your family to a more active lifestyle and some tasty low fat eating instead.

Typically, an adult gains five to seven pounds over the Christmas Season, and makes a New Year's Resolution to get it off in the coming year! Unfortunately, many people get desperate when the new year begins and will try anything in an effort to lose weight and become slim. Many weight loss schemes only result in temporary weight loss and in fact can result in weight gain in the long run! The appeal of effortlessly slenderising without changing lifelong eating habits or without exercising is very tempting. Unfortunately, you cannot melt off fat in saunas, whirlpools, steam baths, or body wraps; you cannot rub it off with vibrators, rolling machines, exercise tables or massages; nor can you dissolve it away with weird diets, formulas or pills. Fat can only be lost when your body muscle burns it up, through appropriate exercise and a fat and calorie reduced diet.

Before you try any diet scheme or gimmick you need to be a detective -- investigate, before you participate. Find out all you can about the product or practice being promoted. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is too good to be true! There are hundreds of diets promoted through books and magazines; just because they have been published or are written by a doctor or nutritionist is no guarantee they are healthy or reliable.

Your weight is a result of your way of life -- be it from eating too much food and/or from lack of activity. Thinness or fatness does not occur overnight or in days or weeks, it occurs from months and years of established routine habits.

The key to weight control is not dieting but changing your lifestyle habits as they relate to food and activity, over a period of time. The problem with most people is that they are too impatient and want to lose weight quickly, a promise that many diets make ... what they forget to tell you is that you are likely to gain it all back, and more! You need to take a closer look at what and how you presently eat and exercise and determine how you can make effective modifications. Modifying the way you eat does not mean never being able to eat the foods you love. It means making gradual changes to modify your present diet to bring about gradual long-term weight loss. You cannot change everything at once. Draw up a long-term plan of positive changes, start with one or two changes, and add new ones over time.

In most cases it means learning how to cut fat and calories safely from your diet. You can accomplish this by: eating high fat and high calorie foods less often, in smaller portions, with little or no added fats such as butter, margarine, mayonnaise, using lower fat substitutes, such as skim milk and non fat milk products, using lower fat cooking methods, eating snack foods -- chips, chocolates etc. -- less often and in smaller portion What about exercise? Do you: Have much activity in your day-to-day life -- use stairs instead of elevators, walk instead of drive? Participate in active leisure time pursuits such as gardening, golf, tennis? Get regular physical exercise such as brisk walking, jogging, etc., a minimum of three times a week? If you answered no to any of these questions, particularly the third one, you are not getting enough physical activity. Your activity level is probably such that your fat burning capacity is reduced so that you are more likely to be fat. Exercise can increase your metabolic rate (ability to burn calories) and promote fat burning, so it is an essential part of any weight control programme.

The Department of Health recommends that you and your family get 30 to 60 minutes of vigorous exercise a minimum of five times per week. The exercise does not have to be anything fancy -- brisk walking is a great exercise, one that you and your family can enjoy together.

It is important to realise that any diet that offers quick weight loss is just temporarily fooling you and the weighing scales. Permanent fat loss can only be achieved by adapting your eating habits and activity patterns for the rest of your life. Betsy Baillie, Nutritionist, Department of Health.