Our tips and hints - blog piece

You might be familiar with the following scenario...the time has come to lose weight, you decide on a diet or method, and then hit the shops, buying all the healthy food, fancy new exercise outfits, and you even sign up to a new gym membership. You figure if you spend the money then you'll stick with it.

It's day one of the new food regime, you're feeling motivated, energised, and believe this time you have it in the bag. You get through day one okay, you eat the food, although it's not particularly enjoyable, but hey it's healthier than normal and you manage to run a lot further than you have in memory.  You are so tired you crash in bed early and don't even have any wine! Kicking goals.

Day two and you wake up feeling your muscles, that's something that hasn't happened in a while. You feel good because you didn't have any wine the night before. You plan to go to the gym but your muscles have other plans and you can hardly move. You tell yourself you'll go tomorrow, but at least you'll have a healthy breakfast. You mix some yoghurt, berries and the quinoa you had boiled up yesterday.

You snack on some almonds mid-morning then start getting peckish by midday. Lunch is a tuna and salad wrap - with no dressing. Bland as - but super healthy so all is good.

5pm and you close the lid on your laptop. Not sure what this headache is, you had some grapes mid-arvo. Drinking water doesn't resolve it. You are suddenly thinking about food, as in real food, lasagne and fries, or a bacon and asparagus pie, but you need to eat by 6pm as you are eating only between 6am and 6pm now. You open the fridge to the new healthy food selection and have a choice of grilled chicken kebabs and salad or zucchini spaghetti with pesto. Neither excite. You skip the gym as your headache is now thumping, your stomach is really feeling empty and all you can do is think about food.  You hop on the scales, all this pain must have at least achieved something. You've lost half a kilo. Ohhh progress, you feel slightly motivated again and drink some water and  your zucchini spaghetti. It is as horrible as it looks and sounds. You start thinking about real spaghetti, with parmesan.