If you need to drop and few kilos and dont know where to get started, stop counting calories and start counting colours. When it comes to losing weight, make sure your plate is piled high with a range of colourful fruit and vegetables. Youll naturally create more balance and health-filled menus.

Why? Colour not only brightens your mood but also your diet. Load your plate with fruit and veges like a box of crayons in colours such as red, yellow, orange, blue, purple, white and green and youll also be filling up on power packed phytonutrients. Phytonutrients are naturally occurring chemicals which combat disease, including cancer.

Go easy on the beige and brown foods such as pasta and startchy carbs. When there are too many of these drab colours on your plate, weight gain is almost certain. That's because these beige foods often are high in calories and can leave you feeling hungry later. A cup of beige or brown beans can be over 200 calories....but a cup of red or green vegetables is under a hundred! Add fresh greens, deep purple-reds and bright yellow-orange to a meal, and water the nutrient content go up, while calories go down! Plus, you'll get more enjoyment from eating when there's a variety of colours and flavours on your plate.

According to Dr David Heber, M.D., Ph.D. and author of What Color Is Your Diet the key to designing your colourful diet is to choose from a range of different colour groups:

Blue/purple fruits and vegetables contain varying amounts of health-promoting phytochemicals such as anthocyanins and phenolics. Choose from a range including blueberries, blackberries, eggplant, plums, raisins. These assist in memory function.

Green group includes broccoli; Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and bok choi. These foods stimulate the genes in your liver to turn on the production of enzymes that break down the cancer-causing chemicals in the body.

The yellow/green group includes green peas, avocado and honeydew melon. These promote eye health.

The yellow/orange group includes carrots, mangoes, apricots, rock melon and pumpkin. These contain carotenoids (beta carotene is one), fierce antioxidants that help prevent cancer and assist to lower heart-attack risk.

The white group includes bananas, white peaches, cauliflower, garlic, ginger, mushrooms and are helpful to maintain heart health.

The red group includes tomatoes, pink grapefruit and watermelon all of which contain lycopene. Lycopene is associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer and cardiovascular disease.

The red/purple group includes grapes, grape juice, prunes, cranberries, strawberries and red apples. These foods contain anthocyanins which have a beneficial effect on heart disease by inhibiting blood clot formation.

Kim Beardsmore

Kim Beardsmore MBA, BSc (Biochemistry) is a weight loss consultant, Independent Herbalife Distributor and creator of the online magazine Weight Loss Health. She also writes a column, Weighty Matters, for several off line newspapers in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.