100 Ways to Fight the Flab

1 Eat chocolate

I am serious. Although we’re talking a few squares, not the whole supermarket shelf. Keep a bar of the dark stuff close by for when the hunger pangs hit between meals. Choose high quality chocolate – at least 70% cocoa content and preferably 85%. (Green & Black’s is good – bring on the product placement?). My exhaustive research has revealed that chocolate contains stearic acid which slows digestion and also tryptophan, an essential amino acid that stimulates the production of serotonin – a natural anti-depressant – in the brain. This means that a few squares will not only take a significant edge off your appetite, and leave you feeling fuller for longer, but will cheer you up as well (necessary if you’ve planned to diet and are facing the prospect of cutting out butter and not drinking).

2 Cut out butter and quit drinking

I am joking – bread without butter is beyond the pale and as for a plain baked potato … What you could do if you want to feel virtuous is have low-fat cream cheese mixed into your potato instead of the hard stuff and swap that glass of wine for a vodka or gin with slimline tonic. A method guaranteed to cut the calories but still let you fall over.

3 Get a dog

  I have noticed that a lot of people who should, by rights, be fatter than they are, have a mutt that they walk in rain and shine. I am more of a cat person. I find dogs too time-consuming, too needy, too fond of licking their testicles and then wanting to do the same to my face. I am also squeamish about picking up warm poo. But there is no doubt at all that taking regular brisk walks is an excellent way of keeping the weight under control and one’s thighs and bum toned.

4 Borrow a dog

This is a good compromise. I enjoy taking out Kenzo, a black Labrador belonging to my friend Lyn-Marie. Kenzo and I have an arrangement. He does a poo in the garden before we leave and I take him to all the muddy places where he’s not usually allowed. I also have an arrangement with Lyn-Marie. Should Kenzo ever let me down, I will phone her on her mobile and she will send one of the children to clear up.

5 Borrow a horse

This could be more complicated to arrange but horse riding will also give you muscles of iron. I have this problem licked ever since begging for and receiving a hilarious Christmas present which had my husband choking over his credit card statement for the next six months. The iJoy ride is an exercise machine that simulates the action of riding a horse and as you jog up and down, tones your buttocks, thighs and stomach. You can flap your arms at the same time, add weights and do various exercises as outlined in the dvd of suitably bored-looking girls that comes with it. Visiting children will enjoy it too. Plonk the smallest and loudest on there and turn it up to full speed before they can trash the place.

6 A chilli a day keeps a fat arse at bay

So eat a chilli. The hotter the better. Chillies raise the metabolism and the fierier they are, the greater the effect. Experts estimate that one can expect a 15% increase in calories burned for about two hours after eating a hot chilli sauce. Buy packets of fresh chillies from the supermarket and then keep and dry the seeds. Growing them yourself is easy, cheap and satisfying (sorry to sound like an excerpt from Cooking on a Shoestring in a Bedsit for One) and the plants look pretty on the kitchen window sill (I would include a photo but this is book is on a shoestring too). Try them finely chopped in omelettes and scrambled egg, over meat or fish, in sauces and – for the brave – straight down with a couple of crisps. Actually, you will find the more you eat, the more your tolerance will grow (I don’t wish to be indelicate here, but it is best to build up slowly!). They are strangely addictive after a while.

7 Sit on a ball

One of those exercise balls that you inflate. Bit like the vibrating horse, the idea is that you wobble away and the effort of keeping yourself upright tones your stomach muscles, firms your backside etc. I can vouch for this. I spent a week balanced on a big one while I typed. My stomach definitely felt less blobby by the end of it, but I found I was tending to support myself via my wrists on the desk and gave myself sore shoulders. So watch TV on it instead. This has the added benefit of causing great hilarity throughout the family when you get carried away clapping to X Factor and fall off.

8 Don’t eat in the evenings

If you’re trying to stay on a ball you won’t be able to anyway. But, honestly, the earlier you stop eating the more food you’ll get away with. The theory is that if you don’t eat after late afternoon, your body has all evening to burn up what you have eaten. Whereas if you turn in at midnight, after three jam sponges and a lard sandwich, you have all night for your body to convert that into another layer of blubber across your middle.

9 Walk before bed

This works too. A brisk march round the block before you hit the sack will boost your metabolism no end and help burn off whatever you’ve been stuffing in front of Newsnight. Eat the same as usual but do this for a week. You’ll be surprised at how much thinner you feel. NB if you live somewhere dodgy you might want to take a large partner or friend with you. If they are very large, you will feel thinner anyway.

10 Get some fat friends (see above)

And stand next to them. .

11 Pretend you weigh much more than you do

Most of us shave a bit off our weight when we’re talking to others, but the reverse works much better. Announce gaily that you weigh fourteen stone, when you really weigh nine and you will be met with gasps of disbelief and admiration. ‘Gosh you don’t look it,’ they will cry. ‘You must have lead toes,’ they may shriek. You will be instantly admired for your ingenious way with clothes and the clear evidence that you must be ‘heavy-boned’ or ‘all muscle’. If you do things the other way round, there will a shaking of heads and some pointed staring at your spare tyre. The same principle applies to lying about your age and wrinkles.

12 Use a tape measure not scales

Everyone knows that muscle weighs more than fat and that weight can fluctuate wildly all on its own (try getting up and weighing yourself, walking round a bit, drinking half a cup of herbal tea and weighing yourself again. You’ve had no calories, a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter and you’ve only had 300ml, and you’ve suddenly put on a pound and a half! How??). The tape measure cannot lie and will demonstrate conclusively whether your girth has increased overnight, or it hasn’t because  you took my advice and sprinted down the road and back. As will a ‘measuring skirt’ or pair of trousers. Pick something you can only get into on very thin days and try it on. If the zip does up you’re doing fine whatever the scales say. If your stomach is bulging through the gap like an uncooked suet pudding, it’s time to hit the hot water with lemon and ginger.

13 Drink hot water with lemon and ginger

Apparently hot water makes your stomach feel full, lemon juice takes the edge off your hunger and ginger boosts the metabolism. I can’t vouch for this. I just know it doesn’t sound as nice as a glass of Macon Blanc Villages and a bag of Kettle Chips.

14 Think thin

There is a lot to be said for the power of positive thinking. Have you noticed how skinny people are always twitching about and never sit still? Tell yourself you are a thin person too and start fidgeting now. Walk rapidly instead of waddling along like a fatty, throw the kids’ crusts to the birds instead of hoovering them up (thinnies disdain leftovers) stand tall, think slimline and practise an irritating laugh and trilling: Sometimes you know, I forget to eat altogether…

15 Cut the carbs

There is no doubt about it, however much you may be clinging onto that packet of custard creams, that this works. Eat no rice, potatoes, bread, cakes, pasta etc and you will lose weight. If you don’t drink alcohol either it will fall off. Also, the benefit of the high protein approach – lots of meat, fish, eggs, cheese – with salad or vegetables, is that if you do it properly you won’t feel hungry either. (Bored and deprived maybe but certainly not starving). In fact, after a while, as you rediscover your hip bones and note just the one chin looking back at you from the mirror, you may find you really feel quite energised and jolly. I think it’s the smug feeling of virtue that cheers me up! Opponents of this plan, usually to be identified by the plate of chips in their hands, will whine on about heart disease and cholesterol levels but really they’re just feeling bitter about the lack of biscuits. Useful for a quick fix when you’ve got two weeks to get into the dress you haven’t done up since 2006.

16 Cut the fat

Doing this is much, much worse. You are condemning yourself to a dreary existence of dry toast, flavourless leaves, bad-temper and hunger (or was that just me?). Yes, a multi-million pound fortune may have been built on the premise that if you give up butter you’ll get thinner legs, but if you’re that desperate to lose ten pounds it is probably less painful to cut a leg off.

