An Australian fitness instructor, who gained more than seven stones in four months as part of an experiment, says he is now hooked on junk food.

Paul "PJ" James, 32, a former model, went on his binge-eating escapade so he could understand his fat gym clients better. To gain weight, he ate kebabs and fry-ups, as well as bacon, chips and chocolate milk and went from 12.5 stones in January to his present weight of 20 stones.

Melbourne model PJ James before and after his junk food diet

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The humble grapefruit could prove to be a mighty – if bitter tasting – weapon in the fight against diabetes, scientists say.

A study found naringenin, a flavonoid found in citrus fruit, makes the liver burn fat instead of storing it after a meal.

Researchers believe the chemical would also help obesity sufferers and even fight diabetes, because it also helped balance insulin and glucose levels.

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Trying to copy celebrities who are back in skinny jeans weeks after giving birth is unrealistic and dangerous, new mothers are being warned.

It can take women six months or even a year, not weeks, to shed the weight they put on in pregnancy, say experts.

Crash diets and intensive exercise programmes are not only likely to fail but can harm mother and baby.

The advice comes from Germany’s Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care.

According to the Institute, women are under too much pressure to lose weight quickly after giving birth, when many need some of that extra weight to provide nourishment for the baby.

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A pill which claims to help dieters lose pounds will be available over-the-counter from UK chemists on Wednesday.

Nicola Lovejoy-Mellonie has lost a significant amount of weight since taking the pills

A month’s supply of Orlistat – which is known as Alli – costs £49.95 and will only be sold to people who are clinically overweight.

Nicola Lovejoy-Mellonie, 42, has been taking the pills as part of a trial since January.

She says unlike her previous attempts to lose weight, Alli has made a real difference.

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The so-called muffin top is the overhanging flesh that spills over the waistband. Not a good look by anyone’s standards. So, with summer in sight and low-rise jeans and cropped tops still in fashion, it’s time to lose that spare tyre. JANEY HOLLIDAY, founder of Fit For A Princess, explains how to get rid of your muffin top for good.

Work out laterally… Conditioning your muscles all the way around helps decrease the ‘muffin’ appearance

STRIP THE FAT

Muffin tops are made up of excess fat around the abdominal area all the way round your body. Stripping excess fat from your body with cardio exercise is one of the best ways to get rid of it.

Jogging, power walking, cycling, aerobics, swimming – anything that gets your heart rate up and your body moving – will burn fat. Women tap into fat stores for energy much more slowly than men, usually after 40 minutes of exercising, so aim for at least this, but ideally building up to an hour, three times a week.

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British women are the most overweight in Europe – but are also the most comfortable about their size, a study suggests.

French women, meanwhile, are the thinnest, yet worry more about being fat than those in any other EU country.

The findings highlight both massive differences in the weight of men and women across Europe, and how countries’ attitudes to obesity vary.

In France, the proportion of thin women has long been the highest in Europe. Around 6.7 per cent of French women are dangerously thin.

According to the most recent statistics, French women also have Europe’s lowest average Body Mass Index – the measure of weight that takes into account someone’s height.

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Carrying four stones of excess weight can cost you three years of life, warn researchers.

A study of almost a million adults has given the clearest indication yet of the mortal dangers of obesity.

Those who are extremely overweight could lose ten years of their life, it says.

Scientists from Oxford University assessed the impact of obesity by analysing data from 57 separate studies.

They found a clear link between high body mass index scores and an early grave.

Using BMI gives a good measure of how overweight a person is, because it compares weight to height.

But the scientists also gave an estimate of how much excess weight could be dangerous compared with an ‘ideal’ weight.

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You should be taking 100 steps each minute for half an hour a day if you want to achieve "moderate" exercise by walking, a study shows.

A US team reached the figure after measuring the body’s oxygen demand in some 100 people walking on a treadmill.

They wrote in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine that a pedometer alone was not enough to gauge exercise as it gave no data on intensity.

US and UK guidelines urge half an hour of moderate exercise five days a week.

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Being overweight or seriously underweight as a teenager curbs life expectancy as much as smoking 10 cigarettes a day, a study suggests.

Swedish researchers followed 46,000 men from the age of 18 for 38 years.

Being obese or smoking more than 10 a day doubled the premature death risk, the British Medical Journal reported.

Being overweight, seriously underweight or smoking 10 or less raised it by 30% – and interestingly the fat non-smoker ran the same risk as the fat smoker.

Those who were underweight – with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of less than 18.5 – had no increased risk of dying early, regardless of whether they smoked or not.

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Doner kebabs in the UK have been found to contain the equivalent fat to drinking more than one and a half wine glasses of cooking oil.

A nationwide sample of the nutritional content of the takeaway meal found the average doner also contained close to an adult’s entire daily recommended intake of salt.

Before adding salad and sauce the average kebab contained 1,000 calories but researchers found some with 1,990.

Last year food scientists tested a doner kebab containing 140g of fat – twice the amount a woman should eat in a day.

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