London - There is the Dukan diet, the Atkins diet, the 5:2 diet and countless other cunning plans which offer you that shimmering mirage of the perfect bikini body.
The low-carb diet was basically ‘goodbye, spuds, rice and bread’. The Mediterranean diet meant lots of grilled fish and olive oil and playing The Gypsy Kings on the CD player.
The tapeworm diet involved swallowing a tapeworm which - so the highly implausible theory went - would gobble up some of your spare calories from the inside. It seems amazing anyone fell for that one.
To these weight-loss fads we can now add the Falconer Diet, named in honour of a former Lord Chancellor, Charles Falconer, who in the past ten months has shed 5st (about 32kg), nearly a third of his old weight.
The politician formerly nicknamed ‘Fatty’ Falconer is a porker no more.
His lordship, who served in the Cabinet when his former flatmate Tony Blair was Prime Minister, was 16½st (about 105kg) two years ago. Today, after a routine of one meal a day (dinner), the Labour peer is down to 11st 5lb (about 72kg). His regime included some nine cans of Diet Coke a day and lots of fruit. He seems to have devoured as many apples as a much-patted Dobbin at the local pony club.
Even as the news was being reported, less-than-slender Britons were no doubt wobbling off to the supermarket to stock up on apples and Diet Coke.
Isn’t that the way with diets? The copycat mentality takes a grip and suddenly we are all after grapefruits or lemonade or whatever the ‘new secret cure’ for tubbiness might be.
A few years ago it was cabbage soup. Remember that? The offices of Britain started ponging like boarding-school corridors.
I have sometimes wondered if the cabbage soup diet was an enormous practical joke, devised to get the whole country parping away like Noddy’s little car.
So what is the biggest lesson we should draw from the ‘Falconer diet’? Before the whole world goes mad and some publisher commissions him to write the latest diet book for the post-Christmas market, the basic truth of his remarkable weight loss was this: he stopped gorging. He also went on 8km runs most days.
And he gave up alcohol. Quite a sacrifice, for the old Lord Falconer was a notably convivial fellow, a Falstaffian figure with a voice that gurgled agreeably as the wine went down his capacious gullet.
He was, by his own admission, practically the only New Labour grandee who would booze at lunchtime.
Then Falconer looked at himself last December and realised he had to alter his ways - or face problems such as diabetes and heart disease. And so he took control of his appetite. You could almost say he became a bit obsessive about it.
Was there maybe something a little bit typically male in that? Men love to follow orders, be decisive, smite the table and say: ‘Right, this is the way it’s going to be from now on!’
Falconer’s inspiration was former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson, another one-time chubster who went on a dramatic weight-loss plan of his own devising (and got a publishing deal out of it). Lord Lawson also shed 5st, in part by giving up Stilton, replacing butter with lemon juice, and exercising, yes, willpower.
When it comes to dieting, are women not prone to a certain amount of wishful thinking? I know that I tread, here, in a minefield. Dieting ladies can be snappy, their sense of humour worn thin (dread word) by disgusting skinny noodles, low-cal nutrition bars that taste of cardboard and mix-in-a-cup lentil soups with the consistency of washing-up liquid.
One generalises at one’s peril, but there is a gender difference when it comes to dieting. Men become competitive. They stand on the bathroom scales in the morning and greet each lost kilo with a Neanderthal grunt of triumph. They regard flab as a challenge. They come over all macho about going without elevenses, saying: ‘The SAS go days without eating when they’re on manoeuvres.’
How does a woman approach the endeavour? Her methods are gentler. She negotiates with her grumbling tummies. She makes deals: a chocolate bar at the end of a virtuous day, an almond croissant to keep a non-dieting friend company (‘because I don’t want her to feel bad’).
Before you rush to tick me off, there are scientific studies to support this.
One school of thought says higher levels of oestrogen cause women to form an emotional attachment to certain foods, making it harder to give them up without some degree of regret. They are more likely to ‘comfort eat’ than men.
Men, meanwhile, tend to have more natural muscle mass than women, and it is muscle that helps burn more calories when exercising. So men are more likely to see the immediate effects of diet and activity and feel spurred on. With women, the weight is slower to shift and the lack of immediate progress demoralising - and cause for a consoling cream cake.
Having been on the portly side since childhood, I was put on my first diet when I was 12. My mother, having read something in the newspapers, announced that I would be going on a ‘steak diet’. She even bought me a special sharp knife with which to eat the steaks that were going to transform me from Bunter to a drainpipe.
Alas, steak was a little beyond her shopping budget, so I ended up being given Bird’s Eye steak burgers, which were rather less slimming than a butcher’s sirloin might have been.
Then some fool wrote an article about how cheese was good for slimming, so I was given hunks of cheddar to go with my burger. Inevitably, my trousers became only tighter.
My wife is an exception to the rule that women talk about losing weight, let you know they are on a strict regimen - then have a bar of chocolate each evening before bed. I don’t know if she will thank me for saying this, but my wife diets like a bloke.
A couple of years ago, she announced her intention to begin going to a Zumba dance class. The weight started falling off, she lost 2st (13kg) and looked (and looks still) super.
One day, she cast a leathery glance at my gut and left it to be understood that a little regime might be in order for me, too.
Any thought of joining the Herefordshire ladies at a Zumba class in my mankini was beyond the pale, but I pretty much gave up white flour, particularly bread, and managed to lose a stone-and-a-half (9.5kg).
It has stayed off, happily, because being a chap I have the willpower to keep it that way. But I don’t intend, just yet, to do a Lawson or Falconer.
Lord Lawson was unrecognisable after he went from 17st (about 108kg) to 12st (about 76kg). It is almost as difficult today to recognise Lord Falconer. The old Charlie has been replaced by someone who could be the brother of football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson. He is wrinkled, flashes a not entirely convincing smile and poses in a pair of lean-guy denim trousers. Mister Fitness!
But the voice has maybe lost some of its bonhomie and there is something spare, something missing, in his parliamentary personality these days. He is not the man he was.
Professional dietitians were already tutting when they examined his weight-loss strategy. They deplored the fact that he ate no breakfast, and said we are healthier if we have something in our stomachs at the start of the day. They were twitchy about all those cans of Coke.
Most of all, though, I suspect they may have been uneasy that Lord Falconer had proved that the most effective way of slimming is simply cutting back on the nosebag.
He is not the first to have done this. Ten years ago my friend Simon Carr, an 18st (114kg) parliamentary sketch writer, lost more than 5½ st in 40 days. It was like watching air go out of a lilo.
How did he do it? He limited himself to 200 calories a day, drinking only water.
Back then, too, the professionals from the multi-million-pound diet industry were appalled. How could they make money out of their diet books, diet CDs and diet DVDs if some maniac showed that eating very much less is the surest way to lose weight?
For that, I’m afraid, is the cold truth of the matter. Detox, Dukan, dooby-doo-woo... if it’s a smaller dress size you’re after, ladies, there is no alternative but to stop scoffing so much, stop boozing and buy some running shoes. In short: approach your weight loss like a man!
Daily Mail