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Eat Well & Stay Trim....

It is possible. And without having to resort to odd dietary or lifestyle regimes, either.

As any 'foodie' must know, the challenge of enjoying good food as part of a daily routine sits uncomfortably with the process of maintaining control over the waistline - and over the decades regular recourse has been had in this household to various expedients in an effort to get rid of some of the excess pounds. The problem with all of them was firstly, that they were only ever departures from normal behaviour, and secondly that they were always deeply, deeply dull! And so, on both counts, unsustainable. Which is the problem in practice with pretty much all weight-loss initiatives - after a while, you heave a sigh of relief, return to your earlier habits and - surprise, surprise - any benefit you might have accrued dissipates before your very eyes.

The only way to balance eating well with having a physique which doesn't make you avoid full-length mirrors is to identify a dietary regime which is readily sustainable in the long term, and in which the food is interesting as well as being consistent with your dietary goals. And after several years of tinkering with it, I think I've largely got there.....

The current regime has grown out of the discovery of the low-carb Atkins concept, which I first encountered about ten years ago. At the time, I had a job which involved much time spent on planes, in airports and at hotels in different parts of the globe, as well as sitting in meetings and conference rooms and at corporate dining tables. It's a regime perfectly designed for chubbiness - no time for regular exercise, and constantly taking refuge in the sort of comfort-eating that follows on from tiredness, wrong time-zones, and people forever pushing the stuff at you! At home, in an effort to do something, I suggested reducing our normal three-course dinner habit to only two courses, but was met by dark muttering from the Technical Department along the lines of ' thin end of the wedge', and ....'the end of civilisation as we know it'. So, no luck, there...

At first sight, Atkins seemed wonderful: no prohibition or even limits on levels of consumption of meat, fish, eggs, cream, cheese.....eat as much as you like! When I first tried it, though, I followed the suggested menus that the Atkins people had devised - which was, frankly, rather challenging. With the best will in the World, the range of suggestions was pretty limited, and after a week of nothing

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