Summer is over, the air feels crisp and blustery, the leaves on the trees are a kaleidoscope of yellows and reds while the days are getting shorter and the nights longer.

You can already see hints of Christmas in the air -- banners outside of pubs and restaurants advertising their Christmas menu; Christmas gifts and plum puddings gradually being added to the supermarket shelves.

Soon the diet industry will also start its weight loss campaigns encouraging you to lose weight so that you look great for those Christmas parties coming up. Ironic isn't it -- messages about Christmas and food, food, food and messages about dieting, losing weight and not being tempted by luscious food. Just can't win, can you!

I could very easily go off on a tangent about the futility of dieting. I've worked with eating disorders in my private therapy practice for 15 years so I have a pretty good idea about the world of dieting.

The bottom line is this: Diets don't work.

There are both psychological and physiological reasons why that is so but let me get back to my real point. Diets don't work but that doesn't mean there aren't excellent strategies for losing weight painlessly.

I'm an advocate of lifestyle changes rather than dieting. If you make lifestyle changes as a way of losing weight, you are more likely to keep the weight off. You will also feel better because you won't get caught in the two dieting traps:

The yo-yo dieting lifestyle trap where you end up spending your life and money on programmes to lose weight, only in the end to gain the weight you lost, plus a few more pounds.

The self-flagellation trap, where you beat yourself up for 'failing' which only serves to leave your self esteem in tatters.

Lifestyle Changes

It's not rocket science. In its simplest form, to lose weight means you have to take in less energy than you use.

Most people focus on reducing the energy intake. But the minute we hear the word 'diet' we start thinking about deprivation -- what we can't have, what we can't eat and quite frankly most of us love our food. Diets just seem like really hard work!

So let's turn the idea on its head. I prefer to focus on ways of expending more energy than we are taking in. Don't worry. This doesn't mean going to the gym 3 or 4 times a week, remember, we don't want anything that feels like hard work.

I'm a believer in making change as easy as possible. It's got to fit in with who you are and it's got to be sustainable. So let me share a simple concept that over time will become one of your health habits. You won't feel any pain. You will be using more energy than you are now and you might, like me, find you start having fun with coming up with more creative ideas for using more energy.

The idea I'm going to share with you comes from Paul McKenna's book, 'I Can Make You Thin' and it is really beautifully easy.

Keeping In Step

Step 1: Get hold of a pedometer. They are available online, in sports shops, in gyms, even in cereal boxes sometimes!

Step 2: For one week monitor how many steps you are taking each day. Don't make any changes to your routine. Use a simple spreadsheet to record the number of steps you take each day. After 7 days, add them up to get your total for the week.

Step 3: In week two think of one way you could add more steps. • Choose a different route to work - one that is slightly longer • Use the stairs, not the lift at work or when you go shopping • Park a little further away from the shops when you shop

Monitor your steps for a week with the new small change you've made and again, find your weekly total. Give yourself a pat on the back for the increase.

When you've adjusted to that change and it feels like a normal part of your routine, choose another way you could add more steps -- and keep the process going.

Last year, the lifts in the office block I work in got flooded and were out of order for 9 months. I got used to taking the stairs and even though the lifts work again, I choose to continue to take the stairs. I take the stairs when I'm shopping and in the car parks now too. I find that I'm just as quick -- often quicker now -- than the lifts. So I'm using more energy overall but it just feels normal -- no hard work there.

Remember that the simplest way to extinguish old, lazy habits is to choose new ones that you want and practise them consistently until you get the new habit 'in the muscle.'

Have fun, get creative and remember -- 'no pain' really doesn't have to mean 'no gain'.