My Health and Fitness column for February's Magnet Magazine

Most diets fail because they are unsustainable, with lists of unrealistic rules and strict limitations that are too complex to stick to or by just being downright unhealthy!

One of the main reasons people find diets hard to stick to is feeling hungry. 

Rather than breakfast, many people instead begin their day with strong willpower and good intentions, not eating until lunchtime, congratulating themselves on sticking to a couple of crackers and some celery, foregoing any further snacks until mid afternoon when they finally cave and devour anything and everything in sight!  Eventually their fuel-starved brain wins and they seek the calories they’ve missed all day.  Sound familiar?

The best way to avoid this is to eat well and eat early.  Start every day with a good breakfast – avoiding, of course, sugary choices.  Then make sure you have a snack between breakfast and lunch of fruit or vegetables or seeds or nuts, try to include protein with your snack as well (meat, fish, eggs, cottage cheese and Greek yoghurt are great sources).  After lunch, which should include vegetables or salad as well as protein and healthy fat (think avocados, olive oil, nuts, full fat Greek yoghurt etc.) you need to make sure you have at least one more snack before dinner – again avoiding processed foods and refined sugar.

If you keep yourself regularly well-fuelled and healthily nourished like this all day, you will find the urge to raid the kitchen cupboards and snack all evening disappears!  So ditch the diets and eat your way to sensible weight loss!

For more tips on healthy breakfasts and sugar-free baking, have a look at the paleo recipe page.