It’s all too easy to fall off the wagon, especially after you’ve had a long break from building your healthier habits. Whether you’ve had a bout of low motivation, have been on holiday, or just had some life stuff going on (it happens), put it all behind you and get back into a routine. Here’s how.

Start small

Don’t try and do everything at once. You know what you need to do to start losing weight again: eat better, watch your portion sizes, and get a bit more active. We’re not talking about killing yourself in the gym or restricting what you eat here. Think about what small, achievable goals you can start doing: take a daily walk or swap a snack for something a little healthier.

Wean yourself off

If you’ve got junk food lying around that’s make it difficult to cut back on high calorie foods, wean yourself off it. As tempting as it is, don’t immediately throw all that junk food in the garbage, because you’ll probably feel very hard done by (also who can afford to be throwing food away in this economy?!)

If sweets, chocolate, or crisps are your weaknesses, portion them out into food bags and enjoy them as a calorie-controlled treat.

Gradually do more to incorporate healthier habits into your life. If you’re ordering a takeaway too often, make a pact with yourself to cook at home twice a week and give yourself a pass on the days when a takeaway feels like the only option. Then add more and more homecooked meals until you feel like you’re back in control.

Find something you enjoy

When you enjoy what you’re doing, it’s much less likely to feel like a chore. This is especially true when it comes exercise, so put the effort into finding something you’ll enjoy, whether it’s dancing, swimming, cycling, or hiking.

Avoid boredom

Boredom is another huge reason why we fall off the wagon, because we need something to hold our interest. Why would we continue to eat the healthy homecooked meals we pour our time and effort into when our head gets turned by a cheesy, easy, fast-food meal?

Mix things up. Try new recipes and recreate your favourite takeaway dishes to add some interest to your meals. The same goes for workouts – try something new!

Plan your meals ahead

Meal prep is a great way to stay on track. Planning what you’ll eat ahead of time can help you make healthier choices and avoid impulse decisions, so it’s worth a try to see if it works for your lifestyle. Prepare a batch of healthy meals or snacks on the weekend to have ready throughout the week.

Don’t beat yourself up

It’s normal to have setbacks when you’re trying to lose weight. Don’t let them derail you, instead try to learn from your mistakes and get back on track. Weight loss takes a lot of effort and time, so try and be patient with yourself. We know it’s frustrating, but if you keep chipping away at your goals you’ll get there.

Lean on your support system

Honestly, there’s no shame in struggling to get back in the swing of things. We’ve all been there, because this stuff’s hard. Talk about how you’re doing with your fellow MAN v FAT Rugby teammates, and you’ll soon find that we all have times when we struggle.

Sharing your experiences can boost your motivation, and the support and accountability you’ll get from your teammates is incredibly helpful for setting you back on the right path.

As the season progresses, it’s important to take a step back and consider how things are going. Are you making good progress towards those goals you set back in week 1? Or do you need to adjust them now that you’ve got a few weeks under your belt?

Reflect on your progress

This is a good time to take stock of what you’ve achieved in the last few weeks. Have you lost weight? Has your fitness improved? Are you enjoying yourself out on the pitch?

These are all important things to think about, and if you’re happy with the progress you’ve made that’s cause for celebration!

• Celebrate your achievements. This isn’t a time to be modest: be proud about what you’ve done.
• Think about what went right. What went into your success? What really helped? Knowing these answers will make it easier to replicate your achievements as you work towards your next goals.
• Set new challenges. Take what you’ve learned in the past few weeks and use your knowledge to challenge yourself further. What will get you even closer to your overall goal? Can you challenge yourself to cook more, or to try a new workout?
• Continue to track your progress. You’ve made a great start, but don’t lose momentum! Keep going, and check in with yourself every few weeks to see how you’re doing.

