Be strong and make those resolutions stick!

Temptation can be easy to give in to, but the rewards will be worth it.

So how are those new year resolutions going?

By now I’m sure many of us have fallen off the wagon.

My promise to myself to ease up on the sweetie consumption lasted until the morning of January 1 when I discovered a giant slab of fruit and nut that had fallen down the back of the fridge.

Of course I could have thrown it away or given it to someone . . . but as anyone who loves chocolate knows, it’s just not that simple.

When you’re aware there’s a bar of the stuff in the fridge or in the cupboard you can’t stop thinking about it. It’s almost as though the chocolate is talking to you and demanding to be devoured.

This time I haven’t made the mistake of previous years and gone on a daft faddie diet. Those days are gone.

Weird diets don’t work all you have to do is cut down on fast food and snacks and make portions smaller. Combine that with some exercise and you will slowly but surely lose weight.

But as we discovered this week, you have to be really vigilant about checking food labels due to the amount of sugar that can be included in foods we all buy on a daily basis. Even items that are supposed to be healthy can contain ridiculous amounts of added sugar.

This week health experts declared all-out war on the stuff, proclaiming it to be just as dangerous as tobacco. They reckon our obesity crisis could be turned round in five years if food companies simply cut the amount of sugar they add to the food we eat by 30%.

The new campaign group, Action On Sugar, is especially concerned about the amount of sugar our children are unwittingly consuming, especially in soft drinks as well as fast food.

It’s not enough just to check obvious stuff like processed grub and cakes and biscuits. You need to be very beady-eyed indeed and scrutinise every single label in particular food that proclaims it contains no fat as this can be loaded up with sugar. ‘Fat free’ yoghurt is just one example.

Some so called ‘health’ drinks can contain as much as four teaspoonfuls of sugar, and even certain types of processed bread have a high sugar content.

It’s all about common sense and being more aware of what we are eating and what we feed our children.

So good luck to those who are trying to eat more healthily this year, those who have vowed to do more exercise and especially to everyone endeavouring to give up smoking.

It’s all about baby steps, balance and taking one day at a time.

And beware of the sugar monster . . .