The first thing to decide was when I would begin the diet. I opted for a weekend, which turned out to be a bad mistake. That's because you need a tremendous amount of self-control, and being around so many food temptations at home is not the ideal place to do that.

Imagine that after you have cooked some lovely dish you are not allowed to eat any of it - and just as your stomach is beginning to feel the pangs of hunger.

My preferred cooking time is the weekend, when there are fewer time constraints, and one thing I often cook is braised pork in a delicious gravy that is one of my family's favorite dishes.

On Day 1, the fragrance of this dish as it was being braised enveloped a large part of the house. I must say that the taste of the greasy cubes of pork that form the bulk of this dish have never appealed that much to me. But this day that pork and my palate seemed to be born for one another. I picked up a piece and savored the smell.

But willpower won the day, and the pork did not cross my lips.

When the next weekend came I had a hefty breakfast consisting of milk, two slices of whole-wheat toast with ham and cheese, a boiled egg, two walnuts and an apple. I gulped down every last bit of it.

By 7 pm my stomach was aching rather than rumbling and I decided to have a bowl of porridge to soothe it, and calculating pragmatism eventually ruled that the two-day plan should become a one-day plan.

I managed to hold to the slimmed down version of the 5:2 diet the following week.

However, after a disastrous outing with friends to a Korean restaurant in which temptation was simply too much I all but ran up the flag of surrender, and on a trip to Thailand during the Spring Festival holiday I declared my diet dead.