PROFILE

Mimi Spencer is a prizewinning fashion journalist and a leading lifestyle writer. Her weekly column in The Mail on Sunday’s You Magazine is read by 2.8 million people, and she has been a contributing editor to Observer Woman and Grazia since launch. Mimi edited ES Magazine for two years, following six years as Fashion Editor for the London Evening Standard, where she won the British Fashion Council Award for Fashion Writer of the Year in 2000. She lives with her husband Paul Bowen, a human rights barrister, and their two small, sticky children in Hove on the South Coast of England. She cooks a mean chocolate fudge cake (which explains the sticky children) and challenges anyone to beat her in the Dolphin Derby on Brighton Pier.

Mimi’s book, 101 Things to do Before You Diet, is published in paperback by Bantam on January 1 2010 (£7.99).

“We all know that dieting simply doesn't work for most people. So here's a ‘not-a-diet’ book that will show you how to develop positive relationships – with your jeans, your butter dish, your waist, your world. If you think it's time to free yourself from the tyranny of thin, this sassy, funny and practical book by style guru Mimi Spencer is the one for you. Like your ideal best friend, she will help you release your thinner self without all the depressing self-denial, guilty weigh-ins and faddy food plans of conventional diets. Instead, she will help you make the most of what you've got, and teach you to understand that the person you are now is just as fabulous as the person you want to be.”

For more on 101 Things to do Before you Diet, and to buy the book, go to http://authorsplace.co.uk/mimi-spencer