Happy New Year to you! I hope that you all got to celebrate with those most dearest to you and are feeling excited for the new decade to come.

At the start of any New Year, there will be a slew of 'New Year, New You' books promising anything from new bodies, personality change, more friends, more money and genuinely a better life for you. as a former bookseller, we always greeted these titles with a mild eye roll. I mean what is wrong with the life and person you already are? The worst of these were the diet books; Atkins, Keto, South Beach Diet, Paleo....the list goes on and so shall it be forever more.

So for you dear reader, I propose an anti-diet book, ' How to Have your Cake and Skinny Jeans too' by Josie Spinardi. I read this and it truly opened my eyes. Spinardi has an easy, witty writing style that starts by saying that diets DO NOT WORK !!! Furthermore they can be extremely detrimental to our health and weight loss journey in the long run.

Spinardi explains the diet cycle and I found myself uncomfortably recognising a lot of the behaviours (well hello clearing the cupboards of 'bad' food). She argues that there is no such thing as good or bad food....just food. And how overeating may actually be a symptom of something else, something deeper. There are mini exercises to do. I loved the letting go exercise where you go to a supermarket and buy previously 'forbidden' food because NEWS FLASH...you would like to eat it. At its most basic, letting go of long held beliefs around food and eating.

I absolutely adore this book. I keep it in the loo so I can look back on it often. I have done the exercises Josie suggests and I have never dieted since. Am I a size 8? No, of course not, but I am happy with my my body. The sky did not fall in, I did not become a blimp, in fact, I stayed exactly the same weight but I have ditched ryvita because I don't like the taste of it and I do eat cake as you know and I'm OK.

A meditation teacher I once knew said a wonderful thing to our meditation group 'You don't need to change, the universe has already made you perfect and unique'. I love this! It does apply to all of us including you dear reader.

Well pairing this with a cake was easy peasy. The clue is the big cupcake on the cover. A lovely buttery, vanilla cupcake with lots of chocolate frosting preferably in a polka dot bun case. Enjoy my loves!