It's odd the way that some foods act as a trigger for becoming a manic and overeating everything around them. The type of food varies from person to person but that particular item makes all willpower disappear immediately and diets come to an abrupt end. Some people find that eating just a crumb of cheese does this, for others it's chocolate or sweets. For me the fatal one is ..... Crisps. I don't know why but all I have to do is to eat just one solitary crisp and I become a manic, consuming not just all the crisps in that packet but also every other food I had previously given up while trying to lose weight.

I have, over the last few weeks lost almost a stone in weight and some inches from my body to boot. I still want to lose more and, hopefully, make a rather obvious stomach disappear. I am not eating much at all - 2 slices of toast for breakfast, homemade soup and some fruit salad midday and two (small) rolls filled with cold meat in the evening, with some fresh fruit for munchies if I'm hungry. Eating like this makes me feel healthy and the weight is shifting, slowly but it is shifting.

However, walking today through the local Tesco I still avoided the isle where the crisps were set out. Just looking at the huge range of colourful packets of them, whether Small, Medium or Large, made me think how ephemeral a diet can be. I swear that eating them acts like a compulsion to me, then I just have to eat all sorts of fattening foods, not just that day but the next day and the day after and the next .... I suppose it's a bit like an alcoholic afraid to have one drink, in case it starts him drinking too much again. So it's self- discipline for me, with the hope that yet more pounds and inches will disappear.