17 Cut the wheat and dairy

Nobody is anybody these days unless they have a food intolerance. Obviously, if you swell up and die when you see a peanut, you have my sympathy, and I myself must admit to a small tendency to get stomach ache if I eat much meat. But on the whole, let’s face it, the whole thing’s a nonsense. If God had wanted us to eschew bread and butter, why would he have invented the egg mayonnaise sandwich? However, when my friend Fiona announced she’d ‘simply given up wheat’ and was suddenly swanning about looking at least a stone lighter, with perfect skin, that was galling. And there is always something seductive about the quick fix. The idea that one might revolutionise one’s entire life and looks by cutting out one ingredient had to be worth a try, I thought. It wasn’t as if one had to do it for ever. I figured you could give up pizza for a month when you needed to look gorgeous for some big event and then capitulate later when it was all over and it didn’t matter if you were fat and blotchy. So I tried no wheat. It was very boring. And since it meant I couldn’t stuff down the bread in restaurants while I was waiting for my starter, I used to get very drunk. I went to a long lunch – it might have been a Romantic Novelists’ Association Awards Ceremony – where the entire menu – all cheese sauce, crepes and filo pastry shapes – featured something I couldn’t eat. In three hours I had a tomato, three green beans and two bottles of burgundy. My friend, the writer Lynne Barrett-Lee, who had to pour me into a cab when I could no longer speak, said if I ever did it again she would wrestle me to the floor and ram a roll down my throat.

18 Give up yeast

This advice was delivered sternly, by a Thin Friend looking hard at my fat stomach. ‘It will sort your bloating,’ she said. I will tell you what sorted my bloating – it was having a hysterectomy. This may be a bit drastic for you (especially if you’re one of my male readers) but if you were considering one anyway, I can confirm that a flatter abdomen afterwards was one of the better by-products. (Being pumped full of HRT instead of flinging the crockery about for half the month was another. But that’s a different book.) I was mildly tempted to ban yeast until I met the TF’s colleague who had. We shall call her Ursula Uptight. She claimed she’d been blood-tested, yeast was the culprit and it was never going to pass her lips again. When I saw her, she’d lost loads of weight and looked a million dollars. But you wouldn’t want to go out with her. In the restaurant she barged her way into the kitchen to root through the ingredients on every packet and jar, wouldn’t have mayonnaise or drink wine and sat in front of an empty plate all night with a face on. This put me off the whole idea. Apparently there is yeast in everything. Weight loss through starving yourself is a recognised method already and how was I supposed to cope without Marmite? (Good for a hangover, mixed with peanut butter.) But under the joint pressure of the born-again intolerants, I sent off for the test they’d taken – a ‘simple pin-prick blood test’ which was quite scientific-looking and involved a small, round plastic thing that you clicked onto your thumb. Being both of a squeamish nature and a wimp, I asked a friend to perform the necessary. ‘Press down firmly’ he read aloud as he pressed and I screamed. Investigation inside the plastic thing showed something resembling half a Stanley knife. I bled for five minutes. There was plenty to dip the stick in anyway and I packed it off and waited for the outcome, dreaming fondly of finding out I was intolerant to something like lentils or semolina that I didn’t think much of anyway, and shedding half my body weight overnight; and vowing not to tell anyone if it turned out to be red wine or crisps. It turned out to be nothing at all. Test Result Negative, said the letter from the ‘Medical Director’. Said it was a nonsense.

19 Cut everything and eat yoghurt and banana

This idea came from my friend Irene who swears by this unlikely-sounding regime which has one simple rule – you can eat as much as you like of absolutely anything as long as it is plain yoghurt or banana. You are supposed to do it for three days. Since banana is a diuretic and yoghurt an evacuant (let’s not go there) it does work, but by dawn of the second day you are out of your head with the tedium of it and are hallucinating about toast and marmite or anything that isn’t bloody yogurt or banana. Not unlike the Squeeze-into-trousers-too-small Plan which involves:

20 Grapes

By this method, you eat nothing but grapes for as long as it takes till you can do your party togs up. Purists say that that you should eat the skins and stalks and pips (fibre, I believe!) and offer the helpful advice that you should persevere through the nausea and headaches (toxins clearing, don’t you know) and vary the mind-numbing monotony by sometimes making a grape smoothie. Oh and you can drink lots of water too – hot OR cold, just to add to the excitement. I have no doubt you will lose weight if you try this – you may also feel like jumping off the nearest bridge. The only time I attempted it, when wishing to wear a slinky black dress without looking like a black pudding, I lasted three hours. Try small squares of dark chocolate instead (see point one).

21 Get food poisoning

This is quickest of all. For best effect, go for full-blown salmonella or dysentery so you’ve got both ends in action at once and can’t even keep fluids down. My most dramatic experience of weight-loss via this method came from a suspect pepperoni pizza in Verona. I was on the bathroom floor for three days and the water bill came to more than the hotel room. I dropped nearly half a stone. Another time, I collapsed on a plane and threw up in the New York Times. If Italy or America are a bit too far to go, you can probably pick up a dodgy kebab in the High Street.

22 Try intermittent fasting

This, as you will know, is all the rage. Devotees (backed up by some reasonable science) swear that arranging your life into alternate ‘feed’ and ‘fast’ days will not only keep your weight down but help you live longer. The method goes roughly like this: you eat normally (whatever you like, they say!) on five days of the week and then on the other two (non-consecutive) days – say Monday and Thursday – you eat either nothing at all (if you are totally obsessed with this theory and probably American) or you just have 500 calories (if you’re not). I cannot claim to have carried out exhaustive testing but after 351 feed days I did try a couple of days’ fast. It appealed to me psychologically because a) you can stand pretty much anything if it only lasts 24 hours, b) I do love a quick fix, c) the thought of being able to stuff burgers and chips with abandon for the rest of the week was a good one.

AND I read an interview with one chap (in America) who does it and who is super healthy and slim (with lovely American teeth) and he didn’t even starve for what we consider a day. He went from 2pm to 2pm which frankly anyone should be able to do. I tried from 6pm to 6pm on the basis that when I came out of my non-eating phase I would be able to celebrate with a glass of cava with my chips. My findings are as follows:

It does work – I lost a pound in the short term – but you would have to do it every week. And whatever two days you designate for not eating are guaranteed to be the days you are invited out for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea and then someone suggests a take-away.

23 Follow the C-Plan

My friend, the writer Lynne (a surprising number of my friends have this name) Hackles, conceived this. And it is ingenious. The rules are simple. You can eat anything you like as long as it doesn’t begin with that letter. So no Cream, Chocolate, Chips, Crisps, Cake etc. It sounds really good. But it doesn’t work. Especially if you pig out on Gateau and French Fries.

24 Count the calories

This, of course, is the only way to be able to eat all foodstuffs all the time. You develop a scientific knowledge of the calorific value of everything you are likely to want to consume and keep a running total in your head. Or, nowadays, naturally, there are computer programmes, websites, apps and all sorts to help you, although even these cannot solve the knotty problem of what to do when you were heavy-handed with the bacon at breakfast, you were unexpectedly invited out to lunch, have already consumed 1654 calories when your upper limit was 1500, it’s only 3pm and you’re starving. Calorie counting is totally foolproof and works like a dream as long as you stick to your allowances. To do this successfully you have to approach the calorie-controlled diet with military precision, a will of iron and a degree in forward planning. Or you can just follow my very own technique and go on -

25 The shelf diet

This stroke of genius was created by the heroine, Cari, of my very first novel, Raising the Roof , published in paperback by Transworld in 2001 and still available on Kindle etc (in case, instead of eating so much, you want to take pity on a poor impoverished author and go buy a copy). I am still shocked that, considering its sheer brilliance, I am the only person to have thought of it (and hurt that as yet, nobody has fallen over themselves to commission me to write an entire ten-volume series on the subject or – recognising that I am sitting, no longer on a bad case of Writer’s Bottom, but on a diet breakthrough – given me my own TV series).

It works like this:

You take one shelf of your fridge and each day put on it exactly one thousand calories worth of food – no more, no less. Then you eat it.

There are other rules of course. Like you can’t eat anything else that’s not on the fridge shelf.

The wonderful simplicity lies in the fact that it’s all planned beforehand. No wandering around the kitchen wondering what you dare eat. Temptation is removed, all the calculation is done before you start and you never feel deprived because there’s always all that food waiting for you.

