A diet that's right for you

With more pressure than ever on people to look good where should you turn to find a diet that suits your needs? Although maintaining a healthy eating plan is what we should all be aiming for, fad diets are becoming increasingly popular.

With many of Hollywood's rich and famous claiming to owe their stunning figures to the latest fad diet, it can come as no surprise that many people are trying to lose weight on the most bizarre diets.

The Atkins' Diet

The Atkins' diet is basically a high-protein and low-carbohydrate diet, based on the theory that too many carbohydrates prevent the body from burning fat, and that dieters should, therefore, fill up on protein instead.

When following the Atkins' plan, dieters can eat large quantities of protein such as meat, fish, shellfish, poultry, eggs and cheese. Foods that contain large amounts of carbohydrate, such as pasta, bread and potatoes are not allowed, as are those with large amounts or refined sugar.

The pounds do tend to drop off very quickly when beginning this diet, but mostly that is due to loss of water. The down-side, however, is that high-protein foods like meat and cheese also tend to be full of saturated fat and cholesterol, which is not good news for the heart nor general health.

The Grapefruit Diet

Grapefruit is believed to contain a special fat-burning enzyme, and as such this diet became very popular in Hollywood.

Dieters following this diet plan eat mainly grapefruit as the name suggests, but they may also have black coffee, salad, melba toast and eggs, although some versions also allow meat and fish. The calories consumed on this diet usually don't add up to more than 800 a day, which makes it a very low calorie diet.

Because the calorie cutback is so severe, dieters usually lose a lot of weight initially. However, it can become very monotonous, and therefore isn't easy to stick to. It's also important to remember that any diet based on one food alone cannot provide all the nutrition your body needs to be healthy.

Cabbage Soup Diet

This is the hot diet at the moment. For one week dieters eat nothing but cabbage soup, made from cabbage, onions, green peppers, tinned tomatoes, celery, soup mix and water. Dieters can down as much of this soup each day as they please, plus one type of specified food such as fruit or vegetables.

However, the weight loss on this diet is mainly just water, as cabbage isn't known to have any calorie-burning powers. Even worse, some dieters complain of excess wind, nausea and generally feeling unwell when following this plan.

Advice from the British Nutrition Foundation says that there is no scientific evidence to prove any of these diets work in the long term, and everybody who wants to loose weight should aim to follow a nutritionally balanced, low fat diet.

The best way to do this is to restrict the amount of fatty foods you consume by cutting them out of your diet altogether, or by replacing them with lower fat alternatives, such as yoghurt instead of cream on deserts, and tomato-based rather than creamy pasta sauces.

A good guideline to follow to help you lose weight but also provide you with a healthy diet is to:

- Eat three meals a day. Skipping breakfast does not usually help you to lose weight as it makes you more likely to snack during the morning.

- If you know you will want to snack during the day, have a supply of fruit, vegetables, yoghurt or other low fat snacks at hand.

- Choose low-fat foods whenever possible, such as skimmed milk, extra lean meat or low fat spread.

- When cooking food always bake, steam or grill it rather than frying, and never add any extra fat to food when you are cooking.

- Cut down on alcohol, drinking no more than one unit a day.

- Watch out for products that are labelled 'low fat', but are still full of calories, such as cakes and biscuits.

- Exercise regularly, as this is the most effective way of burning calories