I reckon it’s fair to say I’ve passed the first week of my Drop A Dress Size challenge with flying colours. I couldn’t have asked for a better opening result than losing eight pounds over the last seven days.

I’ve stuck pretty religiously to the fat-melting diet plan that is low in carbs and high in protein, and it would certainly appear to be living up to its name.

The guys at Cheshire Fitness, who are guiding me through this four-week summer shape up plan, reckon I shouldn’t get too excited by my initial weight loss, because their mantra is more focused towards losing inches rather than pounds – particularly as the exercise side of the regime is concentrating on increasing the lean muscle mass while the diet is taking care of decreasing the fatty stuff. 

They tell me that I may even put on weight before I lose any more by building muscle, so I can’t say that I’m entirely looking forward to weighing in next week.

I have to admit, though, that it’s been a tricky food plan to follow to the letter – particularly the prospect of having eggs for breakfast every day. 

I’m more of a fruit and yoghurt girl myself, but yoghurts are strictly off limits for the four-week plan.

Foodwise the plan is as follows: two eggs on one slice of toast for breakfast, a mid-morning snack of either a handful of blueberries, nuts or an apple, lunch of either salmon/chicken with salad, afternoon snack of carrot sticks with houmus and then dinner of either fish/turkey/chicken with vegetables that grow above the ground - eg broccolli, kale, cabbage or green beans. 

Going organic

I’m encouraged to buy all-organic produce to cut out any nasty chemicals that apparently may be hindering us all from losing weight.

While it has indeed helped me shed the pounds in the weight sense, it has also been pretty tough on the old pounds and pence. 

Trying to buy all organic produce is a much harder prospect than I had anticipated.

Even the posher supermarkets such as Waitrose and Marks & Spencer have nothing like as much organic produce as I thought they’d have, and when they did I was shocked to discover that they were often double the price of normal grub.

Fat loss or no, I simply could not stomach shelling out over £7 for two chicken breasts when there was an offer on four regular fillets for a much more affordable £4.

However, not being totally organic doesn’t appear to have dinted my weight loss progress this week. And, if I’m being totally honest, I haven’t exactly ditched my daily cup of coffee as the plan suggests, and there may also have been a couple of glasses of wine in the mix over the course of the week.

However, I’m feeling pretty smug about my opening weight loss – and personal trainer Glenn Williams gets me to hold a 4kg medicine ball to appreciate just how much weight I’ve lost in one week, and suggests I should now try to run round the block with it to show how much weight it really is. 

Having already completed one hour of training for the day, I heartily laugh off this suggestion.

Glenn and fellow personal trainer Greg Johnson have been taking me through my paces in the gym, and I’ve had three one hour sessions with the guys over the course of the week.

Changing routine

The guys’ ethos for a shape-up plan like this is refreshing - they believe you don’t have to be doing hours and hours of hard slog in the gym to get good results – instead you need to spend your time in the gym much more efficiently.

So during our sessions, they’ve been interspersing a couple of short sharp three minute runs to get the heart rate up, with focusing on exercises that work the whole body – for example using kettlebell weights and some strange pully lead things that have me contorting in all sorts of funny shapes. But hey, as long as humiliation in the gym guarantees me these sort of weight loss results, who am I to complain?

The fellas are also keen to keep changing things with each hour session, to shock the body, eventually I hope, into a rippling muscular form.

Glenn, a former professional boxer, has been teaching me some sparring moves, while karate expert Greg is also to take me through some martial arts -style training in the week to come.

Next week the guys are going to measure my body fat percentages as well as my weight, to see what impact all my hard work has been having on making me a healthier person too. And hopefully I’ll be a few inches closer to dropping that dress size! 

Personal training sessions with Cheshire Fitness start from £35 an hour.  

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