Adjusting your goals

Things might not have gone exactly as you’d hoped, and that’s ok. Maybe life got in the way, or you had a few false starts with getting to grips with changing your eating habits. Maybe your initial goals were a bit too ambitious. It happens. If this sounds familiar, think about what you can change and how, and make a pledge to work on it.

• Are your goals realistic? We’d all love to lose a huge amount of weight in a short space of time, but that’s not how it works. Make sure your goal is something you’ve got a fair shot at achieving, otherwise you’ll just end up frustrated and demotivated.
• Can you try something new? If you’ve not quite achieved what you’d hoped to, consider a new approach. Switch things up and try something different, whether that’s a new workout, a way to increase your daily activity, or a new approach to eating better.
• Seek support. Confide in friends and family and you might find they’re a treasure trove of support and encouragement. If you’re not comfortable turning to people you know, don’t forget about your MAN v FAT Rugby teammates! They’ll know better than anyone what it’s like to be working towards weight loss goals.
• Speak to your coach. Your coach is also someone you should be leaning on when times get tough, it’s what they’re there for! Arrange to have a chat with them and they’ll be more than happy to help, whether it’s looking over your food diary to spot opportunities for change, or for a pep talk when things feel tough, your coach is there for you.

Check in regularly

It’s important to check in with yourself regularly as you’re working towards your weight loss goals. People who are successful at losing weight (and keeping it off long-term) are the ones who are fully in tune with their body and mind, continually asking themselves if there’s anything they can do to better work towards their goals.

Thinking about your goals and evaluating your progress will help to keep you accountable and on track, but it’s also incredibly motivating to see the progress you’re making. Enjoy the process and make sure you take a moment to celebrate your success along the way.

Binge eating is really common among men who are trying to lose weight. It’s likely there’s been a time where you’ve thought, why did I eat all that?! We’ve all been there, and while it can feel disheartening, there are ways to bounce back.

Stop the yo-yo

We overeat, or binge, then say, ‘diet starts Monday’ while feeling guilty or disappointed. Then we radically cut back to try and make up for it.

That can only go so far, and you’re bound to find that you can’t keep the restriction up for long. And when you can’t maintain the restriction, you reach for food for comfort – all the food! And then you’re back at square one.

Break this yo-yo cycle though by accepting when you’ve maybe eaten too much and try your best to simply move on, without placing unsustainable, unrealistic restrictions on yourself.

Get back to normal as soon as possible

It’s true that a new week is a fresh start that’s full of opportunity, and it can be liberating to say ‘the diet starts on Monday’, but instead of waiting, seize the day and don’t let a bad day spiral into several.

Each meal is a new opportunity to flex your healthy eating habits. If you had one flat tire you wouldn’t slash the other three. In the same way, don’t give up on your goal because of one setback.

Drink more water

Most of us are guilty of depriving our bodies of the water it needs to function. Does that ring true? Do you get your eight glasses of fluids in a day? Drinking more water will stop you from getting dehydrated, especially after a high salt binge, and it’ll help with your digestion too.

Get moving

When you’re feeling lethargic and full after binge eating, you’re probably going to want to just lie on the sofa doing nothing except possibly clutching your belly and wailing.

Although it’ll feel like the last thing you want, the best thing you can do is to get active.
Go for a walk and blow off the cobwebs. It doesn’t need to be an especially long walk but getting yourself out of the house will take your mind off that uncomfortable full feeling and will help your body start to process all that excess food.

Cut yourself some slack

We’ve saved the most important for last. Don’t beat yourself up about the odd binge slip up. Changing your unhealthy eating habits is a monumental task and it’s not always going to be smooth sailing. Try to see it as an experience to learn from. Breaking a habit like bingeing takes time and effort to overcome.

See if you can work out if there are any triggers to your binge eating and that should put you in a good place to spot the next potential binge and try and stop it in its tracks.

