Here are out top 10 tips for doing it!

1. Cheese is usually very high in fat and calories. You can substitute half fat cheese. This is great for recipes where cheese is added to hot dishes, but it is often about as appealing as rubber when raw! If you want to add cheese to a salad, the key is to use as strong a cheese as possible. Parmesan is very good, and to make the strong cheese go even further, grate it. It makes even 1 oz of cheese seem like a lot, and if the cheese is strong, you'll still get a lot of flavour.

2. If you like red meat dishes like chilli con carne or spaghetti bolognaise, try substituting low fat alternatives like soya or quorn for the meat. This can sometimes reduce the calories by up to a third. If you must have red meat, make sure you pick extra lean cuts, and always dry fry, carefully draining any fat away before adding the extra ingredients.

3. We all love chips or fries! Oven chips are a good substitute as they often have less than 5% fat. If you want to reduce the fat even further, try brushing an oven tray with olive oil and add some chopped potatoes (wash and leave the skins on), turning them a few times until they are coated with the oil. Cook in a hot oven for around 20-30 minutes or until they are crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. To flavour, you can also add spices like paprika or curry powder to the oil.

4. If you like fried foods, you will be amazed how good dry frying can be. Make sure you use a good non-stick frying pan, and add some spray oil, which you can buy in most good supermarkets. Then just add the food and 'fry'.

5. You can cheat with sauces. The normal way to make a basic sauce is to melt fat in a pan, add flour and then milk. Instead, add some skimmed milk to a pan and heat up, but don't boil. Mix some cornflour with a little more cold milk, and add. Bring to a simmer, stirring constantly. You can add more cornflour (blend every time with a little milk) to make it thicker. You can then flavour with low fat cheese or just salt and pepper to get a very low fat and low calorie sauce that you can use to make cauliflower or macaroni cheese.

6. Hate low fat spreads? If you can't stand low fat spreads, why not try low fat mayonnaise as a spread for sandwiches. Although higher in calories than low fat spreads, it is much lower than butter.

7. We all love desserts, but they can be really high in fat and calories for just a tiny amount. Low sugar jellies are a great dessert or snack with virtually no calories at all. To give some added interest, you can add fruits canned in fruit juice (use the juice as part of the liquid for the jelly) or milk to make a milk jelly. To do this, make up the jelly with half the liquid and leave in the fridge until it is just starting to set. Add the rest of the liquid as milk and leave to set fully. You can add fromage frais or yoghurt too.

8. If you yearn for chocolate, cocoa powder is very low in calories. Drinking chocolate is high in sugar, and so can add a lot of calories, so avoid it. You can add unsweetened cocoa to fat free sponges, ice cream, milk for a hot drink, meringues or yoghurts. Because it has no added sugar, you may need to sweeten your food, but you can do that by using sugar free sweeteners without adding any calories.

9. Vegetables are very low in calories, so try to 'bulk' out every meal with them. You can reduce the amount of pasta or rice by serving a huge plate of vegetable sauce or vegetable stir fry. It will seem like a lot and be filling. Try adding courgettes, leeks, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, aubergine and anything else to pasta sauces! And bulk up stir fries with Chinese mushrooms and beansprouts. It will have the added advantage of adding lots of vitamins to your diet!

10. Employ the one pan technique! When you are cooking a casserole or a pasta sauce, throw all the ingredients in a pan together with no fat at all. Add your stock or tinned tomatoes and just bring to a simmer. The sauce will thicken by simmering to reduce the liquid. You will probably find that you need to add additional flavouring to substitute for the fat, so add flavourings like Lea and Perrins Worcester Sauce, stock cubes or powder, black pepper, tomato puree or paste.