We all love a snack with flavour. Chips and chocolate sure beats a dose of water cracker goodness. And the same goes for the fluids that we drain down our gullets.

But I’ll give you a quick tip in this, the second edition of our not so frequent diet series. Swap out at least half of your full strength beverage of choice for a spritzer of sorts. We’re not talking lime spritzers to shed the kilos but instead try a:

• Coke spritzer – split the can – 1/2 Coke + 1/2 soda water. 80 calories instead of 161.
• Orange juice spritzer – 1/2 cup juice (100ml) + 1/2 cup soda water (100ml). 40 calories not 80.

Make your own up. If you can read, you can do this.

If you can water the drinks down even more – the more you’ll save on calories. Nice.

We all know how boring water is and how addicted we can be to drinks like the “sacred brown one”, but if you want to shed the guts…

There is nothing like a good old public shaming to provide the motivation to change oneself.

So here I am. 178cm. 5’10″ old school. Rotund around the circumferance. Embarrassed. Weighing in at 85kg or 13.4 stone. That gives me an obese BMI of 27. 20-25 is the healthy weight range.

So here’s the rub. For me to get to, let’s split the middle-ish, a BMI or Body Mass Index of 23, I’ll have to weigh 74kg. That’s a weight loss of 11kg. A little optimistic perhaps but what the heck. As a paramedic I see the end result of lazy eating and no exercise. Fat guts and broken hearts.

Stay tuned for a journey into:

• Dieting (we’ll make up the azureblues.com diet)
• Exercise
• Fats, carbohydrates and proteins
• BMI
• Cardiovascular fitness
• General wellbeing
• and possibly a little cheating for the soul.

Wish me luck and stay tuned. Photos may follow if I’m brave enough.