When you stock your shelf you make sure it is beautifully balanced with a combination of fats and fibre, sweet and savoury, so you can open the fridge door and say: Hey! What shall I have now? An apple or a Snickers bar? And know you still have three boiled eggs, four bits of Ryvita and a tin of sardines in brine to choose from until bedtime!

To this end, I recommend in fact preparing the whole week in advance – allowing one the flexibility of popping a bottle of chilled white in the door – and filling the fridge with seven or ten thousand calories (this remarkable system allows for a choice of fast-tracking or slower weight loss) worth of food on which you live exclusively for the next seven days. This may need to be adjusted if you have plans to eat out, have the sort of friends likely to arrive unannounced, clutching a curry, or live with a bloke who cannot grasp which shelf of the fridge he’s got to keep his mucky hands off.

Once word gets around – and I’m relying on you here, fame has been a long time coming – I am expecting to be mobbed by an eager public demanding I write the entire full-length Shelf Plan with colour photographs, a different shelf combination for every day and/or full fridge option for every week of the year.

And in time, when the world is losing weight and falling gratefully at my feet, there may well be a supermarket franchise with shrink-wrapped plastic trays containing a day or week's choices, pre-calorie-counted and all ready to carry home and place directly on the fridge shelf with no need to spend valuable time preparing it yourself.

(An excellent alternative for those unfortunate enough to have gluttonous husbands and ghastly children filling the fridge with their own nasty food. The dietee eats smugly from her own plastic tray and watches serenely while her children get obese and spotty and her husband dies of heart disease.)

In the meantime, as a foretaste of things to come, just imagine the joy of a diet where anything goes. Fancy a jam doughnut? Pop it on the shelf. A sausage sandwich your thing? Have it!

For you are in control of what's on offer tomorrow. As long as you remember these golden rules –

Prepare your shelf the night before. ( Preferably when you're not starving) so it's all ready for breakfast and there's no risk of getting overcome with malnutrition first thing and gulping down four slices of toast and a fried egg sandwich you hadn’t bargained for.

Make the shelf look full . If all it’s holding is a large bag of crisps and a KitKat, anyone can see you’re going to be tempted to ram these down for elevenses and have a very sad evening. This is where the full-week plan comes into its own.

Then you can stick in the in the crisps AND KitKat but fill up the spaces with 6032 calories worth of worthier items.

Carrots and tomatoes are good as are huge bags of salad. Half a dozen eggs looks substantial and at only 480 calories leaves thousands of spare calories for Cadbury’s chocolate fingers (one of my – and indeed Cari’s – favourites).

These are especially good shelf components being only around 30 calories each and fourteen – two a day – looks such a wickedly indulgent pile of chocolate delight that you’ll soon forget you’re on a diet at all. (Imagine the sheer ecstasy of a scheme where you can eat fourteen biscuits and still have 6,482 calories worth of food to devour and end up looking stunning.)

Don’t have friends round. They will mess things up by attempting to eat the crisps with you and sharing your wine. (Then what will you drink tomorrow?)

Don’t go out. And if you do, don't eat anything. (Unless you've deducted accordingly from fridge components.)

Be healthy. If all you've got in the fridge is chocolate cake and a pork pie, take a vitamin pill.

If it goes wrong, which it sometimes does – warning signs: you have half a lettuce and three radishes to last four days – don't despair! Remember nobody's perfect. Eat everything in the fridge, have a large glass of wine and start again tomorrow.

NB please send your grateful testimonials to jane@janewenham-jones.com ‘Before’ and ‘After’ pictures especially welcome.

26 Employ visualisation

Tell yourself those stabbing hunger pains are the feel of fat dissolving from your hips. Comfort yourself by mentally adding up all the calories your ill-disciplined friends are ramming down their throats. Or really piss everyone off and do it out loud.

27 Keep magazines in the fridge

This is a celebrity tip, included by kind permission of novelist Katie Fforde. Katie’s logic goes like this. A lot of the time we eat because we’re bored. If you find reading material in the fridge you can peruse that instead. I might also add that it is useful to keep nail varnish in there too. It stops it going lumpy. And if you’re that bored, you can paint your nails when the magazines are finished.

28 Do that food combining lark

You know that little number beloved of the Hay Diet whereby you can’t eat protein and starch at the same meal? The idea is that by eating either one or the other, the stomach digests it all more efficiently or some such. It does work – I’ve tried it – and devotees of the regime tend to have a definite glow (this could be more smug virtue at having lost weight while the rest of us still have several chins) but there is a reason why. Once again, you can’t help but eat less. Suddenly fish and chips is a no no, as is sausage and mash, toad-in-the-hole, any sandwich unless it just contains lettuce, cheese on toast, shepherd’s pie – you get the picture. It is the variety – the combinations of textures and flavours that keeps us eating (as the fast food industry has so successfully proved with its blending of fat, salt and sugar) and once you can only have half a meal in isolation you won’t eat so much. Give it a try though, by all means. See if it irritates you as much as it did me.

29 Keep a food diary

No, I don’t know why either but they always say you should. It could be so you can feel thoroughly disgusted with yourself when you see in black and white that you ate three pork pies before breakfast; it might help you track down your food intolerances – Ah ha! It is when I eat celery hearts after pigs’ trotters that I go particularly blotchy – or it could be so that you can study it carefully so as to do something very useful indeed in the battle of the bulge. And that is to:

30 Find your Achilles heel

When it comes to eating to the point of spare rolls and love handles, we all have a particular weakness that is largely responsible. For some it is chocolate, for others it might be beer or ice-cream. Personally, I can do perfectly well without biscuits or cakes (even if I am rather partial to a chocolate finger) but have a ridiculous weakness for crisps. Not to mention peanuts, small savoury biscuits, cheese straws – basically anything highly calorific, that is salty and goes well with wine! It started when I gave up smoking a zillion years ago and was looking for a replacement for the always-have-one-with-a-drink fag. Now when six o’clock comes and I hit the kitchen in search of corkscrew or gin bottle I am rooting around for a little bowl of something to eat too. This is bad on all sorts of levels. It means I am using up about a quarter of my daily calorie allowance (if I happened to be counting calories which I’m usually not) on something that is not particularly nutritious or filling and just makes me want more of it. If I take the plunge and stop both wine and crisps for a week I am guaranteed to shed weight without making another single change to my life. But suppose that feels a bit drastic? (It is 17.55 now and it does!). The trick is to find a replacement. Identify your area of downfall and line up a less calorific/lower fat/more filling/healthier alternative and get that down your neck instead. I have just discovered the Food Doctor range of Corn & Soya Crisp Thins in what they describe as ‘exciting natural contemporary flavours’ (so far I’ve tried the Sweet Chilli and Mild Korma). These are made from 50% corn and 50% soya and are ‘popped’ rather than baked or fried. High in both protein and fibre. Sounds dull – tastes surprisingly good. Perfectly acceptable, anyway, as a pre-dinner, with-wine nibble and only 95 calories a bag. So you can save on the calories or eat twice as many! If your weak spot is, say, the contents of a box of chocolates at that low blood sugar hour of the late afternoon (I have been there too) then you might want to prepare, say, a bowl of strawberries instead or some low-sugar sweet you can suck. If you have a tendency to hit the cheese and biscuits at 9pm then be ready with the carrot sticks and zero-fat yoghurt dip (yes, I too can see that might not hit quite the same spot but you get the idea). If you’re basically huge because you can’t resist the bedtime Arctic Roll, sausage sandwich and stuffed crust pizza with your cocoa I’m not quite sure what to suggest. Could you get your jaw wired?

31 Practise your own aversion therapy

When you need to cut back, picture something revolting. A horribly squashed sandwich or the sensation of chewing on a piece of gristle (I am so suggestible I am gagging as I type but you may be made of sterner stuff and need a viler image). My most successful aversion technique came in the form of a friend’s child, who took in food in such a thoroughly disgusting manner, I used to retch watching and could barely eat at all. His mother thought I sat near him because he was lovely.

