If you’ve got the perfect body and the perfect diet to go with it then you won’t need to read this article. For the rest of us the Easter chocolate feast is over and it’s time to start losing weight for the summer.

Just one look at last year’s strappy tops and shorts can be enough to make us cringe. Are you a martyr to the yo-yo dieting and the tiresome struggle to shed those unwanted pounds, only to have them creep back on in half the time it took to lose them? Well join the club.

If you take a walk around the health and nutrition section of any bookstore the amount of diets on offer is mind-blowing. For example there’s the seasonal detox diet, the watercress soup diet, the starch-free diet, the south beach diet, the Atkins diet, and one of the latest is the G.I. diet, (glycemic index) and that’s to name but a few.

The question is do they work? Well, temporarily they can do but, unfortunately there’s no miracle diet and the weight always seems to go back on. According to the experts, this is because most of the time when we lose weight by adjusting our diet, its just fluid and not fat we’re losing.

Sadly, there is no way to lose a pound of excess fat without burning 3,500 calories. So, instead of worrying about dieting we should be concentrating more on exercise.

The trouble with diets is they’re just plain boring. We’re all striving for that perfect body and we want results fast. It’s no surprise we’re becoming impatient when we can turn onto programmes like ‘Nip Tuck’, ‘The Swan’, ‘10 Years Younger’ and ‘Extreme Makeover’. You can have an eye lift, a brow lift, tummy tuck, breast reshaping and a whole new set of teeth in the length of time it takes to watch two episodes of Coronation Street.

Very soon a visit to the Plastic Surgeon will be as common as a visit to the Hairdressers or the Dentist, it’s already high on the list for loans after cars and holidays.

Over on Channel 4 there’s ‘You Are What You Eat’ with Gillian McKeith. This is the slow, painful approach, where she takes an extremely overweight person and helps them to change their whole lifestyle and diet.

Gillian helps them to clear their presses of all the stodgy comfort foods they’ve been eating for years and replaces them with plenty of green leaves, pumpkin seeds and nettle tea etc.

There’s also a very tough exercise programme including a visit to the GYM three or four times a week, which is extremely difficult if you’ve not exercised in years. This is a very drastic change and although it may have immediate results it could become very monotonous after a while.

There is an alternative to these extreme measures, it’s called the ‘Just eat less than you used to diet’. Some of the stars like Halle Berry, and Jennifer Garner say that big food is out and portion control is in, and for once it’s a diet that’s gimmick-free, you don’t count calories, carbs or G.I. you simply eat whatever you like (being sensible of course) but in much smaller quantities than you used to.

It’s not about starving yourself either or a return to the ‘Nouvelle Cuisine’ of the nineteen eighties when it was all design and no substance. The days of supersizing are gone and the days of smart sizing are here.

If you are eating out a lot or someone else is cooking for you, the secret is to stop when you are 75% full, and the rest of the time you make sure to serve yourself a smaller portion than normal.

Always put down your knife and fork between bites and try to leave something on the plate even if it’s only one bean. Combine this with a good, brisk walk at least three times a week, and any other exercise you can do like swimming, cycling, skipping or dancing. Eating less will help with weight loss, but you need the exercise for toning up. Good Luck!