Dave has never been thin. He was a heavy baby (nearly 11lbs…) and grew from there. The only thing that had got him to lose weight before was eating seafood in India (not a recommended way of losing weight!)

I've never had a great relationship with my body. I put up with it because I'm attached to it, but it's soft, unfit and generally soaks up a lot of abuse from my lifestyle excesses.

After changing my diet quite significantly to lower the fat content, and taking up some light regular exercise I was getting frustrated that I wasn't losing weight. I was 13 and a half stone (189 pounds or 86 kilos) and I'm only 5ft 8 (173cm). I wasn't fat, but I was heavy and it showed not just in a beer gut, but on my face, which really narked me.

Now I don't have much will-power. In fact I'm quite an addictive person, and I saw the Atkins as a simple way of losing weight without much pain. However worries about how it affected your health and whether it even worked stopped me for two years.

Finally a friend, Kath from Surrey Dietetic Services, did some work on the effects of the diet. One of the volunteers was Chris, her husband, and he lost weight fine, came off the diet and kept it off. OK, so he has the advantage of being married to a doctor of dietetics whilst helping another dietician doing a PhD on low-carb diets, but surely if he can, I can, right?

Anyhow, I duly purchased by copy of the Atkins diet book and ploughed through it. There are about four useful pages buried half-way through that actually tell you what you can and can't eat. Surrey Dietetic Services provide a great summary, complete with recipes and a shopping list as a reminder of what you can have.

If you don't have this, or aren't married to your own dietician here is Dave's simple rules of thumb:

Basically Atkins works by depriving your body of carbohydrate intake - its usual energy source, so it has to burn fat, making you lose weight.

Eat low carb stuff - you're allowed 20 grams a day for the two week kick-start called induction, and can then add five grams to your daily allowance each week. The idea is that you find an equilibrium and stay there forever. I haven't found the need to and it's probably not healthy, I just stayed on it until I'd lost as much weight as I wanted.

20 grams of carbohydrate is naff-all. It's something like a pint of full-fat milk. Basically it means you can eat meat, fish, eggs and some vegetables. That's it. You can't eat anything sweet unless it's artificial sweetener, not even healthy stuff like fruit. Also nothing with starch, so no root veg, bread, or Italian restaurants (some curries are OK and French food is mostly cool)

You will need to take vitamins, maybe a fibre supplement (you don't need an explanation here) and you need to drink a prodigious amount of water. I found I didn't lose weight unless I did some exercise, but I just tried to do a 30 min walk a night, so nothing strenuous.

Atkins tells you to keep off the sauce, which maybe fine in the Presbyterian US, but in the UK it is unrealistic for a pub-based social culture. I still went out and got drunk at weekends, but stuck to spirits with low-carb mixers (like gin 'n' slimline tonic) or wine. Beer is right out, that's the worst bit. Also, don't ask for a gin 'n' slim at the snooker club; they didn't even have gin, let alone appreciate a posh boy on a diet.

It also says to keep of caffeine. My metabolism went through the floor (as burning fat is less efficient) and so I had loads of coffee. I still lost weight. It's not scientific, but it worked for me.

The main difficulty I had was breakfast in the first few weeks. Now cooking bacon and eggs is alright at weekends, but on a Monday at 6:15am with your eyelids stuck together it's a health hazard. After experimenting with cold meat, I gave up breakfast. Chris did a blinder with sugar-free jelly, if you like it Atkins will be easier. Once I had a bigger carb allowance in later weeks I had yoghurt and nuts and stuff for breakfast.

Basically there's not much range to what you can eat, so I got a bit bored of it, but stick with it and weigh yourself obsessively and you see the results quickly. I lost one and a half stone (10 Kg, 21 pounds) in two months and wasn't exactly religious about the diet.

If you get the chance, measure yourself before you start. I went down three belt notches, but wished I had measured for the full before and after effect. I even went down a notch on my watch-strap, now that's scary…

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