Drop a dress size with these simple phrases!

Consider this change! Grit arrived in Hong Kong last year, firmly middle-rolled and plump bummed. But those comfort handles are gone! How was this done?

Try grit's no-effort diet!

All you have to do is repeat these obsessions, phobias, fears, general anxieties and depressive statements each day, and a shrunk arse can be yours within the month!

1. We are not going to the supermarket. They are trying to steal my handbag.

But this is true. Present any checkout in Hong Kong with one baguette and a pot of kid's jam and you feel as if your life savings have been mugged by Bernard Madoff. The up-market Waitrose-lookalike, for example, City Super. Charging $278 for six strawberries?! And how much are they asking for a pot of jam? HOW MUCH? Right. That does it. Take my advice, hold onto your handbag and refuse to buy any food ever again. (Lose 7lb immediately!)

2. Where are all the cows?

Grit is not a farm girl. But even she has to wonder where those eggs and dairies come from. Not Hong Kong, that's for sure. Chickens are banned and you can't stick a cow on a mountain. There is only one answer. Mainland China. I'm betting animals living there are skipping joyfully in pampered, free-range luxury. Shudder and go vegan. (Lose another half stone, although moral righteousness weighs quite a bit, so put back on 5lb.)

3. I cannot eat that. It is pewk.

Say this every morning while staring at yellow mush called bread! Over here in land of noodle, you can take one mouthful of this vile crap, spit it out over the unfortunate Shark and declare all bread in Hong Kong disgustingvilepewk ughughugh noteatingthat everagain EVER EVER EVER. (Fussy eating loses 4lb instantly!)

4. China is trying to poison me.

Yes, they bloody well are. E-numbers, pesticides, chemicals, everything. Any nation that sprinkles melamine onto its baby food and dumps corn syrup and antibiotics in its honey needs watching, let's face it. The Grit response is to prowl the foodstuffs twitching and staring, scrutinising every label and every potato nobble and then refusing to eat any of it. (See? 5lb straight off!)

5. I'm sorry. Only hand-made, artisan sorbets can touch my lips now.

Hong Kong, the land of Cartier and Choo, has its benefits. Join the cult of artisan sorbet worship! Refuse to eat anything else all day long, then gorge your superior, upmarket taste buds with sensation perfection. While hanging out for the strawberry and basil decoction from I Scream you are sure to stop cramming your face with processed sugar-laden lardy junk! (But add 4lb thanks to three visits a week.)

6. Shut up. We are bloody well walking.

The perfect weight loss statement! Too poor from the ice cream and too mean to pay the taxi fares, you must walk everywhere including all Hong Kong serious hills, for hours. Has an educational benefit as you can justify petty meanness by claiming the kids need the exercise! (No weight loss but very firm thighs.)

7. Er, is there anywhere to buy food?

Live on an outlying island with two veg shops, an assortment of dried fish skin outlets, a butchery and an old man who sits by the concrete path selling beetroot. By the end of an hour you've exhausted the main street and emerged with something that you hope is a handful of dried noodles and not a nouveau pan scrubber. (Lose the will to live.)

8. Oh no, we have to pass the Hong Kong seafood restaurants.

Yes, one glance to those tanks is almost guaranteed to have you vowing that you'll never eat again. You can pick your live food item - the crayfish clawing its way out the tank in despair, the sad crab sitting there in a death sentence with a bamboo ribbon tied round its claws, or the half-dead fish with no space to twitch a tail - and your hunger can shrivel to nothing. Say, things have got better though! Under the British I couldn't tell the difference between the pet shop and the steakhouse! (Lose 4lb but head back to the sorbet counter to comfort eat.)

9. I don't want anything to eat. I am depressed.

This is a great line! Gets you out of all cooking, shopping, food preparation, every meal, daily! Keep it up for several weeks! Shark, who can run the family without anyone, can take your purse and scavenge lunch at Mrs Chang the Cake Lady. Apparently she makes excellent coconut buns, not that you can eat them because they might have been near a condemned cow. Anyway, you're far too busy lying foetal in bed and crying, self piteously, at all ordinary life traumas, so have no appetite at all till next Wednesday! (Weight loss? Who cares when everything is pointless anyway?!)

10. Now, all you ladies (and gentlemen) looking to drop a dress size, you too can follow grit's fantastic diet by chanting this simple phrase!

Be mean, be sad, be phobic!