32 Eat what you like, when you like, but exercise

Exercise makes us feel good and builds muscle. Muscles, historically, burn more calories than fat (though some experts have begun disputing this and saying the difference is negligible. Let’s not listen to them!) so there is an argument for not being restrictive at all but eating whatever you want then burning it all off by exercising madly at all hours of the day. This is all very well if you have lots of time available to go to the gym, run marathons, attend Bums & Tums classes (and can stomach the woman – there is always one – who has a perfect physique and just comes to preen on one leg and share with the lesser mortals the enviable sight of her admirably sculptured, lycra-clad buttocks) (Grrr) or swim sixty lengths of the local pool. But if, actually, you have things like a life or a job or children, and free minutes are at a premium, quick bursts of activity will work well too. These are things you can do that are cheap and easily fitted in.

33 Go for a run

A good pair of trainers (and a sturdy bra for the girls) and you’re off. Even if you just run up the road and back or once round the car park, you will boost your metabolism and burn calories. You will also tone up all over but particularly on your legs and bum. If you force yourself up hills, the effect on the latter can be remarkable. Some personal trainers believe that the best time to run – or do any exercise – is first thing in the morning before you’ve eaten. Particularly if the run or work-out will last less than thirty minutes. Running on an empty stomach will maximise fat-burning and unless you have an underlying health condition, you should be able to trot round the block for that long without fainting. When I am in a running phase (this hasn’t happened for a while) I also like to ring the changes and go at six o’clock in the evening. This has an unwinding effect after a hard day bashing away at the keyboard, the release of endorphins during physical activity leaving one clear-headed and relaxed for the night ahead. It also means one can feel perfectly justified in having a gin and tonic and a bowl of peanuts.

34 Jump on a trampoline

If the kids have got a big one in the garden so much the better but otherwise get yourself a trampette (also known as an aerobic bouncer or a rebounder) – one of those mini circular jobs – and leap up and down on that. You can jog, hop or do star jumps– it will come with a leaflet with suggested exercises – and hold a small weight or a tin of baked beans in each hand to intensify the effect. It’s quite good fun, kind on the joints, and a good way of burning calories and firming muscles. Just two words of warning … both for the females. 1. Wear that sports bra and 2. If you’ve had children – they will laugh at you. If you’ve had lots of children, best have a wee before you start …

35 Do squats

There are a whole heap of different squat-type exercises you can find if you hit Google but here are a couple of basic ones. If you do just twenty of these each day (no, me neither, but get a grip and be a bit more disciplined), you will tone up your derriere in no time …

Method one : (avoid if you have dodgy knees) is to stand with your feet apart – beneath your hips – and then with your hands placed on your hips, slowly bend at the knees as if you were about to sit on a chair that’s not there. Hold for a few seconds, rise and repeat. If you have got dodgy knees, they will probably drive you mad by clicking so best to do this one instead:

Method two : taught to me years ago by skiing friends who were going on the piste …

Stand against a wall with your feet apart, again to the width of your hips, and slowly slide your back down the wall until you are in a sitting position, with your feet about a foot away from the skirting board. Picture yourself on an imaginary chair and everything will be in the right place. Now hold that as long as you can. When you have recovered, do it again. It is much harder than it sounds, hurts quite a lot, quite soon, but will give you rock-hard thighs and a toned bottom.

What is more fun is to:

36 Go up and down stairs on your bottom

Like a child might. I can offer no scientific evidence that this tones you up but it certainly feels as if it does. Try it and feel how many muscles are working! I have just practised it for you half a dozen times and I’m exhausted. If you can do it without using your arms, it’s even more strenuous. (Please, however, be careful and do not fall down the stairs and then attempt to sue me.) If you cannot imagine what I’m talking about and have no idea how to do this, there are instructional videos on YouTube. (Of course.)

37 Drink don’t drive

Don’t ever take your car out with you in the evenings. Or quite enough cash for a cab. That way you will be forced to walk home (or at least back from the bus stop) and will expend lots of energy before you get to bed.

38 Don’t wear enough clothes

There is a theory that getting cold activates our ‘brown’ fat (as opposed to the usual blobby, yellowish-white stuff) which in turn may burn up calories to try to warm us up again. Research carried out at the University of Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre suggests that eventually this brown fat, mostly found around the shoulder blades, strangely, could hold the key to solving weight problems. I am not suggesting you spend your life semi-naked in a walk-in fridge, but when you’re freezing your butt off braving snow and gales this winter, you could look on the bright side.

39 Wear too many clothes

I’ve seen these strange folk in the gym, running on the treadmill in three anoraks. Presumably the theory is that you sweat off the pounds. Looks truly horrible. There must be an easier way. Like…

40 Wear the right clothes

If you are built like a manikin, anything you wear, from three knotted dusters to a Tesco carrier bag, will look good. This is why the manikins in shop windows have waists the circumference of the average woman’s thigh. And why the whole look of a garment can alter drastically if we put on, or lose, weight. Having said that, it is also perfectly possible to look seven pounds heavier or lighter just by thinking carefully about the way you dress. Compare and contrast, for example, your appearance when slobbing out at home in a pair of shapeless tracksuit bottoms and a washed-out T-shirt – tucked in – with how you look in your most punishing hold-it-all-back underwear, fitted dress and perilous heels (or for you more conservative chaps, a well-cut suit!).

A lot of it is down to choosing attire in an enhancing shape and cut, in the right fabric, flattering colour and to a good fit. That’s the aesthetics but there’s more. The thing about wearing the right clothes is that if they are right, they will make you feel good. And once you look in the mirror and you like what you see, you will have confidence. If you have confidence, you’ll relax and feel happy. And if you feel happy you’ll look beautiful. Simple. Never mind how much extra flesh you’ve got.

If you are like me, this magic combination can be a bit of a moveable feast. I am incapable of travelling light because I can never be sure which clothes are going to make me feel good on any particular day so I always have to carry a choice. But if you know the sort of thing that works for you and can follow a few general rules, then you have a better chance of cutting to the chase. My friend Janice , who knows a bit about fashion and used to style brides, actually has a bigger waist than I do but looks much tinier. She puts this down to clever upholstery. She pays as much attention to what goes on underneath as what you see on top and it works like a charm. Janice believes in petticoats (for a smooth finish and no unsightly lines), good cuts, and what she calls ‘Harvest Festival Knickers’ – where all has been safely gathered.

41 Wear big knickers

Or whatever underwear it takes to hold it all in! You can buy brilliant undergarments these days that can totally revolutionise your shape. Why not let them? Look around the room at the next party. Half the people you see who look good, are probably holding themselves together by this means.

I remember spotting a good friend out one night. She was wearing a skin-tight red, glittery number and not only looked fantastic but about three stone lighter than she had at lunchtime. ‘Where’s your stomach gone?’ I shrieked diplomatically, having seen her at large only hours before. She gave a secretive smile.

‘I’m wearing one of those squash-it-all-in things,’ she confided. ‘If the poppers give way, it’s every man for himself ….’

I went straight out and bought one myself but I can advise that, like most things, some are better than others. You need it to be tight but also well cut. Some of the lesser examples of the all-in-one ‘body-shaper’ send all the spare blubber into a nasty bulge that pops out under your arms or half way down your thighs. Make sure you are being flattened out evenly. (To any chaps reading – this is not as irrelevant as you think – you can get male girdles too!)

A good rule of thumb is that if you can’t breathe or sit down and going to the loo is out of the question, then it’s probably working. NB If you are in the early stages of a relationship or hoping to land a new conquest, this is not the time to rush into things or let him undress you. If he does manage to wrest you from the garment in question, you’ll probably knock him out.

42 Look to the stars

This is another Janice tip. Search for the celebrity who most matches your body shape and size and who you think looks particularly good. Then Google image them and copy their style. (Be sensible, says Janice. Don’t aim to look like Uma Thurman when you naturally look more like Dawn French.) As Janice points out, stars often use style consultants, so you may as well benefit vicariously from their professional advice.

43 Don’t look to size zero

Remember when Kylie went on tour in a corset that reduced her waist to sixteen inches? It brought forth a rash of ‘hourglass’ diets. Go fetch a tape measure, bend it into a circle and see what a waist of sixteen inches looks like. Inhuman! There is no point aspiring to that. Go look at the dimensions of Victoria Beckham in Madame Tussauds. (I stood there for some minutes, gaping.) There is no point in aspiring to that either. Unless you look like that naturally which you probably don’t. (Or why would you be reading this?)

