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Forget the cabbage soup and the Atkins... there's now a diet that will not only help you to lose weight, you'll be brainier and live longer too.The idea behind the Alternative-Day Diet is, well exactly as it sounds. There's no calorie counting or meal plans.
Dieters must simply eat a small amount one day (up to 50 per cent of your normal intake) and the next eat whatever you like.
As unlikely as it sounds, apparently a "skinny" gene is triggered by the feast to famine scenario and encourages the body to burn fat.
It was Dr Mark Mattson, an America neuroscientist, who first made the breakthrough in 2003, when he discovered that rats on a low calorie diet experienced no ill effects when eating normally every other day.
And now Krista Varady, an assistant professor of kinesiology and nutrition at the University of Illinois, has published the results of a ten-week trial involving 16 patients, all weighing over 14st.
By eating 20 per cent of their normal intake one day and a regular healthy diet the next, they each lost between 10lb and 30lb.
Dr James Johnson, author of The Alternate-Day Diet, has been using the method for five years.
He told the Daily Mail: "I've always been a bit overweight. When I first started, I lost 35lb in 11 weeks.
"Now I use the diet to keep my weight stable. If it starts going up, I'll just go back on it for a few weeks. The evidence says this is about the most healthy thing you can do for yourself."
You might think he's just trying to sell more books but consider that the diet can relieve the symptoms of asthma and reduce levels of free radicals linked with heart disease and cancer and it suddenly sounds a lot more credible.
And if the thought of going from starvation to feast sounds tricky, don't worry.
Dr Varady insists: "It takes about two weeks to adjust to the diet and, after that, people don't feel hungry on the fast days."
We'll take her word for it.
