STEP AWAY FROM THE DIET SHEET!

It won't have escaped your notice that in January every year, the entire female population (and some of the male) seems to become caught up in a collective dieting obsession. You can tell that Christmas is over because Gillian McKeith will appear again, with a demonic grin, inspecting poo and criticising someone's eating habits until they cry.

Have you ever thought about just leaving them all to it? Turning off 'Celebrity Fat Club', eschewing the continuous repeats of 'You are what you eat' and, in the words of a very well known 1970s kids TV programme "Go out and do something less boring instead?"

Christmas is great! It's a time for feasting and geese getting fat. It's a time where we get to show our appreciation for friends and family by giving them scrumptious food. Cooking for people is a way of showing love, after all. We enjoy eating all the delicacies that don't appear in the shops all year round. It's perfectly natural to over eat, drink too much, and slob in front of the TV, contemplating a week off work and the extra editions of Corrie and Eastenders.

Bizarre diet customs...

If the trousers are a tad snug afterwards, never fear. Diet companies love this time of year so much. They helpfully offer incentives to entice embarassed fatties through their doors, saturate the TV ad schedules from 2nd January with adverts featuring slim women eating cakes (subliminal message: this could be you) and send mail shots out to lapsed members offering them a few free weeks of ritual weigh-in hell. I've been there, done it and got the T-shirt in sizes 14 to 22!

I've done the removal of all jewellery before leaving for 'class', wearing my heaviest clothes on the first weigh-in and then summer clothes (even when it's snowing outside) afterwards so that it looks like I've lost more. I've queued for the loo before the dreaded scales. Why do we do it? I even used to hold my breath when I stepped on the scales, as if that would make any difference to my weight. And I consider myself reasonably intelligent!

Knowing that there's a diet coming after Christmas just makes you eat more. Think about it - you have a fair bit of Christmas food left over. Once again, you bought enough to feed the whole street. You've already tried to palm it off on your guests as they leave after the New Year party, but what do you do with the remaining temptations? Well, in the words of one dieter from a message board, "when theres some left it makes you feel you have to eat it quickly and get it out of the way" and from another, "I shall have a slice of the cake with a brew later and throw the rest away."

That's madness! But it's standard diet thinking and I've been a victim for years...until now.

The antidote

I found an antidote to the madness last year, and 2007 is going to be the year that I embrace something different, the year that I don't throw delicious leftiovers and foodie gifts into the bin on 2nd January 'beause it will only tempt me if I don't throw it away' - and the year I finally get to grips with the fact that diets just don't work! Yes, it's the Food Philosophy, and what a bloody great philosophy to embrace.

Instead of focussing on the pesky weight that's bothering you, the extra ten pounds or couple of dress sizes, the Food Philosophy turns diet thinking on it's head and slaps it around a bit. Fat isn't actually your problem if you're overweight. Over eating is your problem. Fat, and any associated illnesses, are symptoms caused by the over eating. So, concentrating on your excess weight and obsessing over it, when it's just a visible symptom of your real problem - over eating - is just like burning your hand and taking a painkiller for the pain but not taking your hand out of the flame. You'll carry on burning yourself until you stop doing what's causing the injury!

Eating for fun!

Beating the overeating is actually fun with the Food Philosophy. There's no strict diet, you're given total freedom to eat as and when you like, even if you're not actually hungry and it's just convenient. There are no confusing hunger charts or second guessing what your tummy rumbles actually mean, just 100% freedom to learn to trust your instincts. This removal of external control and restriction of food gives you the control back, and takes away the drive to over eat - no rebelling against the diet sheet, sneaking extra points or cheating. There's nothing to cheat, no diet to follow, and all the time the innovative Cognitive Behavioural Technology (CBT) exercises are training you to think like a non-dieter and lose weight as a side effect of conquering the over eating.

Hang on, I can hear legions of people argue, if I let myself eat whatever I want, I won't be able to stop! That's the most common response to telling anyone that they can eat anything they like on the Food Philosophy, and it scares some people to death. "How can you lose weight if you eat two Mars Bars and a chinese take away every day?" To me, this response just shows up how much everything we put in our mouths is externally controlled...I mean how sad is that, that we are so scared to trust ourselves to eat?

The fact is, not many people genuinely want to over eat. You know how you feel when you pig out, and it's horrible. Most over eaters live their lives feeling a bit sick, suffering heartburn, indigestion and berating themselves for breaking the diet. Stuffing your face is horrible and makes you feel, quite honestly, like crap. So why would you do it? Well, at the risk of repeating myself, " "when theres some left it makes you feel you have to eat it quickly and get it out of the way" - there's a diet coming, you'll get back on it tomorrow, Monday, after Christmas....may as well stuff your face now...

There has to be another way. So, this year, I'm not buying into it. I'm not throwing my leftovers out, I'll eat them as and when I fancy them. I don't care how many of my friends are counting points, or stessing about detox diets. I'll relax, trust myself, and go against the flow of the diet magazines. Happy New Year...and Happy New Me!

This competition is now closed.....