New Year Diets

It's the beginning to 2012 and, as at the beginning of every New Year, people are regretting the amount of food and booze they consumed during the holidays and are hitting the gym and starting their diets.

I am, of course, no exception to this. Sadly, January is a month filled with the blues because those after-work trips to the pub are stopped, or lessened. No more going out for dinner or getting a takeaway because we don't feel like cooking. And a lot of healthier food.

However, a couple of years ago I went to see a nutritionist who set me on a diet that actually worked and wasn't the most difficult thing in the world to follow. So I'm going to give you the basic rules for this and how I've adapted this diet to deal with England - where the food is significantly stodgier and fried food is around every corner.

• Rule 1: Eat every two hours. Seriously. Don't let yourself get hungry
• Rule 2: Drink lots of water. Difficult to remember to do but very important
• Rule 3: Fried food is out. Grill, steam or at worst, bake everything
• Rule 4: Avoid fatty meats like sausages, bacon, lamb. Enjoy lots of chicken and fish
• Rule 5: Cheese is your friend. Fill up on cottage cheese and hard cheese. Nothing blue or soft
• Rule 6: Bread, pasta, rice, potatoes - avoid

So that's the basic stuff. Nothing too difficult. And the nice thing is that the diet doesn't absolutely cut everything out. You should eat cereal for breakfast, which is quite filling. Fruit or ryvita snacks with cottage cheese or ham make excellent snacks. Yoghurt too. And the best part is that you can eat quite a varied diet for your main meals. To give you an idea of what this could be, here's a breakdown of my last few days on this diet:

Breakfast: small bowl of Special K every day

Lunch:   salad made of lettuce leaves, cottage cheese, tuna/ham, carrot and pepper

            vegetable soup (no potatoes used in the making)

Snacks: handful of almonds

             apple/banana

             Ryvita with cottage cheese, pepper and tabasco

             low fat yoghurt

Dinner:   Breast meat from roast chicken with roasted butternut squash and carrots (no gravy or sauce)

             Beef teriyaki stir fry (no noodles)

             Chicken and mustard stir fry (no noodles)

             Beef casserole (made with tomatoes, veggies and potatoes - I avoided the latter)

And this week we'll be eating fairly similar things. Leftover chicken from the roast will probably go towards a soup or stirfry (I heart stirfry). We'll be having a tomato based curry on Thursday night, which clearly I won't have any rice or bread with.

So here's the point of this diet. It works but it is difficult, especially when no one around you is also dieting. Including boyfriend, who wants something more substantial for dinner. Having bread and noodles and chocolate in the house means having one hell of a lot of will power!!

And on the plus side, I get a treat a day. A couple of roast potatoes, a chocolate bar or a glass of wine. It helps sooooo much!!!!