Joe,

Sorry to hear about this, and hope it ends up not being anything serious.

Regarding living healthily:

The posters urging "moderation" are, to my mind, the ones to listen to. Those posting specific "solutions" that rely on avoiding things completely, or prescribed eating patters, are IMO edging towards "faddism".

The 5/7 approach, where you eat what you like for 5 days and fast for 2, works like any other method of calorie restriction....the science behind Mosely's claims is very weak and independent tests have shown that weight-loss on this regime is pretty much due to calorie restriction when taken on a weekly basis. If it works as an alternative for some people, fine, but there have been some indications that it can be bad for you long term.

Same with advice to minimise salt intake, egg eating etc: yes, if you're eating 3 fried eggs a day, or slathering everything with salt, you should look at moderating intake, but the latest evidence is that regular egg eating has no effect on cholesterol levels and that salt intake has been over-stated as a cause of problems. Personally, if I don't get enough salt, I cramp up badly after or during exercise.

MODERATION is the key...there's no need to cut anything out completely: eat meat if you like it, but not a 12 ounce steak every day! Up the veg intake, yes, and try to cook things using less fat, but there's no need to get evangelical about it (eg I still use nice-tasting butter rather than revolting low-fat vegetable spreads....just less of it. And I won't touch low-fat cheese as it's uniformly vile. I just eat less of the good stuff than I did).

Losing weight is basically just a question of eating a little less and moving more. There are some other "fine tunings", sure, but that's the basic solution. A few years ago I lost 3 stone (42 lb) in 6 months using that approach and never felt as if I was "dieting" at all. Initially I used a weightloss site to log the calories I was eating and the exercise I was doing but after a while became good at estimating each day whether I was in calorie deficit or not without having to log it all. I put 14lb of it back when I was laid up recently for several months due to an operation on my foot, and unable to exercise properly for several more months after the plaster came off, but I've now got a grip again and cut down on the "comfort eating" of crap that had crept in to alleviate my misery at being unable to exercise, so expect that to be gone again in another 8 weeks or so.

On the exercise front, walking is great, yes, but I think it's also a good idea to get the heart rate elevated above what normal walking achieves. Power walking up hills would be good, or running if possible. I can't stand gyms, but I do a form of circuit training outdoors (all weathers) in a group, which helps with motivation when it's raining or snowing!

Losing a couple of pounds a week, max, is a healthy rate of loss...."crash" diets that promise huge losses mainly show early results due to water loss, and can be quite unhealthy long term, as well as leading to "yo-yo" weight gain/loss when the diet "ends" and you go back to eating the same old stuff. Eating just a bit more carefully, with everything in moderation, is a re-education of the palate and the body and doesn't ever "end" in that you adopt a whole new eating pattern, which balances out as you lose weight (ie your base level calorie expenditure will drop as your weight drops and at some point you'll reach a maintenance weight where the calories from your re-educated palate's intake are balanced by the output).