Can anyone give me tips on diet, Carbs and protein etc ??

[Old bones Ian]

If you want to lose weight sensibly and actually have a fighting chance of keeping it off, just make your meals smaller, eat a bit healthier and do some exercise, however this will be a slow solution.

Whatever you do don’t skip meals, true the weight will tumble off, but your body will start storing the food because it won’t know when it’s going to next get feed and when you eventually start eating again you will put it all back on.

I agree about the size of the meals, i used to eat huge dinners with 3 slices of bread and butter on the side.

I've now cut out the bread and really brought down the amount i put on my plate. it made a big difference and i don't feel lethargic after a meal now.

Snacking is the thing i have to tackle next, i'm a nightmare for cake .

But i've lost about a stone and now weigh in at 11st 12lbs , and i'm 5' 8"
when i got fit through running i went down to 11st, never felt fitter . But everyone started saying i looked ill.

[GAV]

As far as losing weight and keeping it off, you will want to avoid any sort of fad diet or quick fix. For example, if you want to lose a stone you could do a no-carb or very low-carb diet and see the weight come off in a reasonably short period of time. The problem? Once you've reached your weight loss goals you re-introduce the carbs and your body puts the weight back on quite quickly.

In order to take off the weight, and keep it off long-term, you need to make a change to your overall lifestyle. That means what you eat, when you eat and your exercise level. If you don't currently exercise then introducing some form of activity is required (even if its going for a 45 min walk 3 times a week with your i-Pod as company).

I won't sit here and hammer you with information about foods you should eat and those to avoid as you can find that on a million and one different websites. Here are a few tips:

1) Eating 4-6 smaller meals a day is much better than eating 2-3 large meals.
2) Breakfast is essential to get your metabolism started and to set you up for the beginning of the day.
3) Wholewheat is always a better option for bread, pasta etc. Make sure the first ingredient of your wholewheat product is "whole wheat" though and not "enriched whole wheat"
4) Cut out all refined and added sugars, so things like carbonated drinks and dumping sugar in your tea. Find a sweetner that you like and use that in your brew instead.
5) Replace some of the plate space that would be dedicated to pasta/rice/potato with vegetables.
6) Take a multi-vitamin and 1000mg fish oil capsules
7) Keeping a diet diary is always a fantastic help to track where you are and to see what things you can cut-out or add in.
8) Don't eat foods high in carbohydrate (especially sugars) after about 7or 8pm, unless you workout very late in the eveining.
9) Drink more water

[Hagler2002]

Don't get sucked into the chance of winning expensive items on certain food products! I've been playing McDonald's monopoly now for 10yrs and the only thing I've won is type 2 diabetes.