One of the biggest mistakes most people make when undertaking a new diet is to completely cut out the foods they love. This is the single biggest cause for the binging sessions that ruin a diet and, in some cases, end it all together.

It is incredibly likely that at least some of your favourite foods are high in fat, and therefore every diet in the land will tell you to forsake them. However, you should always view a diet as a lifestyle change, or you’ll spend your life yo-yoing from one weight to another. Looking at it like this, is it really possible that you’ll never touch your favourite foods, ever again? Of course not, and that’s why diets tend to fail.

The key word here is ‘moderation’. There is truly nothing wrong with having a curry on a Friday night, so long as it isn’t every Friday night. Make it a monthly event, set in the calendar, that you can look forward to. But you must be strict – if you break and indulge in a curry before that set date, the date needs to move back another four weeks.

If a calendar-strict system of operation won’t work, then perhaps altering the days on which you diet will. Try dieting 80% of the time, or put simply, on week days. Most of our socialising – and therefore, our indulgent eating – happens on the weekend anyway. So make Saturday and Sunday a diet-free zone and indulge. You aren’t going to lose weight as quickly this way, but it definitely is more conducive to building a slimmer lifestyle that you can stick with for years.

Then there are the small changes you can make to your favourite foods that keep the essential reason you enjoy them but lower the fat content. Making foods more diet friendly takes a little effort, but it’s worth it. For example, a typical English fry-up is calorie laden and would make most dieticians scream with horror. Yet with a little alteration, it might be a little heavier than salad, but it’s not in the red zone.

To begin, switch from frying or scrambling eggs to poaching. When choosing your bacon, be selective, buying cuts with as little fat as possible – then grill, not fry. You can also try microwaving bacon, which is even better, but it is something of an acquired taste. 

Switch the butter for your toast to a low fat one, grill your sausages, leave a tomato uncooked and use low-fat baked beans. Small changes, but big ones when it comes to fat content.