Stay real.

44 Find your USP

What’s your best feature? Accentuate it! If it’s your eyes, wear a colour that brings them out. If it’s your cleavage, flaunt it, if you’ve got long legs wear clothes that show them off. Who’ll have time to think about your backside?

45 If you know you’re going to eat, dress accordingly

If you are going somewhere where you know there’ll be copious food and drink – a wedding, say, or dinner at the friends’ who always serve five courses, then you will not want to be wearing the equivalent of a corset. Instead, wear clothes that are roomy around the middle but still disguise the worst of the podge. A-line dresses that are fitted around the bust can work well and still look sexy. Or if you’re really going to pork out – a flowing top over elasticated trousers.

46 Employ cardigans and light jackets

To disguise lumps and bumps from the sides but still show off a curvy shape from the front. If the front is a problem too, try a dangling scarf. Or a poncho.

47 Never tuck anything in

48 Ignore labels

When buying clothes, never be swayed by anything it says on the label (unless it’s ‘dry-clean only’). Only focus on what it looks like on . Clothes on the large side look infinitely better than anything too tight and it is madness to squeeze yourself into an unflattering 14 because you refuse to acknowledge the 16 fits. You can lose the tag later. Even if something appears to fit, it is worth trying on the size below and size above. An over-sized jumper can look great over tight jeans and sometimes, despite one’s fears, a closer-fitting dress can be more flattering. If it’s an important occasion you’re buying for, take a friend who can be relied on to be brutal. Take the shoes you’ll wear with you – and possibly the big knickers ensemble too. The clothes in my wardrobe range from size 8 to 16 and I wear them all. If the label upsets me, I cut it out. And then lie about it.

49 Ditch the fat clothes

By this, I don’t mean the clothes you wear on a fat day – we all need to keep a few billowing things for then – but the clothes that make you look fatter than you need to. I have a bright green dress in a great design that looks fabulous on the hanger. It might look good on you too. On me it adds ten pounds. (There is a photo of me in it floating about the internet– ugh. But a good reminder not to eat.) I keep the dress out of interest to see what it will look like when, one day, I go on the mega, most-committed weight-loss plan of my life and end up at seven and a half stone (that is 105 pounds to my American cousins – no, not very likely is it?), but I should just give it away now. Life is too short to wear clothes that do not make you look the best you can. Go through your wardrobe with a weather eye, or a good friend, and fill that charity sack. If you do get thin, you’ll want new clothes anyway.

50 Buy a Doreen

I had never heard of one of these until Janice slipped me the word, but it is allegedly the UK’s, if not the world’s, best-selling bra! I got mine when I was in a play. It was Terrence Rattigan’s Separate Tables and I was playing the forty-year old, ex-model Anne Shankland. Needless to say I went on an immediate diet – the last thing I wanted during my big moment was to hear someone muttering from the audience: she looks a bit old and fat to be a model … and I consulted Janice (see tip 40 if your memory’s failing) re my costume. She packed me off to Debenhams post-haste and I have been a Doreen convert ever since. This bra, from Triumph, is one of those old-fashioned-looking garments of the sort your mum or Granny used to wear – a sheepdog bra, as Janice puts it – that rounds them up and points them in the right direction. Described as having a soft cup, firm underband, and wide straps, it gives a fifties-type silhouette and because your bust is hoiked up, it elongates your middle section between your ribs, which is very slimming. Whenever I wear my Doreen under a close-fitting top or dress I am asked if I’ve lost weight. I like that.

51 Make sure your bra fits

Janice is evangelical on the subject of brassieres and it is true that a good bra makes all the difference to your overall look – there is nothing worse than overspill or underhang or bulges beneath the arms. It is really worth getting a proper fitting and spending time making sure you’ve got the right bra for the right outfit (sports bras are for sport, Janice sniffs). ‘For special occasions shorten bra straps inch by inch,’ she instructs. ‘It is good if you can touch your boobs with your chin – not so good if they touch your stomach!’

52 Buy a tent

Cut a hole for your head and put it on. Seriously, if you are having a really fat day, it is best just to cover it all up. Put on something long and flowing so you can’t see the lumps and depress yourself when you look in the mirror, and try not to think about it. If you have to leave the house, a brightly coloured tent will make others feel cheery and distract them from what it’s concealing. Don’t eat after 4pm, drink lots of water and walk before bed, and you’ll look and feel better in the morning.

53 Tone your arms

Even thin people with flabby arms don’t look as good as bigger people with biceps of steel. Toned arms look fantastic, and distract from a multitude of other sins. If your upper arms are firm and you’ve successfully dealt with that floppy bit under the armpit you are going to look great in anything – and the world is your oyster when it comes to sleeves and off-the-shoulder. If you’re a young thing in your twenties and thirties there’ll be admiring glances galore. If you’re over forty, nobody will even notice the size of your backside, they’ll be too busy crowding round to ask how you did it. If you’re over fifty – you’ll be a legend!

Some toning methods that work:

54 Put all the nice food in very high cupboards

The constant stretching up will work wonders.

55 Buy those stretchy, resistance fitness band thingies

Or whatever they’re called. Get a couple and keep one in your pocket or hand bag and one where you can see it while you work. Whenever you have a spare moment – waiting for the train, in the post office queue, while the potatoes are boiling or emails downloading, you can whip it out and do a few exercises. Just wrapping the band round a knee or foot and pulling it back and forth will give your bingo wings something to think about, but there are lots of exercises on the internet – with demonstrations on YouTube to help you focus specifically on triceps and wobbly bits. You can do stuff with soup cans too.

56 Buy cheap cooking utensils

The sort of scrubbing a bargain baking tray will need after a single roast will soon give arms a work-out.

57 Be arm aware

Think arms whatever you do. Tense them and put extra effort into anything that involves your biceps and triceps. Can you feel the muscles tightening as you wield that corkscrew?

58 Try the power plate

If you belong to a gym, there’ll be one there. I have found doing press-ups on this vibrating wonder machine quite dramatic in the firming-up department and there are easy-to-follow exercises for all parts of the body. (I will be very grown-up and won’t make the obvious joke about sitting on it.) If you are rich, you could get one for home use. If you aren’t, you could go to a sports equipment store and pretend you are. Ask for a full demonstration of their most expensive model and to try it yourself for half an hour while you think about it. Go back the next day in a different wig and do it again.

59 Swim keeping your legs still

If you do have time to visit the local pool, try a few lengths of breast stroke using only your arms with your legs held straight out behind you. Not difficult but intensifies the workout. You can alternate this with lengths using only your legs – arms held straight in front of you, hands clasped. A little trickier but you won’t drown. (NB as long as you can swim in the first place.)

60 Use your local shops

Walking there will use up calories. Carrying the shopping home will tone arms some more. And if you are lucky enough to live near a proper High Street with small independent shops, you’ll be helping the local economy and socking one in the eye to the supermarkets too. Multi-tasking for the Green and Ethical.

61 Arm wrestle

After all that, you’ll probably win.

62 Wear white leggings

Or some equally unflattering attire, with a T-shirt tucked in and stomach thrust out. Let that be a reminder of how  gross you could look. But you won’t, will you, cos you’re going to eat a chilli every day and go up and downstairs on your bottom. See what I can do for you? Really, don’t mention it …

63 Wear heels

Not all the time obviously – but whenever you want to create an extra illusion of slimness and elegance. ‘Court shoes elongate the leg,’ says Janice. ‘Ankle straps are sexy but tend to shorten it.’ (I don’t know as I rarely wear shoes, preferring boots, trainers  or flip-flops.) Can I also suggest that you either wear a short skirt or a long skirt. Unless you have very thin legs, mid-calf promotes the tree-trunk look. This applies to both sexes.