If you’re keen for success and are eyeing up the top spot, you’ll need to know how the MAN v FAT Rugby scoring system works. Let’s get into it. On the pitch, the rules for MAN v FAT Rugby are pretty similar to the rules for any small-sided touch rugby league, however we will be following a new version of the game called T1 Rugby. The thing that makes MAN v FAT Rugby special? There are opportunities to score bonus tries based on your weight loss and healthy habits. That’s what’s going to help you lose weight, and what’s going to help you and your team sail to the top of the league.

Players can score bonus tries in four ways:

1. Team bonus. Each week we add up the number of players on your team that have either lost weight versus the previous week or maintained their healthy BMI*. We award a bonus try for each pair, up to a maximum of 5 tries per team – so that’s 1 bonus try per every 2 player that loses weight, with half tries rounded up.*All players must have a BMI of at least 27.5 to join MAN v FAT Rugby. Once a player reaches a healthy BMI, we no longer encourage them to keep losing weight, so the rules switch up for them and they get bonuses for maintaining a healthy BMI, whether they gain or lose weight. Players who record a weight that is both heavier than the previous week and heavier than they were at the start of the current season will score an own goal.

2. Hat tricks. Any time an individual player records three losses within their club’s league season, they score 1 full bonus try. These losses don’t need to be consecutive, but they don’t overlap seasons, so one player can get a maximum of 4 hat tricks for his team each season.

3. 5% loss bonuses. When a player reaches an incremental milestone loss of 5% of his body weight, he gets 3 full bonus tries for his team, a maximum of twice per season. This is always based off your weight when you first join us, so you’ll get a bonus for losing 5%, 10%, 15% of that starting weight, and so on, until you reach a healthy BMI for your height.If you manage to lose 15% of your starting weight in just one season, first of all, hats off to you, and second of all, don’t worry about missing out on those sweet, sweet bonuses – they’ll carry over to the first week of the following season so you can hit the ground running.

4. Food diary tracking. Teams will score 1 additional bonus try for every 1-3 players who complete their weekly food diaries. This encourages mindfulness about your eating habits and a supportive team, since you’ll all need to work together and stay accountable to one another if you want to score the maximum number of points.

Losing weight is the key to success with your team in MAN v FAT Rugby, so don’t forget to focus on building your healthy habits as well as your performance on the pitch.

If you’ve taken part in your first MAN v FAT Rugby session and feel like you can’t walk the next day, that’d be the DOMS. Never heard of it? Let’s get into it.

What is DOMS?

DOMS stands for delayed-onset muscle soreness. It’s a fancy term for the muscle soreness that can happen after you exercise, especially if you’ve not exercised for a while, or if you’ve had a particularly vigorous session.

You might feel it in one place, like your legs, when you move or tense muscles. It usually comes on about 24-48 hours after exercise and can last a few days.

Is it actually DOMS?

It’s important to remember that DOMS is delayed. It’s not something you feel during exercise, so if you’re feeling pain during exercise don’t just dismiss it. DOMS is also about soreness, it’s not a sharp or severe pain. It also shouldn’t stop you from doing everyday activities, even though you might feel sore or uncomfortable.

If you’re feeling a sharp, severe pain that’s so bad it’s limiting your movement, that’s more likely to be an injury you should get checked out.

Why do we get DOMS?

DOMS is due to tiny tears in your muscles from moving them in a way your body isn’t used to. That can be from doing exercise that’s new to you, returning to exercise after a break, or if you exercise more vigorously than you’re used to.

‘Tiny tears’ in your muscles may sound scary, but it’s normal and expected. The pain you feel is thought to be the body’s inflammatory response to these microscopic tears.

Is DOMS a good thing?

You’ve heard of ‘no pain, no gain’, right? Well, feeling sore after exercise isn’t really a goal you should aim for, because that could lead to you pushing yourself too far and ending up with an injury. Even if you’re lucky and you don’t injure yourself, pushing yourself to do too much, too soon can lead to feeling fatigued, overwhelmed, and demotivated.

