Let's get one thing out of the way first. A lot of nonsense is written about low carbohydrate diets. Google low carb diets and you'll find lots of dire warnings from doctors about how dangerous they are.

Now Google low carb diets for epilepsy, and you'll find low carb diets have been prescribed to control epilepsy in children for years. And strangely, there's no suggestion such a diet is bad or dangerous for these kids, even though they're young and growing! So why should it be risky for you?

The risk to health, if you stay on the diet for a long time, is that you may not eat a properly balanced diet - especially if there are a lot of vegetables or protein foods you don't like. But that risk is easily avoided. Just opt for one of the "modified carb" diets out there - diets that limit carbohydrates but don't banish them altogether. They're just as effective, easier to stick to and give you a wider range of nutrients.

The basic principle of low carb dieting is - yes, you guessed it - not eating carbs (carbohydrates)! For a good explanation of how it makes you lose weight, read Dr Richard Bernstein's article (note once again, that there's no mention of health risks when diabetics follow this diet, so why should it be a problem for you?)

Obviously, you can't avoid carbohydrates if you don't know what they are. So your first step must be to identify which foods are high in carbs. Most of us could name the biggest offenders - sugar, bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, cake - but there are some that might surprise you. Fruit, for instance, and alcohol. Don't assume!

Most low carbohydrate diets are "all or nothing". You'll have to give up all the major carbohydrate foods completely for the duration. They'll tell you that's going to be painless, because you can eat unlimited amounts of other foods so you'll never be hungry. But if you're a carbohydrate addict, no amount of other foods is quite going to go the trick...

If you quail at the thought of giving up chocolate cake (or sourdough bread, or chocolate almonds, or [insert your drug of choice here]), then chances are you're addicted to carbs!

In a way, it really is an addiction. The mechanism isn't quite understood, but it has to do with the levels of blood sugar and insulin that arise when you eat these foods. To find out if you're addicted, take the Carbohydrate Addicts' Quiz.

Because it's not fully understood, doctors disagree on the way to break the addiction. Some say you should go cold turkey - sign up for a strict low carb diet like Atkins. Others say you should still eat carbs but look for low GI foods. Then there are the diets which try to ease the pain by giving you a day off now and then.

The problem with that approach is, it doesn't work for other drugs (like cigarettes). How many smokers could give up on a regime that said, "don't smoke all week, but smoke as much as you like on Sundays"? So I generally don't recommend this method. However, there is one system which allows treats which I do recommend:

The Carbohydrate Addicts' Diet has been around a long time. It isn't trendy, but it works. Why?

• It recognises that addicts love the food they're being asked to give up, so going cold turkey is beyond their willpower.
• It enables you to eat "a little of what you fancy" every day - in a way that eases your cravings but doesn't re-ignite your addiction.
• It's easy to maintain a balanced, healthy range of foods
• There's almost no counting or calculating
• The eating pattern it teaches can be followed for life, without feeling deprived
• You can entertain or have a night out without breaking the diet, and no one will even notice!

The diet works like this:

The bad news is that for most of the day, you must eat only low-carb foods. The only exception allowed is a little milk for a cup of tea or coffee - no caramel lattes! The book gives you the list of "allowed" foods, but you'll find equivalent lists in most low-carb diet books. Basically, you're restricted to vegetables, meat, fish and eggs.

So, for breakfast you might have bacon and eggs or an omelet. Lunch might be a salad or steak and mixed vegetables. Don't worry about the bacon fat or the marbling in the steak, fats and oils are fine on this diet. Snack if you like, but only on low-carb foods.

The good news is that at dinner, you can eat anything you like. Yes, you heard right! Of course, there's a catch.

• First, you must begin your evening meal with a salad. I don't mean one lettuce leaf and a slice of tomato, I mean a big bowl of salad - any kind so long as it has lots of green leaves in it.
• Second, you must complete your evening meal in one hour. Counting from your first mouthful of salad to your last piece of dessert, you cannot eat for one second more than 60 minutes.
• Once you've finished your evening meal, you are not allowed to eat anything else until breakfast.

That, in a nutshell, is the diet. Because you don't have to be picky about what food you eat at dinner, you can dine out without worrying (provided you stick to your time limit, of course). And if you're invited out to lunch or want to throw a barbecue on the weekend, you can make that your special meal and eat low-carb for dinner instead.

Personally, I found it much easier to stick to this diet than any other I've tried. I could resist temptation during the day, knowing I only had to last until dinnertime to have whatever I was craving. If I was having a particularly good day, I would eat a low-fat, fairly low-carb meal for dinner too - but on the nights when I ate a piece of cheesecake, I didn't have to feel guilty!

To begin with, I missed my sweet treats during the day, but I was surprised at how quickly my brain retrained itself not to expect sweet things till dinnertime. In fact, I lost my sweet tooth to the point where I didn't even feel like dessert at dinner (shock, horror!) - though, perhaps unfortunately, I haven't lost my taste for a nice drop of red....

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All text copyright Marisa Wright. Photos from Flickr.com - Muffin top courtesy of size8jeans. Chocolate cake photo from Renata Diem.