64 With support tights

No wonder Spanx as a company is now worth over a billion dollars. Support tights – particularly Spanx – work nothing short of a miracle on stomachs and waists and bottoms. Even if you have to allow an extra twenty minutes to get them on. They do not come cheap but what price a nipped-in middle when you need one. Other companies (including M&S) do their own reasonably-priced versions. For best effect combine with a Doreen (see earlier). And cut your nails first – nothing worse than finally getting them on, putting yourself in the recovery position and then spotting the ladder from knee to ankle …

65 Walk on squishy soles

I’ve long been a fan of Masai Barefoot Trainers. They cost a fortune but are supposed to mimic the action of walking on soft sand or similar, thus burning up three times the calories expended in ordinary footwear and getting rid of cellulite to boot. If ever there was a divide between the sexes, nothing highlights it like these shoes. When I first got them, men invariably guffawed condescendingly while women all but mugged me. I’m probably fortunate in my genes because I have never suffered from the orange peel stuff, but within weeks of first wearing MBTs I could see my legs were definitely more toned and my husband even told me my bottom looked smaller. (He is not a man to whom you ask ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ unless you really want to know). The trainers (or sandals for summer) come with a dvd showing you how to walk in them. (Basically you keep your shoulders over your hips, roll the foot, and don’t thrust your pelvis out, until you can move without weaving about.) Might feel like hard work at first but worth it.

66 Keep your crisps in the loft

Climbing up and down the ladder every time you fancy some cheese & onion will tone your thighs in no time.

67 If you work from home, work upstairs

If it’s a hassle moving the loft hatch, then make sure you work upstairs. Running downstairs every time you want to raid the fridge will burn fat, and using stairs generally is great for legs and bottoms. So run up and down them anyway. The winter our heating was on a go-slow and I huddled in the kitchen all day as my office was arctic, I soon saw the difference. Not in a good way.

68 Fall in love

This works particularly well with someone who doesn’t love you back. Then you can spend hours mooning by the phone waiting for him or her not to call, feeling sick with anxiety and wondering where you’re going wrong. Advantages of this plan: you’re much too heart-broken to eat. Disadvantages: you’re also all red and blotchy from the weeping and wailing, and nobody will ever fall in love with you looking like that.

69 Have lots of great sex

(NB if you’re married, best not to let your spouse find out.). A good shag uses up to 400 calories and increases the endorphins in your body leaving you feeling naturally high without resorting to chocolate. Points in favour: you spend all your eating time bonking, and when you do come up for air, you don’t want to look unalluring by ramming food down your throat. Points against: if you’re single, you might fall in love, decide to get married and that will be your sex life gone for ever.

70 Have a crisis

(This may follow naturally from above). There are two types of emotional crisis. The one where you are too traumatised to contemplate food and spend a lot of time staring into space feeling tragic, and the sort where only two bottles of wine, half a pound of chocolate and chips with houmous will reach the spot. Make sure you develop the right kind. (NB Your partner finding out about the great sex probably comes into the first category but it also tends to be very expensive and upsets the children.)

71 Get yourself on TV

If your other half has found out, and there’s a brawl brewing, you can go on Jeremy Kyle and share it with the nation. (You might want to consider Wife Swap at the same time). Television instantly piles on ten pounds. Once you see the recording, you’ll be so horrified you’ll never eat again.

72 Drink lots of water

Sometimes we think we are hungry when really we are dehydrated and need fluids. There is a theory that drinking a glass of water before each meal will lead to feeling full quicker and therefore eating less, and another that your body needs the water in order to burn fat. Certainly if you are following the high protein approach you should drink lots to prevent putting strain on the kidneys. Water also gives you more energy, flushes out toxins (hot water with a piece of lemon in it is a good detox first thing) and improves your skin no end. Keep a bottle or glass next to you and sip away at it. Or:

73 Drink tea

I drink gallons of the stuff. Green tea with lemon, jasmine tea, herbal teas, and Darjeeling. No milk (yuck) or sugar. This is because I find it easier to drink vast quantities of fluids when they are hot (champagne excepted) and I am probably addicted to caffeine. Yes, green tea has it too but the wonderful benefits of all those free-radical-busting anti-oxidants it also contains, cancels out the negative effects. That’s my theory anyway. I am currently rather partial to tea by teapigs. For further info see http://janewenhamjones.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/jasmine-and-tea-flakes/ . You might even find a discount code.

74 Drink red wine

Thrilling news from the University of Navarra who carried out more than 30 studies looking at the effects of drinking alcohol on weight. They concluded that wine drinkers, especially men, were less likely than non-drinkers and people who drank spirits, to carry around excess fat. Then, if that wasn’t enough, scientists from Yonsei University in South Korea looked at the supernutrient resveratrol, which is found in red wine, and found that it may suppress hormones that trigger fat-storing mechanisms. Mice tested showed a significantly lower weight gain than their poor little mates who were not given the resveratrol supplement. Best of all, the red wine with the highest concentration of this excellent substance which comes from the grape skins, turns out to be Rioja, which is one of my favourites. Win, win, all round.

75 Eat eggs for breakfast

Studies have shown that if you eat eggs for breakfast you will consume, on average, 400 calories less during the rest of the day than if you have a carbohydrate-only based start to the morning. Research carried out over eight years, by Dietician Dr Carrie Ruxton, showed that those eating eggs, as opposed to cereal, felt fuller for longer and therefore ate less later on. This is presumably because eggs are high in protein, which stops you feeling hungry – why the high protein approach works so much better than the low-fat – and also, apparently, contain quite a specific sort of protein at that, which works well on feelings of satiety. More research is required but eggs may also possibly affect some appetite-related gut hormones aiding feelings of fullness. In the meantime, they certainly contain Vitamin D which regulates the amount of calcium and phosphate in the body and promotes strong bones and teeth.

Eggs are also excellent as a hangover remedy and, together with cress and mayonnaise, make the best sort of sandwich.

My Quick Egg Breakfast – and yes it really is filling!

Put a small slosh of chilli oil (you can buy this ready-made or make it yourself by infusing dried chillies in olive oil) or plain olive oil if chilli first thing is a step too far, in a bowl, and add a beaten egg (or two if you are extra hungry). Add some chopped chives or basil leaves or dried chillies if fancied, with a little pile of chopped ham (ditch this if you are a veggie obviously) and some grated cheese. Add black pepper. Stir in a large spoonful of fat-free fromage frais. Pop in the microwave on full power for one minute. What you get is a sort of sloppy omelette. If you don’t want it sloppy, omit the fromage frais. Either way, it is quick, it tastes good and you won’t want to eat for ages. Though sometimes I follow it with a couple of squares of dark chocolate. (Just to be on the safe side.)

Alternative Slow Egg Breakfast

Or you could scramble them. Without wishing to brag, scrambled eggs is one of my specialities. But the secret is to do them S L O W L Y so maybe this is one for the weekends. If you have a large pile of egg lavishly made with milk and butter and black pepper on a slice of robust brown bread (the wheat n rye quarter from Waitrose makes brilliant crunchy toast) as a mid morning brunch, it will keep you going till at least four. And you’ll end up eating less than if you had a more moderate breakfast and then ate lunch. Trust me.

76 Get pregnant

I know some women find it a difficult time but I adored being up the duff. What’s not to like? You no longer need to think about holding your stomach in and others positively encourage you to eat. You aren’t drinking so you can get the sugar your body is accustomed to by having lots of puddings. If you breastfeed later, you can eat even more, as someone else is helping to use up the calories. I was thinner afterwards than before I started (this could be because the little blighter didn’t sleep through the night till he was about twelve and I was run ragged) although unfortunately I have occasionally made up for it since. I have never quite recovered from the day in Sharm el Sheikh when an Egyptian waiter looked me up and down, pointed to my protruding abdomen and enquired: ‘You wait baby?’

He nearly got a black eye instead of a tip but there was one small comfort. He thought I was still of child-bearing age.

77 Get a fake tan

However much flesh you’ve got, there is no doubt it looks better brown. (NB this is not the same as orange). And it’s never been easier to get a tan. Though judging from some of the examples parading the high streets, might I suggest we proceed with caution. I have not tried an automatic tanning booth yet although friends seem pleased, but there are plenty of places you can get sprayed. I like having it done at home so I can wander around with almost no clothes on (you must wear loose garments afterwards). And I think the very best tans are achieved when the lotion is put on by hand and rubbed in to pre-scrubbed skin. But when the operator knows what she’s doing, a spray is good too. My lovely friend, Michaella Bolder, who is a tanner to the stars, has done both sorts for me and has set up a tanning booth in my kitchen – hilarious. Even the do-it-yourself products are a lot more natural-looking and smell a lot less foul than they once did. Fake tanning yourself is OK to fill in strap marks or give your legs a quick boost but I would never attempt any greater surface area on my own. You may be braver and if so here are Michaella’s hot tanning tips just for you.