There is a small nugget of wisdom in the ‘no pain, no gain’ philosophy though: when you work your muscles and produce those tiny tears, your body will get to work repairing them. And if you give your body the right tools to repair your muscles (healthy food including plenty of healthy protein and good fats, good sleep), they’ll build back stronger and leaner.

Will I always experience DOMS?

As you get used to being active, you’ll experience DOMS less and less. This is where real progress is made, because if you keep it up, you’ll soon be able to do the hard things that once caused you to crawl up the stairs without any soreness the next day. Then you can gradually increase the intensity of your workouts.

Of course, if you stop exercising, then try to exercise at the same intensity after a break of several weeks, you’ll probably experience DOMS again as your body will be out of practice.

Recovering from DOMS

We know DOMS can feel crap, and no amount of telling yourself it’s for your own good helps when every step hurts. Here’s how you can help your body recover:

• Rest is absolutely vital to help your body thrive, and rest is just as important as activity when you’re looking to reduce fat and build muscle.
• Make sure you have rest days in between your MAN v FAT Rugby sessions and other exercise. This should include ‘active recovery’, where you do light exercise, like stretching and walking. It’ll probably feel awful at first, but warming your muscles up gently like this will do them the world of good. Don’t stop using your muscles entirely: gentle movement is one of the most effective ways of easing the soreness, through increased blood flow.
• Try and get enough sleep. Your body does its best repairing and rebuilding when you’re asleep, so get a good bedtime routine going and get your head down.
• Drink plenty of water and keep up your healthy eating, making sure you eat lots of lean protein.
• Massage your sore muscles. A foam roller can help.

How to prevent DOMS

The only foolproof way of preventing DOMS completely is not exercising, but you shouldn’t let fear of DOMS put you off being active.

The most important way of lessening the chances of developing debilitating DOMS is to warm up and cool down properly when you exercise. Dynamic warm ups, where you mimic the exercises you’re about to do, is a great way of preparing your muscles for activity.

Similarly, cooling down after your work out gets your muscles gradually used to not moving as much again.

Get the pump?

We’d all love to be able to instantly do Arnie-level workouts at the gym, or be able to outrun Usain Bolt, but listen to your body and go easy.

Losing weight and getting fitter takes time, and though that can be frustrating, push yourself too hard and you’ll end up out of action with a nasty injury.

It’s ok to challenge yourself and up the intensity of your workouts, but only do what you’re comfortable with, and gradually increase the intensity instead of suddenly going for broke.

Starting something new is always daunting, and you might be wondering what your time at MAN v FAT Rugby is going to be like. We completely get it, and while it’s easy for us to say ‘it’ll all be fine!’, it’s much better to hear it from people who have been in your shoes.

We’ve been running MAN v FAT Football for years and (not to brag or anything) have helped thousands of men lose weight. We asked our current football players what advice they’d give to guys just starting out, and this is what they said.

You get what you put in

“MAN v FAT is a journey you’re in control of” says Lee, who thrived on how good it feels to be improving your health. “Choices will be hard, but the feel-good factor when you achieve your targets and people start to notice your change is something you won’t experience anywhere else.”

Similarly, Nathan is keen to point out the importance of prioritizing weight loss. He’s been a MAN v FAT player for over 7 years but didn’t take it seriously at first.

“I prioritized the football first, so I yo-yoed in weight, never really getting anywhere. But then I finally started to focus on weight loss.”

He’s now lost over 70lbs, and knows a lot about the challenges of staying consistent. “It’s not a race, it’s not about who loses it the quickest. You will fall off the wagon at some point, it’s just about getting back on. You’ve got to keep going, make it a lifestyle change”.

Support each other

One thing that makes MAN v FAT Football so successful is the community the clubs create. Making the most of it is key to your long-term success, says Alan.

“Build a good community within your club, not only with your own team but with everyone. Support each other with weight loss, meal ideas, mental health, everything. When there’s an excellent support network available, weight loss will be easier.”

