The Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture recently found that people of normal weight spend more time on meal-related tasks than people who are overweight (or, for that matter, underweight). Also, the more time people spend on tasks like food shopping, cooking and kitchen clean-up, the more likely they are to be of average weight. This chimes nicely with my theory that the more you LOVE food, the more you enjoy it and engage with it, the slimmer you’ll be. Part of the problem with deprivation diets is that they teach us that food is the foe. This, then, is a call to the kitchen. Get stuck in, cook, eat, shrink. As St John chef Fergus Henderson writes in the introduction to his book Nose to Tail Eating, “Do not be afraid of cooking as your ingredients will know, and misbehave. Enjoy your cooking and the food will behave; moreover it will pass your pleasure on to those who eat it…”

There is nothing more dull. Keep your wits about you and your thoughts to yourself. Let your booty do the talking.

According to my dear friend Johnny Ray, wine correspondent at The Daily Telegraph, some Champagnes are more figure-friendly than others. So it pays to drink wisely… “Regular so-called Brut champagnes can have up to 15 grams of sugar per litre,” he writes, “whereas the bone-dry Brut Nature ones have up to 3 grams. Champagnes made without the addition of any sweetening dosage include Ayala Brut Nature, Jacquart Extra Brut, Pol Roger Pure Brut Nature, Tarlant Brut Zéro and Laurent Perrier Ultra Brut. They are ideal for the calorie conscious, with no more than 65 calories per 125ml glass, compared to 90-plus for regular champagne.”

Moira Howie, a nutritionist at Waitrose, points out that "Drinking wine with a meal can add up to between 300-400 extra calories, roughly equivalent to an extra ham sandwich a day. These can often be forgotten calories." Indeed they can, particularly after a heavy night on the Merlot. Recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show that middle-class people are most at risk from drinking too much – 43% of white-collar workers are likely to exceed the daily recommended limit of alcohol units at least once a week compared with 31% for the working class. Simply drinking tap while you eat will bring the figures right down. Or warm green tea, Japanese style. Or fizzed water. I bought a snazzy Soda Stream last week and have halved my wine intake at a stroke (or a squirt).

Yes, I know this is a weird one – but weird can be wonderful. The idea is to keep that bit of your body between, ahem “the legs at the bottom of the pelvis” in good condition. This is, according to rumour at the Elysée Palace, what Nicolas Sarkozy’s personal trainer makes him do. “The Anglo-Saxons are prudish about this,” Julie Imperiali told The Times, “but it improves posture and sexual relations are better if the perineum is in good shape… Sarkozy is the dream pupil.” God. Too much information, Julie. Still, he has already gone down two trouser sizes and his “body had radically changed”. I’ll give it a go…

Another cute book doing the rounds on the non-diet circuit is Jenna Bergen’s Your Big Fat Boyfriend . The New Yorker blames her weight gain on the arrival in her life of a “fat-trap” partner, who inveigled her to eat toffee popcorn, shared bagels, deep-fried cheesecake, macaroni cheese… yeuch. Deep-fried cheesecake? Jenna was clearly besotted with the man. Still, she has a point. When coupled and cosy, meals easily become “symbolic, a way to spend more time together”. We all know that men, damn them, can generally eat more than women can without gaining weight. We also know, damn it, that woman carry more body fat than men – and that the female form clings to fat like a puppy to a slipper. Bergen decided to change the record, not by elbowing the bloke (he was too lovely, despite his deep-fried fixation), but by doing simple, behavioural things, such as Saying No, leaving food cartons in the kitchen, going on active dates… she also recommends checking restaurant menus online to look for low-fat options before a date (good idea, that) and wearing your skinny jeans for a romantic dinner à deux.

In another glorious study, researchers have found that the stress of thinking causes overeating - with heavy thinkers (such as myself and, almost certainly, you) seeking out more calories. Here’s how it works, according to scientists at Quebec’s Université Laval in a paper published in the September 2008 issue of Psychosomatic Medicine…

“The team measured the spontaneous food intake of 14 students after each of three tasks. The first was relaxing in a sitting position, the second reading and summarizing a text, and finally completing a series of memory, attention and vigilance tests on the computer. After 45 minutes at each activity, participants were invited to eat as much as they wanted from a buffet.

The researchers had already discovered that each session of intellectual work requires only three calories more than the rest period. However, despite the low energy cost of mental work, the students spontaneously consumed 203 more calories after summarizing a text and 253 more calories after the computer tests.

This represents a 23.6 per cent and 29.4 per cent increase, respectively, compared with the rest period.

Blood samples taken before, during, and after each session revealed that intellectual work causes much bigger fluctuations in glucose and insulin levels than rest periods. Jean-Philippe Chaput, the study's main author, said: "These fluctuations may be caused by the stress of intellectual work, or also reflect a biological adaptation during glucose combustion." The body could be reacting to these fluctuations by spurring food intake in order to restore its glucose balance, the only fuel used by the brain. Mr Chaput added: "Caloric overcompensation following intellectual work, combined with the fact we are less physically active when doing intellectual tasks, could contribute to the obesity epidemic currently observed in industrialized countries.”

There. Got it? And if all that demanded way too much thinking, beware: the donut box calls…

I love this. Apparently, learning to relax can help you lose weight, according to a new study published in the journal Preventive Medicine. In a group of 225 overweight women, those who took part in relaxing activities such as yoga lost an average of 5lb 8oz over a two-year period. Those who simply exercised and ate healthily stayed the same weight. Om-tastic.

The bandage dress has, for more than two decades, been the garment of choice and reliability for the A-list. The idea – propagated by Azzedine Alaia, then Gianni Versace, then Herve Leger, now Christopher Kane and other “body-con” designers – is to envelop a body in fabric with the tensile strength of steel. Canny cutting, hard-core underpinnings, swathes of Spandex swooping around the body – all of these will slice away the inches and leave you with a pneumatic piston body. Oasis currently has a nice line in bandage dresses if you want to give one a spin without passing out at the price. The originals, though, are the best. It’s why Kate Moss has an Alaia fetish, why Preen’s Power dresses sell so well, why Roland Mouret is a god, and Victoria Beckham’s Dress Collection sold out before it hit the floor of the store. The idea is to flirt with your body, not hide it under a jumble of lost laundry. Have faith in yourself. Tight is right (though if it’s too short, abort…)

There are so many ways to do this, and you’ll know what works in your world. My point is to make it happen. Stop talking, start skipping. The idea is of course to raise your energy burn on a regular basis. If you are barking, you could try doing it with VPX RedLine Fat incinerator, said to be the drink of choice for Lindsay Lohan (this weird concoction has eight times the caffeine of cola, and is said to help the body to shed fat by forcing it into a state of shivering). If you are made of tougher stuff, follow J Lo’s example and take up training for a triathlon. She did the Malibu Tri and lost three stone in 12 weeks. Gwyneth Paltrow uses “sheer determination” to rise at 4.30am for 90-minute yoga sessions. Kate Winslet arrived at her Campaign Body by doing Pilates at home with a DVD (“Here’s what’s so great about it,” she says, “No one’s looking at you or telling you to work harder or anything like that. It’s my way of exercising in a time-efficient way.”) And that’s the key – in exercise, as in marriage and brassieres, no one size fits all. Personally, given that I am not about to hit the red carpet in a very small dress any time soon, I go for something of a halfway house: Bikram Yoga, twice a week. Works for me.