How much weight do you want to lose and how quickly? Between Jan 2007 and May 2009 I lost 47 kilos, and after putting on some weight over summer after my fight I'm in the final stages of making it 49 kg. Just 2 kg to go. 86 kg last week and I'm working on getting down to 84 in time for xmas. The main things I did were eating smaller portions, not eating between meals, drinking less (sometimes no booze at all for a month or more), and gradually increasing the training. At the moment I'm doing a completely insane 1 x BJJ, 1 x MMA, 2 x Thai boxing, 1 x submission grappling and 1 x longish Sunday afternoon bike ride every week. One thing I discovered while doing all this is that anyone can call themselves a nutritionist with no training whatsoever, even if they work for the Lard Marketing Board or one of those places that sell overpriced vitamin pills that don't do a great deal apart from enrich the seller. Some may have pseudo-medical qualifications (Gillian McKeith bought a PhD from a non-recognised correspondence college, and she eventually agreed with the ASA that she wouldn't call herself a doctor on the grounds that she wasn't one). By contrast, last year I asked my GP to refer me to a dietician (protected term that means someone with certain qualifications) and following her advice I went on to lose 14 kg in just over a year. There's a lot of claptrap in the diet and alternative health industry that can be largely ignored. You need to make sure you eat enough to keep up with what you're doing (I was surprised when my dietician told me I should be eating a bit more), but for weight loss the most important thing is the amount you eat. Conventional techniques work pretty well as I've found, and once you look a bit deeper into "alternative" diets you'll find most of them are pretty similar but with some gimmick to make them proprietary and expensive.

One thing to watch before you do this is making sure you weigh enough and that there are no underlying problems. It's easy to get obsessed with weight loss and there are certain age groups that are at particular risk of eating disorders. Talk to your GP and see what they suggest.