There are good and bad times to start a diet - that much is true.

It's no good starting to eat to a special regime when you have a big week of socialising coming up and you need to eat no more than 30 grams of carbohydrate a day or 10 fat grams. Or you're doing any one of those plans where you have to weigh or count everything or follow a fixed set of menu suggestions. And you know you'll never find time for all the exercise you're supposed to do.

It isn't going to work is it? When you're busy, you are not going to be able to stick to a plan which dictates what you eat so rigidly and uses up so much of your time at the gym.

And that's exactly why diets don't work in the long term.

They don't fit in with real life. You can't be forever calculating and fretting about whether something is allowed or not. Or being told what to eat every day.

So you live in a situation where you're either on a diet or you're not.

And when you reach your goal weight chances are you give up all semblance of healthy eating and start gaining weight again until you're back where you started.

But any time is a good time to get on the path to losing weight and keeping it off forever.

Here's why.

So-called naturally slim people simply have slim habits which are part of their behaviour all year round - yes, even when everyone else is growing rounder than ever during the festive season, even when they are away on business and eating out a lot and even when they are on an all-inclusive all-you-can-eat cruise around the Caribbean.

They eat when they are hungry. They eat what they really want to eat and not everything that's in front of them. They move about a bit more during the course of the day even if they are not big on exercise. They enjoy a big meal now and again but only on special occasions and even then they don't stuff themselves silly. They stop eating when they've had enough. They know there'll always be another opportunity to eat.

You can't change from a person with overweight habits to one with slim habits overnight. That's the short sharp shock diet approach which we are so poor at sticking to.

But you can start with two or three habits right now (or even a single one) and just follow those habits for 21 days until they are part of you and you've put another brick (or two or three) in the wall of staying slim forever.

And you can do this at any time. Adding another "brick" when you can until you've built a new lifestyle to match your new body.

Now doesn't that sound a bit more feasible as we come into this period of constant social whirl and activity?

Start a slim habit today and you'll be on the right track to losing weight and keeping it off for good.

And when someone recommends the next fad diet you can just smile and carry on building your habits instead of struggling with a ridiculous regime again.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small