Bikini bother can lead women to crash diet in order to get trim for the poolside in less time than is sensible or healthy, one expert has advised this week.

According to the presenter of Channel Four's Cook Yourself Thin programme, Harry Eastwood, women tend to panic when they realise they are not as trim as they would like to be when lounging on the beach in their revealing swimwear.

Research conducted by Total Greek Yoghurt revealed that nearly 75 per cent of British women say they feel self-conscious when stripping down to a swimsuit on holiday for the first time.

Furthermore, although these women spend an average of nearly £50 on bikinis and beach-related accessories comma? many are anxious that when it comes to bums and tums they won't meet onlookers' expectations.

The research revealed that 60 per cent of holidaying women said that losing weight would give them more bikini belief.

Mr Eastwood said: "The truth is I think in Britain because we have such a short summer all the pressure comes on just before the bikini because it really is something we wear about two or three weeks of the year max."

He explained that in reality, despite all the drama surrounding the bikini-wearing season, it lasts for such a short period of time that when women get their swimsuits out the next year what they see in the mirror is a "bit of a shock".

According to the TV personality, women's magazines are partly culpable for the shame women feel when exposing their lumps and bumps in a bikini as they promote an often unattainable ideal of skinniness.

This, he explained, leads to crash dieting, which he called a "seriously depressing" cycle of eating to engage in.

"If you are going on holiday to relax and you have crash-dieted before going, you turn up and after four days you have put all the weight on again. That's hardly relaxing - it's actually much more stressful then if you hadn't crash-dieted in the first place," he concluded.

Holidaymakers who want to lose weight were instead advised to plan ahead and draw up a sensible eating plan in order to avoid taking drastic and potentially unhealthy action before jetting off to catch some rays.

Those who do make a sensible plan should ensure that it is not short-sighted and looks beyond their target goal of the holiday if they want to keep the weight off.

Research conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles comma? last year revealed that in the main diets have a tendency to fail.

The study found that those on diets typically lost five to ten per cent of their starting weight in the first six months.

However, around one-third of people regained more weight than they had lost within four to five years, highlighting the importance of finding a realistic lifestyle which balances a good diet with exercise.