have the magic ability to make us feel full without adding a single calorie, it is also WELL good for you in other areas. If you are one of those people that hates it when people say ‘oh you confuse thirst with hunger (No, I’m fucking hungry I can assure you) then drink loads of water and prove them wrong.

But seriously, it can’t hurt, you wee out your toxins, it’s good for your skin and also keeps all those lovely nutrients flowing around your body. It also filters out all that caffeine you drink in the morning to stop yourself dropping down dead at your desk .

There is no ‘Quick Fix’. 

(Image from: http://www.womanaroundtown.com/sections/living-around/quick-fix-diets-may-lead-to-weight-gain )

Unfortunately ladies, you can’t starve yourself for a day then do 20 minutes on a treadmill and expect to look like Cameron Diaz. (I wonder if Cameron Diaz ever thinks ‘Sod it, I’m having a kebab’.

Losing weight can be a long hard slog, but once you start seeing results you feel a lot better. Then you see more and feel a lot better. Then you reach your goal weight and you couldn’t imagine undoing all that hard work with a biscuit binge. So keep going girls. WE CAN DO THIS.