Ryan agrees and credits his MAN v FAT community with being a big part of his weight loss success. “It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. It’s a great community, the team spirit you build is second to none.”

Go at your own pace

“Once I had lost 10% of my starting weight, I slowly introduced extra physical activities which then helped push me to losing 15% of my body weight” says Andrew.

But remember to listen to your body, and don’t push yourself if you’re not ready. If you’ve not exercised since you were in school, you’re not going to suddenly be a pro rugby player. Anthony stresses the importance of remembering this: “Stretch those hamstrings, you’re no longer a teenager!”

Alan agrees and says “You’ll remember that you’re not a kid anymore and you’ll be tired out after 5-10 minutes at your first game. Enjoy yourself but remember to listen to your body. We’ve all been there pushing through it trying to look good!”

Enjoy it!

MAN v FAT Rugby is a great way of losing weight and improving your health, and one of the best things about it is that it’s actually fun! Above all, we hope you have a great time getting to know your teammates and getting out there on the pitch.

We’ll leave it to Nathan to sum it all up: “My advice is to do it now, take the risk, feel uncomfortable at your first weigh in but after that if you’re driven and committed and are consistent with your efforts, enjoy your rugby and the rest will come.”

You might think that when it comes to weight loss, the more you can lose, the better. But studies show that losing even 5% of your total body weight can bring amazing health benefits.

If you want to lose weight, you probably have some idea of how much you want to lose. And while it’s great to have goals, saying you want to lose hundreds of pounds can feel incredibly daunting.

Short-term goals are just as important as your long-term ones to give you focus and keep your motivation levels high. Aiming to lose 5% of your body weight is a great one to consider: it’s attainable, and it can be built upon if needed.

What’s more, studies show that losing 5% of your bodyweight leads to incredible health outcomes if you’re overweight. Hitting 5% lost can lead to:

• Reduced risk of heart attack and stroke. This is because losing weight can elevate HDL (good) cholesterol and lower triglycerides (bad fats). It can lower your blood pressure by an average of 5 mmHg.
• Reduction in insulin resistance, decreasing your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
• Decreased risk of developing certain cancers.
• Better sleep and reduction of sleep disorders like sleep apnea.
• Reduced pressure on your joints.
• Lowered inflammation levels in the body.
• Boosted mood and self-esteem.
• Reducing your risk of fertility problems.

By making small, sustainable changes to what you eat, how much you move, and prioritizing your sleep, you’ll lose weight gradually and consistently – and you’ll be able to keep it off. Every positive decision you make to eat well, move more, and get quality sleep will move you closer to that 5% body weight loss goal – you’ve got this.

It might seem like a chore, but tracking everything you eat and drink is a surefire way to make you more aware of what you eating. And when you’re more aware of what you’re eating, you can start to make the changes that will lead to weight loss.

Why should I track what I eat?

One of the first bits of advice usually given to anyone who wants to lose weight is to keep a food diary. Whether it’s online, on your phone, or with good old-fashioned paper and pen, making a note of everything you eat and drink is an important first step in changing your eating habits. But why does it work so well for weight loss?

It makes you aware of what you eat

It may sound obvious, but one of the main reasons food tracking works is because it makes you fully aware of what you eat in a day. If you’re the type of person to sneak a snack here and there, it’s easy to overlook this when thinking about what you eat.

But these little extras can soon add up, meaning you could be consuming hundreds of extra calories you’re not even fully aware of. When you’re tracking what you eat, you’ve got no choice but to own up to the trip to the office biscuit tin or finishing off the cold fish fingers left on your kid’s plate, keeping yourself accountable.

It’ll help you see where you can make changes

If you’re keeping a food diary but you’re gaining weight, being able to look back at what you’ve eaten over the week is a brilliant tool for figuring out what healthy changes you can make.

