Watch Tips How to lose weight in Summer

We’ve all heard the advice: if we want to lose weight, we need to eat less and move more. It seems simple enough, but it’s a largely useless proposition without a plan.

What I've found to be effective (and what I've written about in several books) is the 5:2 approach to intermittent fasting. This requires calories to be slashed to a quarter of the usual intake (that’s about 500 calories for a woman, 600 for a man) just two days a week. The other five days, you eat normally.

Do this, and you can expect to see changes on the scales, and, crucially, significant benefits to your health, including lowering the risk of a number of age-related diseases.

So what realistic, daily steps can you make right now to take you from hopeful words to guaranteed action? Below are my top 9 weight-loss tips; try some, or all, of these for six weeks and you may well find that you’ve gone down a size, but — far more importantly — you’ll have started to modify your appetite and your attitude to food.