Hold the Chocolate ...

Just a couple of weeks ago I made plans to rein in my eating and lose some weight. With hindsight it was not the best of timing to start just before my birthday. Birthdays mean chocolate. Diet? What diet?

I do, however, have a couple of recommended methods of damage limitation for slightly (ahem) overweight people who need to dispose of diet busting amounts of chocolate . The first - and least appealing - is to let your children help you eat it. Your children love you for it, but you do have to resist the temptation to develop a martyr complex as you watch all your yummy brown stuff disappear.

The second may have no scientific basis, but it is a great theory. If you attack the chocolate with gusto, eat large quantities in one go and finish it up quickly you put on less weight than if you eke it out over a longer period.

Excuse me, but a bar of Green and Black's is calling ...