Here's how to... eat chips while you're on a diet (and still lose weight)

With a hell of a lot of us making that same-old-same-old resolution to lose weight ("THIS year I'll finally do it!" you tell yourself, while eyeing up those leftover Quality Street), it's no surprise most stumble at the first hurdle. Just one night out on the town can ruin a week's hard work. And now we're at the very end of January, we're sure a few have fallen off whichever wagon they were riding. So we spoke to Louise Graham, author of Can I Have Chips, who explained why a fad diet is never going to work. And that you can have chips, even on a diet.

Losing weight is hard work; keeping it off is even harder. I should know because I was a yo-yo dieter until I realised the error of my ways. I discovered there's no silver bullet for long-term weight loss, despite what popular diets suggest. If I wanted to lose weight and stay slim I would need to have a radical rethink of my eating habits. What a relief it was to free myself from the cycle of binge and bust, and eat normally (albeit abstemiously).

5:2 diet, Atkins or bog standard calorie counting. You name it, I did it. I spent so much of my life obsessing about food and there was only so long I could keep it up. I decided to use my training as a clinical pharmacologist to research a scientifically sound diet, one I was able to sustain and that didn't alienate me from friends and family.

It is easy to blame us dieters for our lack of staying power but every time I started losing weight I felt so hungry that I soon caved in. Not only did my weight go back on but I invariably ended up fatter than before I started dieting. I knew it was not my fault. It was my body's way of stopping me from starving to death. Research showed that once I started dieting I needed to maintain my new lower weight for six months before my appetite went back down to normal. This explained why faddy diets that you can't stick to lead to rebound weight gain.

After extensive research of the latest obesity studies, I developed my own eating plan based on the only type of diet that has been scientifically shown to be effective for long term weight loss. It is high in appetite suppressing protein to compensate for the increase in hunger triggered by dieting, and low in appetite stimulating sugary foods. Harder to digest starchy carbs prevent food cravings, and vegetables and fruit provide bulk.

The diet in Can I Have Chips? is made up of two phases. Phase One is the weight reduction phase, and phase two teaches you how to maintain what you have lost while living in the real world. During weight loss, creating a calorie deficit is the priority. I found the easiest way to do this is to ditch the sugary drinks and snacks and fill up on three protein rich meals a day of real food low in added sugar and fat. Simple, realistic, affordable and it works. Hardly surprising when this is how our grandparents ate in the days when hardly anyone was overweight.

But your attempts at dieting are likely to be short lived unless you are also prepared to make some mental changes. Take portions sizes for a start. They are getting larger and larger, so share with a friend or ask for a doggy bag – no you don’t really have to have a doggy. Swap some of those yummy processed foods for a virtuous apple, some nuts or even a few fat chips! They are much less fattening than pastry as they contain water.

Create some useful strategies like studying restaurant menus online before going out so that you can make healthy choices. Tune into what your body wants you to eat and when it tells you to stop. Not too difficult when your appetite control mechanisms cease to be corrupted by fast foods. Start to find the upside in all life throws at you. You will feel in a better mood and less inclined to treat yourself like a dustbin to be filled with rubbish.

You are bound to fall off the wagon from time to time, but don't wait until the next day to do something about it, just get straight back on and soon you will be well on your way to the body you desire.

What do you think? Is this making sense, or are you sticking t juicing, and greener-than-green kale shakes? Let us know below! If you want to know more, visit www.canihavechips.co.uk.