Most of us have at one time thought we might like to lose a few pounds. Perhaps you’ve noticed your jeans getting tighter, or you have a special occasion coming up for which you’d like to look your best. Whatever the reason, it’s always a good time to become healthier and happier.

To achieve a goal of healthy, sustainable weight loss, extreme diets are rarely the answer. The temptation to achieve fast results by crash dieting often leads to piling more weight on in the long run, and punitive, restrictive eating regimes can suck all the joy out of life. Exercise alone is not the answer either – it’s often said that you can’t out-train a bad diet, and that weight loss truly happens in the kitchen.