I thought that I would do something a little different from my recipes. About four years ago I thought that I would try something a little different to bring my wait down - I would start the Atikins Diet. I had never tried an actual, set diet before, so the Atkins would be as good as any.

I started off by buying an Atkins Cookbook - I spent a couple of weeks delving into it, making up shopping lists and deciding on which meals to make on certain days. As they tell you at the start of the book, on the days leading up to the start get rid of foods that might help you, or eat foods that you like - so that you won't crave them for a while.

One of the big selling points with Atkins is that you are actually encouraged to eat foods that you would never be allowed to eat on other diets, full-fat cream, steak, bacon and cheese are all things that you can gorge on. Well, not quite gorge, as there is a daily limit of 20 grams of carbs, this effectively means that fruit and veg are also confined to the garbage!

So, here I was - on the first morning of the diet, getting my scrambled eggs and bacon ready. It seemed exciting at the time, probably my most unhealthy home-prepared breakfast in ages - but on a diet.

This was not to last though, due to not taking any carbs I was hungry again after half an hour - I had to fight it though, because as you are told, you must stick rigidly to the diet, any sort of deviation would lead to actually gaining weight. So I fought the hunger pains, which were soon to be joined by a splitting headache. Lunch was to offer brief respite from hunger pains, but due to the small amount of food that could be consumed it wasn't to last long.

I managed to fight through the early weeks as my body struggled to get by with a lot less calories - and a lot less of the nutrients that it needed to get by. During this time the weight was dropping off dramatically - in the early stages I was losing half a stone per week. Getting up in the morning was the most exciting time of the day, as I could go through and see how much weight I had lost from the previous day.

As you progress on the Atkins you sort of begin to get a feel of what sort of things are satisfying to eat and what isn't. Most of the recipes in the book take an awful long time to prepare and are over far too quickly. I found myself eating a lot of smoked fish, steak and burgers. I even found low-carb beer - which was great, because alcohol is usually a no-no - but a couple of small bottles on a Saturday was no problem.

I was really enjoying the diet at this time, People were taking notice of my weight loss wherever I went and I was fitting into clothes that I hadn't been able to fit in for so long that they had gone out of fashion!

About 3 months of the diet I talked with my wife about taking a weekend off. It was getting a little boring never being able to get out and eat - so for one weekend we went out for a nice meal and a few drinks. The result of this was that I managed to put on almost half a stone over 2 days. Nevermind, when you went back on the diet it would come straight off again.

Over a 4 months period I lost about 4-5 stone. To be completely honest I wasn't feeling the benefits that all that weight loss should have been. My feet felt like lumps of lead, I had a perma-headache, seemed like I was always constipated and I carried a sort of gaunt expression only seen on a starved refugee. My parents voiced their concern - but I was riding a wave of weightloss and was prepared to put up with this.

The problem getting was that now the weightloss wasn't dramatic, but the work to do it had stopped feeling to easy. So, after much discussion with my long-suffering wife, I decided to come off the diet. Albeit onto a low-fat, high-fibre diet.

After coming off the diet my weight loss halted. I haven't been able to lose weight since. I no longer leap onto the scales to check my weight with the same joy that a youngster opens gifts on christmas day.

That was 2 and a half years ago. I don't think that I have had a really bad diet since. I feel that I got rid of some bad eating habits on the Astkins. Inspite of this I have managed to put back on all the weight that I had lost. My unfashionable clothes have been consigned to the back of the wardrobe, and my once-loved Atkins book was consigned to the trash