Look for anything that stands out for adding unnecessary calories and come up with a plan for reducing them.

For example, if you’re eating too many takeaways, find recipes for your favourite dishes and make them at home. If you’re having a few too many beers, pledge to cut down or switch for lower-calorie alcohol options like spirits. If you’re falling victim to high calorie coffee shop drinks, invest in a travel coffee mug and make your own at home, or swap milky lattes for a black coffee. Being able to chart this in a food diary is a great step to lasting change.

It’ll help others help you

It’s so easy to underestimate what we’re eating, especially when we’re describing our eating to other people. But if you want your MAN v FAT Rugby coach to help you figure out why you’re not losing weight, it’s important to be honest about what you’re eating. If you want to know whether you’re on the right track, ask your coach to have a quick look. If you’re using MyFitnessPal, you can also send them the link to your food diary.

A food diary is an easy way for them to see where you can make improvements, and a fresh pair of eyes on what you eat can identify unhelpful eating habits and give you new ideas for making healthier choices.

How to track your food

There are loads of phone apps that make food tracking easy – one of the most popular is MyFitnessPal (free and paid membership available), and Nutracheck (paid with a 7 day free trial) is another good one that’s UK-focused.

You could also scribble down what you eat in a notebook, or in your phone’s Notes app. You could even take pictures of your meals for a visual reminder.

Whichever way you do it, the most important thing is to be honest with yourself, and don’t forget about things like condiments and drinks, which are commonly forgotten about.

There’s a minefield of misinformation when it comes to diets and losing weight. Let’s help you navigate your way with the science behind weight loss.

Fat figures

A whopping 1 in 4 people in England now classified as obese, compared with 1 in 6 in the 1990s. 68% of men in England are now overweight too.

We know that being overweight makes us less healthy. A study published in Lancet Public Health shows a clear relationship between hospital admissions and body weight. But it also matters because being overweight makes many people unhappy.

A British Social Attitudes survey revealed that people who are overweight suffer significant stigma, and that 53% of the British public believe that most overweight people could lose weight if they tried. But the science shows that it’s not simply a matter of being weak-willed.

What’s the best diet, according to science?

When it comes down to it, the science of dieting is simple: eat fewer calories than you burn. You can do it with a low-fat diet (like the raw food diet), or a low-carb diet (like the Atkins or paleo diet). But the problem with diets is not so much losing weight, but finding a way that your weight doesn’t rocket up again the minute you stop dieting.

The best diet according to all the science and research is one that is effective, sustainable, safe and fits in with your lifestyle.

Verdict: Try a supervised diet programme to help you make lifestyle changes you can sustain and that will help you safely shed excess weight.

Do crash diets work?

Advice from the NHS is that “crash diets make you feel very unwell and unable to function properly… crash diets can lead to long-term poor health”.

The thing is, maintaining a healthy nutritional balance while restricting yourself massively can be a problem.

You might lose weight rapidly, but you’ll pile it back on equally fast when you return to a realistic eating pattern. Don’t starve yourself! Feeling full is key to successful weight loss efforts. Your brain responds to hormones and nutrients that are released from your gut into your blood. Eating a diet high in protein will help you feel fuller for longer, which helps your weight loss efforts as protein takes longer for your body to breakdown.

Verdict: Crash diets aren’t nutritionally balanced and will make you feel awful.

Do intermittent fasting diets work?

Intermittent fasting diets like the 5:2 diet are very popular. This is where you eat what you want some days a week and then eat very little on other days, typically fasting until a certain time of day. There’s no research to say it’s dangerous, and over the course of the week you will reduce the calories you’re consuming, but it might not be the right fit for you. There are other ways to do it that might be more sustainable for you and lead to overall healthier, balanced eating.

Verdict: Intermittent fasting is no more effective than other calorie-restricted diets, but if it fits in with your lifestyle it can be a good choice. Just take care to make sure you’re getting all the nutrients your body needs.

