5 FOODS TO HELP YOU LOSE WEIGHT AND GET BEACH-READY
Coffee
Another excuse for a morning caffeine fix. Food scientists at the charmingly-named Oryza Oil & Fat Chemical Company in Japan have found that coffee can aid weight loss. For the best results, go for unprocessed green coffee beans.

Grapefruit
Maybe there is something in the famous/infamous grapefruit diet after all. At San Diego’s Scripps Clinic researchers found that half a grapefruit before each meal helped dieters shed between 3 and 10 pounds over the course of 12 weeks. The scientists are not sure why this works as the same amount of calories were being consumed, but they think that it may be some sort of fat-burning effect brought on by the grapefruit. At only 39 calories per half portion it’s definitely worth a shot.

Chilli
It doesn’t just heat up your mouth, the spicy hotness of a chilli also kick-starts the body’s fat burners. Food scientist Heidi Allison, author of The Chili Pepper Diet, found that you can lose up to 10 times as much weight if you add a sprinkle of dried chillies to your meals.

Protein
A study in the Journal Of Exercise Physiology found that you can burn up to 25 per cent of the calories in a meal of pure protein just by digesting it. While going Atkins is certain to give you death breath and chronic constipation, cutting out the chips for an extra bun-free burger can help you reach your weight-loss goals much, much quicker.

Miso soup
Made from two fat-busting foods, seaweed and soya beans, this broth packs a powerful weight-shrinking punch. Japan’s Hokkaido University Graduate School Of Fisheries Sciences discovered that eating a serving each day can increase your weight loss by at least 10 per cent.

3 WAYS TO GET FIT FOR SUMMER
Exercise with military precision
Join a gym and your conscience starts to torment you about making the most of your monthly membership. Join British Military Fitness and there will be no need to torment yourself as there is a drill sergeant to do it for you. BMF, an organisation set up in 1999, runs workouts led by Army-trained instructors in parks across the country. Classes available in Wales are in Cardiff and Newport. For further details log on to www.britmilfit.com.

Take your lead from man’s best friend
Pet owners generally have lower resting heart rates and lower blood pressure; they often have reduced levels of the stress hormone cortisol and consequently react more coolly to stressful situations. There are more uses for a pet than just keeping us calm, though, but only if it’s a dog. Canine cross-country running is growing in popularity in the UK and there is even a championship that takes place between September and April - which means that there is plenty of time to start training – you and the dog – for the beginning of next season. For more information visit www.cani-cross.co.uk.

Look East
Turn the fiction of the big screen into the fact of the gym and take up Wu Shu. It’s usually associated with films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, House Of A Thousand Daggers et al and is hailed as The Next Big Thing fitness-wise. It will stretch and test you. Like other martial arts, it can be taught to five-year-olds to whatever-year-olds as it’s easy on muscles and joints (www.bccma.com).

CALLING IT QUITS
If your New Year’s resolution is to pack in the fags, you’re not alone. Of the UK’s 12 million smokers, three million attempt to quit each year but the bad news is only 3% manage to stay on the wagon long-term. As an ex-smoker, I know how hard kicking the habit to the curb is, because I’ve been off the nicotine for three years and I still get the occasional craving. If you want to take the sting out of stopping then smoking cessation programmes are becoming increasingly popular, primarily because they’re more likely to work. The late anti-smoking tsar Allen Carr’s much-vaunted course is probably the most famous. Spread over five hours of one day in groups of about twenty, it uses a psychotherapy/hypnotherapy double whammy approach and focuses on why smokers continue despite the obvious disadvantages as opposed to concentrating on why they should quit. It’s successful because it’s about cognitive behavioural therapy: changing your behaviour to change the way you think. The course costs £220 - private sessions are a couple of grand - which sounds a lot but is a mere drop in the ocean compared to how smoking dents your wallet over a lifetime - and this will actually prolong it - and if it doesn’t do the trick then there’s a money back guarantee to boot. For details of your local Allen Carr therapist log onto the website: www.allencarreasyway.com 10 WAYS TO BEAT THE WINTER BLUES
1. Don’t sheep-flock to the gym with the masses this January, take up a team sport instead. Try not to barf, but the camaraderie can be a real mood elevator
2. Take up a new interest. I know this sounds Simon Says simplistic, but sometimes simple is best
3. Lay off the drowning-your-sorrows approach, as alcohol is a potent depressant. You may feel a temporary lift but the high is soon goodbyed
4. Eat spicy food. The substance that makes chillies hot, capsicum, stimulates the release of feel-good endorphins in the brain. Think about it: have you ever seen a depressed Mexican?
5. Drink green tea. It contains high levels of antioxidants that help fight mild depression as well as protect against cancer and heart disease
6. Take vitamins. Zinc is especially effective at upping the brain’s good mood medicine, serotonin
7. Do a negativity edit. If you’ve got a whinger mate who’s always on the moan, limit the amount of time you spend together. Or, harsher still, hit the delete button
8. Change your routine. Experiment by chopping and changing the ingredients of your life to keep things fresh
9. Have a Thai massage. This is much more energising and rigorous than other forms of massage, literally extracting stress from the body
10. Remember winter doesn’t go on forever so enjoy some of its perks, like long walks on crisp, frosty days or having a Sunday roast in front of a crackling country pub fire

Jason Jones is getting fit for summer