It has been going on for generations. Every spring a new crop of diet books comes along, promising to help you lose weight "without really trying". Medical science cannot even find a way for people to lose weight permanently while trying. Most diets fail, which is why obesity is on the increase, but the publishing industry never gives up on dieting.
This year's trend in dieting is - and there's no other way to put this - eating. In the 1970s, the book shelves groaned with books telling women to give themselves permission to have orgasms. In 1998, the books are telling women to relax and give themselves permission to eat. Diet book publishers have cottoned on to the fact that dieting doesn't work, doesn't make you healthier, sexier, prettier or richer - as Elizabeth Filleul wrote in Consuming Passion: Why Diets Harm Body and Soul (Triangle, 1996, £6.90 in UK). So instead of telling us to diet, the diet writers are telling us to get more exercise and eat more healthily - which, if you enjoy biscuits, cakes, chocolate and wine, is the same thing as being told to go on a diet. Dr Deanna Jepson, in Eat Orgasmically And Lose Weight (Thorsons, 1998, £8.05 in UK), says that we should stop punishing ourselves for enjoying food and accept that food is orgasmic, not addictive, and that it is natural to enjoy it. Her advice is to eat from all the five food groups (healthy advice, you have to admit), not to tell anyone you're dieting (which surely takes away whatever grim pleasure there is in dieting) and to use the "rims" on your plate to help you learn when you are hungry - a difficult lesson in these gorging times.
In Eat More, Weigh Less: The Revolutionary 28-day Fat-Burning Plan by Martica K. Heaner (Hodder & Stoughton, 1998, £6.90 in UK) we are urged to exercise more and "feast not fast". She dedicates the book to her mother, whose philosophy was "never-say-diet". Instead, Martica offers Smart Eating Techniques to let you indulge without gaining weight. The chapter begins: "Have you ever eaten a big greasy meal and then felt sick afterwards? Have you ever stuffed your face with a load of fattening things and, even though you enjoyed it at the time, later felt bloated and lethargic? Have you ever gone into a sugar coma where you fall into a heavy sleep after eating lots of sweets?" Martica assumes that the answer is yes.
Her basic tip is: eat healthy foods because it's difficult to eat too much. For this you pay £6.90.
Always be suspicious of diet books by ballet dancers because these are people who were never fat and who probably think that being fat is weighing eight stone. Body & Soul by Karen Smith, a former ballet dancer, with a foreword by actress Maureen Lipman (Kyle Cathie, 1998, £14.95 in UK), is a holistic book which emphasises exercise and emotional health and leaves the nutrition and diet chapter for last. "Eat little and often and never miss breakfast," she advises.
Readers of The Vitality Plan (Dorling Kindersley, £9.99 in UK) are meant to be inspired by photographs of the muscular and incredibly skinny body of Deborah Bull, former principal dancer with the British Royal Ballet and fitness trainer to Mick Jagger for eight years. She's thinner than many of us were at the age of eight. She is clearly a lifelong slimmer with a muscle-and-bone body unattainable by all but perhaps 1 per cent of the population - except, of course, Mick Jagger.
The fitness programme, by Torje Eike, seems excellent, if you could ever commit yourself to doing it without the help of a personal trainer.
The advice on food is the same as that offered by any qualified nutritionist: base meals on carbohydrates such as pasta, rice and potatoes and have meat and fish as part of the dish, not the main feature. Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. The book veers into the danger zone, however, because it advocates eating virtually no fat, which isn't good for you because it may cause, rather than cure, heart disease. The spiritual type of no-diet book encourages us to get away from our bodies all together, which isn't a bad idea. Worried about fat thighs? Forget they're there.
The latest such offering is The 10-Day Re- Balance Programme: A Unique New Life Plan To Dramatically Improve Your Health And Inner Well-Being (Rider, 1998, £10.30 in UK). It's by Jon Sandifer, an "adviser to celebrities" (all you need to know, really) who says that being slim is evidence of your superior spiritual state. Slimness is acquired by balancing yin and yang, practising oriental self-diagnosis, cooking intuitively, doing a little feng-shui in the bedroom and chewing slowly to bring about a more relaxed state.
The only problem is, if you're phobic about fat, how can you relax while eating, especially with a diet book in one hand?
The perennial big-seller is Rosemary Conley's Hip And Thigh Diet (Arrow Books, £2.90 in UK), still going strong after 10 years and in a new edition published at its original price. Conley sells and sells, despite the fact that there is no scientific evidence that a diet can make you lose weight from your hips and thighs, as opposed to anywhere else.
Since the book was first published, we've had hard scientific evidence that a woman's natural pear shape is the healthiest shape to be. Women with apple shapes - thickness around the middle - are more likely to get heart disease. Nevertheless, women remain undeterred from trying to slim away their hips and thighs. Anyone getting too much exercise to worry about their hips and thighs will benefit from Food For Fitness, by Anita Bean (A&G Black, £2.65 in UK). It has advice on the training diet, the vegetarian athlete's diet and on the competition diet (pre-, during and post-). It is inspiring for those of us who can barely walk to the car and full of healthy and quick-to-prepare recipes. Great to have in the house if you have teenagers involved in sport.
The all-time greatest little book of wisdom about losing weight was written in 1989 by Jan de Vries and it's still available. Realistic Weight Control (Mainstream Publishing, £6.90 in UK) discusses the complex mental processes which surround the personal choice to be overweight, when you could just as easily choose the eating habits which would make you thin. You have to ask yourself, "Do you really want to lose weight?" de Vries writes. "Many people go through life `playing' at diets," he asserts. They do this because they cannot really handle the responsibilities that go with being slim. Being looked at with admiration is simply too much for them, he believes. De Vries has the fastest diet advice ever conceived: Want to lose half a stone instantly? Not in 48 days or even a week, but in one millisecond? Absolutely and instantaneously, without pain? Without the need for self-control, for diet pills or water fasts? Yes?
OK, here it is, straight from de Vries: "Stand up straight."