Exfoliation and waxing or shaving is best done the day before your tan.

A 'mousse' product is easiest to use yourself, and best applied with a tanning mitt.

Use an Aloe Vera based moisturiser every day to prolong your tan and keep it looking fresh. 

And one last, hard-won piece of wisdom from me: If you have a spray tan done just before you go on holiday – do not spend the first morning sitting on the edge of the pool with your legs immersed to mid calf while you read your book. By evening you will look as if you have been wearing socks. It is not a good look.

78 Choose great swimwear

If you’re going to sit there at all, invest in good gear. Firm cups give shape, Ruching can be good – no-one knows what’s fabric and what’s you – and psychedelic colours can blind the onlooker to what’s beneath. Chaps – be sensible. Tiny teeny swimming trunks? Not unless you are seven years old. And quite frankly, even then …

79 Use a sisal sponge

I am grateful to the novelist Sarah Duncan for this tip, which she shared with me some years ago. Using a sisal-covered sponge is easier than body brushing but just as excellent in the pursuit of bump-free flesh. Big can be beautiful if it’s soft and smooth. Give yourself a good scrub in the shower, with circular, upward movements – always go towards the heart – paying particular attention to potentially flabby areas like bottom and thighs and upper arms, with this handy exfoliator and then plonk it on a radiator in winter or hang near a window in summer so it dries quickly and doesn’t become grim. You will see and feel the difference, I promise.

80 Do lovely things with vegetables

Vegetables are low in calories and high in fibre and vitamins. I’m not convinced the world will collapse if you don’t eat five a day but there’s no doubt that a pile of veg is good for you. School dinners scarred me for life and I was in my twenties before I learned to embrace broccoli or spinach but I have now learned that if you are creative, vegetables can be interesting, tasty, filling and you can eat really big platefuls of them and still lose weight. I like them with butter and grated cheese. But be adventurous and roast them with garlic, bake them in sauce, stir fry with spices or make a multi-veg curry. Because the veg themselves are low in fat you can add cream or olive oil and still get away with it.

Star-rating *****

NB Carnivores, particularly those on a very strict protein diet, may prefer to eschew veg (which are, after all, largely carbohydrate) and do lovely things with meat instead. Personally I can’t digest too much dead animal at one sitting and am slightly put off by the way the meat-only brigade have that appalling breath.

Star-rating * OK for those who don’t mind if their only friend is their butcher.

81 Eat half

This is a simple and effective way of losing weight – as long as you keep to it. Just have everything you usually have but half as much. Usually have two slices of bread for breakfast? Pop only one in your toaster. Four roast potatoes? Cut back to two. Three chocolate hobnobs? Just have two of those as well (it’s all a bit awkward to leave half a biscuit in the tin). Have a half-size portion of chips or pasta – your vegetables and salad can stay the same – and only fifty percent pudding, and you will notice the difference quite quickly. It does mean you have to leave food on your plate if eating out (difficult on a deep psychological level, I understand, if you were a war baby) but remember if it ends up stored on your hips, it’s wasted anyway.

82 Use a pedometer

A few years ago there was an NHS campaign to encourage us all to walk 10,000 steps a day and pedometers were being given away on the back of cornflakes packets. Interested to see how many steps I actually did clock up in a day, I bought one around that time and added counting my steps to my collection of small obsessions. I still walk round with what is now about my fifteenth pedometer (they get dropped, lost, broken or trodden on at an alarming rate) clipped to my waistband and attempt to do 70,000 steps a week (my average is 56,000). It serves as a good indicator of whether one is moving enough (I have been sitting at this computer for hours) and helps with target-setting. If I’ve had a particularly sedentary day I can resolve to do better tomorrow or do that trot round the block.

Similarly, If I’m feeling especially OCD and it’s raining outside, I can pace the bedroom till the magic number is met, or run up and down the stairs. I think it keeps me fit. My son thinks I am being ‘sad’.

83 Don’t do pills and potions

Obviously you wouldn’t be silly enough to believe the claims of the various ads for miracle cures that promise you will shed a stone in three days, often when you're asleep, and even if you continue to stuff yourself with deep-fried mars bars and refuse to exercise. But just in case you are ever tempted, a small tip. Once, for an article I was writing, my sister and I had an amusing time sending off for various types of these ‘diet pills’, the leaflets for which were, at the time, arriving thick and fast on the doormat. We took it seriously, swallowing down horse-sized tablets containing – allegedly – every-thing from dried grapefruit to seaweed extract, proving they didn't work and then demanding our money back. All the outfits ‘guaranteed’ refunds on returned packages, if the weight hadn't dropped off, clearly relying on the average human’s general inertia and rightly predicting that most people would be so disheartened by finding that – unlike the ‘before’ and ‘after’s in the leaflet, which we can assume are produced by airbrushing the same fat head onto a thin body – they were still waddling about after a month of swallowing essence of lemon mixed with sawdust, that the last thing they’d feel like was a hike to the post-box.

But on the off-chance they were going to encounter my sister – who has made a career of customer complaints and retrieved every penny –  they’d all cleverly written the return-address only on the coupon you sent off with your payment in the first place, or made online instructions for claiming a refund so well buried you needed a degree in archaeology to find it. If you do ever succumb to the urge to spend £49.99 on a few crushed herbs and some talcum powder – and please don’t – arm yourself with returns information first.

84 Don’t do ‘that’ diet either.

You know the one I mean don’t you? Where you eat nothing at all except a few soupy things and occasional bar things and go for group counselling every week. I’m not entirely sure if you actually have to sit in  a circle and say ‘I’m Jane and I’m a Porker’ but the whole emphasis is on breaking old patterns and changing your style of eating for ever. And I strongly suspect that there is a conspiracy afoot to pretend that during this torture, you are absolutely not hungry at all, ever, because that is what they all do claim. Even if it has been clear to me they are almost ready to chew their own leg off.

I imagine if you are paying quite a hefty fee each week for the whole package, that is a fair incentive to stick to it, but I can only tell you this. When I once managed to purloin some of the soupy things and the bar things without actually having to go and sit in the circle, I tried it for three days. At the end of the first one, I sent a text to a friend who was into her fourth month of the regime and had shed about four stone. ‘I hate this,’ I texted. ‘I am fed up, hungry, miserable, bad-tempered, tired and I have a headache.’

She replied with one word: ‘welcome.’

She was one of six people I know who followed this diet and all lost shedloads of weight – from three to an unbelievable seven, stone each. All you need to know is that several years on, every one of them is now back to the exact same weight they were when they started.

Stick with me, kids.

85 Wear statement jewellery

Massive earrings, huge nose studs or something quirkily-shaped round your neck will, I am quite sure, distract the eye from your stomach.

86 Eat little and often

The more often you eat, the more often you will raise your metabolism. Which is why I can’t help feeling that a lot of fat is piled on by living under a traditional (often bloke-controlled) regime where one is forced to eat three meals a day because that’s what one's (his in particular) mother always did, instead of the seven or eight delicate little nibbly ones which one’s internal body clock and I-feel-munchy mechanism in the brain knows, was altogether much more what nature intended. Consider sheep who never stop eating and are altogether much more harmless and pleasant creatures than say wolves or certain people’s smelly dogs, who have single huge meals that they gulp down in three seconds flat. Have you ever seen an obese sheep?

