We are all creatures of habit and no more so than when it comes to our food consumption. For example, if you tend to relax in front of the TV at night with sweets, crisps, chocolates or ice cream, then ask yourself why you do that? Mostly it's just a habit that you've fallen into.

Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle makes two important points about habits. I'm going to repeat them here. I hope that won't be an issue as these ideas appear to be common currency rather than proprietory to the book:

1. It takes about 21 days to make a habit and the same time to break one.
2. Old, bad habits are much more easily broken if replaced by good, new ones.

The book devotes a substantial part of its content to describing the new nutritional habits that you should adopt and the reasoning behind them

Now the 21 days thing is interesting as by last Saturday I was exactly three weeks into the program. We had been invited to the wedding of one of my wife-to-be's work colleagues. It was a lunchtime affair with a buffet reception straight afterwards. The buffet was an assemblage of sandwiches, rolls, drumsticks, vol-au-vents etc. All very nice and I picked myself out a portion of the healthier options.

Then they cleared away one table and laid out the desserts - all the usual suspects - gateaux, pavlovas, cheescake and the like. Now my normal mode of behaviour in these circumstances would be to dash for the head of the queue, agonise over what to have, then plump for whatever had the highest chocolate content. On this occasion I didn't. I could claim that I employed massive willpower to overcome the temptation, but really it wasn't like that. I just wasn't even tempted.

So, the good news is that compared to, say, stopping smoking, breaking bad eating habits is really easy. Junk food isn't physically addictive and new eating habits easily displace the old ones. Just give it three weeks and you'll be well on your way.