Do the maths: Count those calories or count the cost

Anyone contemplating losing weight as their new year’s resolution, take heed: Forget about diet fads, it doesn’t matter whether you have a high or low carb diet, and you have to count the calories.

That sobering assessment of how to become — and remain — trim and fit comes from Mike Gibney, former professor of food and health at University College Dublin.

“If you want to diet, it doesn’t matter whether you cut down on fat or sugar, or what have you. It’s the calories that count,” said Prof Gibney. “There is no getting away from that.”