Can you be fat and fit?

This interesting question has been all the rage for the past few decades. In the UK, the general belief is that food intake is more important than exercise for losing weight.

A recent study of 3.5 million GP records by the University of Birmingham found that ‘healthy’ obese people, who had normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels, were still at higher risk of serious disease than healthy people of normal weight. The obese people had 49% increased risk of coronary heart disease, 7% increased risk of stroke, and 96% increased risk of heart failure.

Verdict: Obese people with healthy blood pressure and cholesterol still have an increased risk of heart problems and strokes.

When you’re trying to lose weight, calorie counting is a great way to do it. But even so, it can feel daunting to figure out where you can cut cals in your diet. That’s why we like these switches – ways to cut calories without any of the effort.

Skip the butter

It’s delicious, but you don’t need to add butter to everything. Buttery toast is one of life’s little joys, but sometimes butter is completely masked by other flavors, and it’s in these cases you should consider skipping it. A tbsp of butter is 100 calories, which is a significant saving if you’re not tasting it.

…Or find an alternative

Ok, so sometimes butter is needed. Sandwiches, for example, are pretty dry without it, but you could use mashed avocado for a creamy alternative.

The calories in avocado can be high depending on how much you use, but avocados have other great things going for them, making them a perfect alternative to butter:

• High in omega 3
• High in monounsaturated fatty acids (that’s the good kind)
• High in potassium
• Shown to lower cholesterol levels

You could also go for hummus, coconut oil, or nut butter, but be sure to check the calories and keep an eye on how much you use.

Change up the takeout coffees

If you’re a Starbucks or Costa fan, your daily caffeine fix can come with a huge calorie price tag. We’re not saying you should stop treating yourself to coffees, rather be mindful of what you’re ordering.

A Starbucks grande white chocolate mocha, for example, is 345 calories. You could lower the calories by switching to a smaller size (a tall is 265 calories), or go for one of Starbucks’ lower-calorie options: a tall skinny vanilla latte (that’s a latte with sugar-free vanilla syrup and skimmed milk) is 107 calories (and a grande is 151 calories).

…And reduce your liquid calories

Put down the fruit juices and smoothies – they’re full of sugar and high in calories. If you love a glass of OJ, eat an actual orange instead for the added fiber bonus. Cut down on alcohol too, as it’s generally very high in calories.

You know soda isn’t the greatest choice, but sometimes it’s hard to beat. We get it. But one 330ml can of Coca-Cola is 139 calories, so keep them as the occasional treat, or switch to Coke Zero, which is (as you may have guessed), 0 calories. Does it taste the same? No, not really, but it’s still crisp and refreshing, and if you can get used to it as an alternative you could potentially save hundreds of calories a day (depending on how much Coke you drink, of course).

Spray your oil

Oil is very high in calories, so you’re probably already aware that you should use it sparingly. Still, sometimes you do need oil when cooking. Spray oil, also called cooking spray, is really low in calories (Frylight is ‘0 calories’ per ¼ second spray, although obviously if you spray more than that the calories are going to go up) and it’s an easy way to control how much oil you use.

Make your own sauces

Jarred sauces are super easy, but they can be high in calories. Sacla’s mascarpone and tomato pasta sauce is 159 calories per serving, which feels like a lot when you could make a simple sauce (tomato puree, tinned tomatoes, onions, garlic, basil) with fewer calories, and add in some mascarpone according to how many calories you’ve got spare.

Spotlight vegetables

You don’t need to replace spaghetti with zoodles (that’s noodle-shaped courgette) or to start grating cauliflower to use in place of rice – although if you do want to do that, go for it.

No, we’re just recommending that you start filling half your plate with vegetables before you add anything else. That’s it! This small change can make a big difference to the calories on your plate, as you cut down on the how much starchy carbs you have.

Keep easy-serve bags of vegetables in the freezer which you can use to easily bulk out meals.