87 Prepare little protein snacks

The important thing, whether you’re actively trying to lose weight or simply maintain your current size and not descend into dispiriting grossness before next Tuesday’s work’s do, is to never let yourself get too hungry. When you’re really hungry, resolve will go out of the window. You’ll tell yourself you don’t actually give a damn if your backside won’t fit through the door, and anyway you can start again next week. All that matters at that moment of gnawing starvation is that you get that double club sandwich down your neck and get it down fast. This is where a little pre-empting comes into its own. Make sure you have plenty of healthy, filling, tasty little snacks within easy access. E.g. Quorn cocktail sausages – (you may of course like the full pig variety but I live in fear of grisly bits in the ‘real’ sausage) cubes of cheese, rolls of ham, chopped cooked chicken, nuts, prawns, pots of yoghurt, whatever floats your non-carb boat. I am suggesting protein because this is the most effective food group to bring about a feeling of satiety. (You over there, with the will of iron, feel free to nibble on fruit instead or have a nice glass of hot water.) If planning isn’t your thing, a black coffee and a few squares of that dark chocolate will work as a stop-gap. Suck the chocolate slowly, do deep breathing and think how proud you’ll be when you CAN get that zip up tomorrow.

88 Never drink on an empty stomach

If you thought your resolve was weakening before, alcohol will see if off altogether. There is a reason why a pre-dinner drink is called an appetiser. You might be entirely restrained all day but I guarantee that if you have one mouthful of wine when you’re even slightly peckish, you’ll be in that fridge like a tramp on a kipper. Have your protein snacks first or drink with a meal.

89 Eat a Tic Tac

Carry Tic Tacs or any container of diminutive mints and every time you think about eating something – suck one of these instead. It won’t be quite the same as a buttered crumpet, but at least nobody will accuse you of having halitosis though they might well think you’re waging a life-long battle against it. Some people recommend using gum in a similar way, but constant chewing, both in myself and others, gets on my nerves, , so I don’t.

90 Get some thin friends

Big friends may make you feel slender but thin friends will at least shame you. I always eat more around other people who are eating more – if they’re on double fries it feels rude not to – and I bet if you think about it, you do too. Hang out with fat friends and you’ll get fatter. Go out to lunch with thin friends who toy with their mixed leaves, send the dressing back, and hyperventilate when the bread arrives, and you’ll feel too embarrassed to stuff your own face and then have pudding.

91 Posture is everything

However much you weigh, you’ll look a whole lot leaner with a  straight back. If you have a tendency to shuffle along staring at your feet or standing in a slump with your stomach hanging out, stop now. Place yourself in front of a mirror and stand tall. Relax your shoulders, hold your head erect and look where the horizon would be. See the difference? Now stay like that. And walk like it too.

92 Tie a string round your waist

Or a nice classy piece of ribbon. It acts as an aide memoir to remind you to hold your stomach muscles in. There are a hundred exercises you can do to tighten your abs – but simply holding your muscles in and keeping them there is the simplest and the one you can do anywhere (a bit like pelvic floor squeezes but these make me squeamish). Stand up and draw your stomach muscles in so your waist circumference visibly shrinks. Then tie your string around your newly-narrowed middle – not so tightly it cuts off your circulation obviously, but so that you feel the pull of it when you forget and let it all hang out again. I am of course trialling this for you – all these tips are exhaustively tried and tested (with the possible exception of the great sex) – and have now been holding my stomach muscles in for half an hour. The idea is that eventually they will do it all on their own without me thinking about it. I don’t think they are quite ready to yet.

93 Watch the camera

The proliferation of camera phones is a scourge of our times and I am fed up with lardy photos of me popping up on Facebook. Not much you can do about that but un-tag them pronto and give the ‘photographer’ a roasting when you next see him/her. But when you are aware of what is going on, there are a few simple precautions you can take. When photographed in a group, don’t stand on the end. Bulldoze your way into the middle, put your arm around the shoulders of the person either side of you and hide your fat bits behind them. When pictured on your own, hold your arms away from your body, suck in your stomach – see above – and then find someone good with PhotoShop.

94 Buy tummy tuck jeans

These clever trousers, also known as Not Your Daughter's Jeans, are not your regular legwear – the range has been specially designed to flatten your tummy and lift your bottom.

You buy these unlikely garments several sizes smaller than you would usually contemplate (I squeezed myself into a UK size four!) and prepare to be amazed. One looks a size smaller at least – and somehow taller – yet once you’ve had them on for half an hour, the stretchiness makes them as comfortable as leggings. The price might take your breath away but, boy, are they worth it. Mine are black with sparkly bits but they come in different colours. If you saw them on the hanger and then looked me up and down you’d never believe I could get them on. (After sitting for a week at this computer, I’m not sure I do either.)

95 Whiten your teeth

Bright gnashers are always attractive and one of those kits where you have put the bleaching gel in the rubber dental moulds and clamp them over your teeth for hours on end are relatively inexpensive and effective. They also make it totally impossible to eat.

96 Wield the iron

And do the rest of the housework while you’re at it. Yes life may be short – but there is no doubt that giving the house a blitz is an excellent work-out. Ironing tones those arms (again); dragging the hoover upstairs will help legs and stomachs. Taking the rubbish out, dusting that top shelf – it all promotes muscle tone, and fat burning. Not convinced? I’d rather pay someone else too …

97 Swallow it too

If you’re on a silly diet, make sure you are getting the right vitamins and minerals. Sometimes cravings are your body’s way of saying what it needs. If you’re mainlining chocolate brazil nuts for example, perhaps you need selenium. If you’re just sucking the chocolate off you might want iron. If you’ve eaten three doughnuts, four cookies and an apple pie and it’s only 11 a.m., you want to get a grip before you’re the size of Dorset.

98 Take comfort from research

A number of important studies – both proper university research-based and anecdotal, as well as a straw poll round my male mates – have shown that men like voluptuous females. Researchers at the University of Los Angeles (rather wasting time and money, I feel, when they could just have asked me) confirmed that while women like slim men (each to his own – personally I’d rather have a muscle-bound hunk), men like curves. So good news for all you generously built females and sorry, chaps, but don’t be too disheartened. It was LA after all. In the real world, women, as I’m sure you know, don’t much care what men look like as long as they a) make us laugh, and b) are tolerant about shopping for shoes. Big cuddly men are just fine – as long as you don’t take up the entire bed and are still fit enough to carry the wine in.

99 Don’t fight it

So carrying on from above, and in an attempt to reach some sort of conclusion before my own writer’s bottom is beyond help – while it is desirable to be fit and healthy, there is no point feeling despondent and guilty about one’s natural shape. Any diet that attempts to give us a figure that only about three per cent of women are actually genetically programmed to have, is going to take up far too much concentration and energy, be exceedingly dispiriting and dull, and you would basically have to stay on it for ever. Look at the malnourished twig-people, wafting up the catwalk wearing clothes that you or I couldn’t get one leg in – do they look happy?

Being realistic is the key.

There have been times when I have turned to the Lose-ten-pounds-in-three-days-and-it-will-change-your-life Diet Manuals with as much alacrity as the next woman. And I have lost that weight. But in my natural, eat-what-I-like state, these are some of the expressions that that nobody would use about me:

‘Skinny’, ‘Thin’, ‘Petite’, ‘Are you anorexic?’ ‘God, I wish I had a body like yours…’ (actually my friend Julia – formerly Jonathan – did say this when she was saving up for her operation), ‘I think you’d look better if you put on some weight…’

Words that have been employed include: ‘Cuddly’, ‘well-built’, ‘soft’, ‘chunky’, ‘I’d like to go to bed with you …’

Take particular note of the last one and refer to point 99. Being somewhat bigger than everyone on Sex and the City, does not make you unattractive. Remember:

Marilyn Monroe was still, famously, a size sixteen.

Photos of the young Elizabeth Taylor reveal a definite tummy and well-rounded limbs, yet most would agree she was one of the most exquisitely beautiful creatures ever.

It never did Dawn French any harm.

Very thin people look lovely in magazines but in real life they can be quite annoying. You wonder why they bother going to a restaurant at all just to suck on a piece of lettuce and who wants a non-wheat, non-dairy, can’t-eat-fat, what’s-its carb-content, I hope-there’s-no-sugar-in-that, teetotaller round to dinner? Nice, fun, rounded guests are much more the ticket. The truth is the most gorgeous, interesting, sexy people are those who are happy in their skins. And what’s more likely to bring that about? Walking around light-headed from starvation, squashed into a bone-crushing corset looking at endless days of carrot juice and protein shakes?

Or having another chocolate?

100 Have another chocolate

Please refer to point one.