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Sugar has been in the news for a long time. It is undoubtedly an enemy in the war against obesity. So what can we use instead of sugar in our baking, if we want to satisfy our tastebuds? There seems to be so much on the market.

It’s January and everyone, but everyone seems to be holding back, tightening their belts and generally wearing a hair-shirt. January smells of denial. So, if this is you, if you are going yes, yes, yes, to a new regime and you’ve booked your (no-return) ticket for a fast-track ride from a size 16 to a size 12, then to ensure a sound mind (as well as a totally awesome body), try and stay off the scales. Stop weighing yourself!

Last week I spent the day in the company of an old friend of mine. We hadn’t seen each other for, oooh, at least a year, so the chat, the laughter (and the chilled Chardonnay) were all flowing nicely.

I’ll cut to the chase. I hadn’t looked at my bottom for a while. In its naked form I mean. I was trying on underwear and I wanted to upgrade from sensible shorts style to more of a floozy Brazilian to see if I could weather the storm of discomfort. But it wasn’t so much discomfort as disillusionment. I’m sure I didn’t always have bits of bottom that fell out beneath the knicker line and which refused to be captured. Like the proverbial wriggling ferret in a sack… though not as cute.

This week is apparently famous for being ‘crash and dive’ week where our plans for giving up the bad stuff for January (alcohol, smoking, sugar, stalking your daughter’s Instagram account) go pear-shaped and we are dangerously close to chucking it all in. Here are some tips for seeing it through to the bitter end… and beyond.

Morning Everyone. Wow, some of you are really feeling the effects. I’ve had so many emails from people in the last couple of days venting their panic and shock about how much ‘weight’ they have put on from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day.

You know when there’s nothing on the telly, so you scroll through all that stuff you blindly recorded in a whim, hoping for a little gem. Well, my gem last week was this programme about Superfoods on BBC2. The channels were full of either cricket or Corrie so I pressed play and settled down. It was a piece about broccoli.

I was sitting at my desk the other day, when the lovely Aaron came bursting in waving his phone. “Look at these photos!”, he exclaimed (Aaron handles the personal training side of the business and has acres of before/after photos of semi-clad women on his phone). “Blimey, that’s impressive!”, I reply, “In how many weeks?”, “Four”, came the reply.

An article from the British Journal of Sports Medicine about the myth of physical inactivity and obesity… you cannot out train a bad diet.