A good weight loss programme can be put in place simply by keeping a food diary. Start a full week before you plan to commence dieting. Write down everything you eat and drink (be honest!) throughout the day. Look at what you’ve written down, and after a few days you should be in a position to see where adjustments could be made.

You may be surprised at how many snacks and sweets you’re getting through, or how many glasses of wine. If that’s the case, they should be minimised first. If your diary only shows nutritious food, then perhaps smaller portions would be the answer. Either way, use your food diary as the basis for the changes you wish to make.

Then take the next seven days and write down exactly what you’re going to stick to. This should include food, drink and exercise. As far as food is concerned, make sure you note down what you’re not allowed, or maybe what you’ll restrict to the weekend. In a different section, make a list of the different foods you are allowed to have.

If you enjoy alcohol, decide on a small quantity that you will allow yourself at the weekend, and write it down. Fizzy sugar-laden beverages must go! With regard to exercise, write down a reasonable routine that you will stick to.

Early in the morning on the first day of your diet, take an accurate reading of your weight. Every seven days, look at how it’s going and then plan the next week. Make a note of your weight in your diary once a week.

You have lots of flexibility with a program like this. Useful observations jotted in the diary will help to make the following weeks more enjoyable. Also enter the exercise you’re doing, to make sure this isn’t getting left out. A diary is a very simple way to monitor your progress - and a remarkable tool for staying with the program!

Do keep your expectations reasonable though. It will take a little time, but within a month you’ll start to feel more energised and maybe less out of breath. Just be patient and have faith! Staying motivated can be difficult, so it’s important to focus on the rewards and not the effort.

Try to get back into good habits as quickly as you can if you find yourself straying. Do you need to change some things about your regime? There are some relatively easy ways to introduce more exercise. Why not take a twenty minute walk every lunch time, and increase the pace each day?

Be proud of your achievements. Your efforts will be much more sustainable if you do. You may not want to splash out on clothes until all the weight has come off. But an evening at a show would be spot-on to toast a ten pound loss!

(C) 2010 S. Edwards. Pop over to Lose Fat Fast or www.weightlossdietwar.com/LoseFat.html.

Our BMI, or Body Mass Index is an indication of whether we are overweight or not. Our weight is thought to be right for our height if our reading is under twenty five and over eighteen. We have weight management problems if our figure is any higher than that. If in fact our index reveals a figure over thirty then we’re obese, with a result over forty making us morbidly obese.

A simple calculation can be done to work out your BMI. You’ll need to know your weight and height in kilos and metres respectively. Your index is your height squared, divided by your weight.

For example if your height is 1.6 metres and your weight is 78 kilos, your BMI is 30.47 (1.6 x 1.6 = 2.56 then 78 / 2.56 = 30.47). These figures state categorically that you fall into the obesity category. Medical advice would definitely suggest a change of diet and activity is needed.

Generally, a reduction in the amount of high fat food will get the weight-loss ball rolling. It’s important that we reduce our portions and convert to healthier options.

Stay away from eating programs that sound too good to be true! They’re usually so restrictive and unsatisfactory that you can’t maintain them for long. Any slimming regime that only allows one and a half thousand calories a day is considered a crash diet. Programs like this tend to have a yo-yo effect on weight - it comes off quickly, then goes straight back on again when you inevitably stop.

Manageable healthy fat loss can’t be done in a couple of weeks. If you reduce your calorific intake by a fifth, there’s a good chance you’ll take off up to a couple of pounds a week. Although this won’t bring instant gratification, it should go some way to addressing your longer-term health issues.

Fatty foods tend to give us the biggest problem with weight management. Lower your intake of saturated fat then, and you achieve a noticeable reduction in calories. In its place eat more fresh vegetables and fruit. To fill up, try eating more wholemeal and grain. It won’t take long before you notice you’re actually feeling better.

It may seem like a good idea to skip a meal, but it isn’t. Over the day as a whole, you’re likely to consume more in snacks to compensate for your hunger. A number of lighter meals throughout the day is better in reality. It’s more difficult to get the weight off when you feel half-starved. Your body can metabolise more productively when it knows it’s receiving small regular intakes of fuel. This allows it to get rid of excess fat more easily.

Copyright Scott Edwards. Hop over to Fast Weight Loss Diet or www.weightlossdietwar.com/FatLoss.html.

Some folks appear to have it all - and everything they do seems to fall easily into place. Conversely, others struggle with everything they do, and can always give you a reason why life is so difficult. It usually comes down to attitude, where the victors maintain a good attitude, and the victims maintain a poor one.

If your goal is to lose twenty pounds, you must have the victor mentality in order to succeed. A piece-meal attempt at dieting without the belief is why the ‘victim’ will never win. Victors commit mentally to a successful conclusion, and back their actions with emotion.

Visualise the finale of a tennis championship, where the player’s attitudes are as follows: One says “It’s my last chance - I’ll give it my best shot,” but the other says “Winning is my destiny.” No prizes for guessing who will conquer his opponent!

The victor can be defined by the term OAR - as it describes someone paddling towards success. OAR = Ownership, Accountability and Responsibility. ‘Bed’ can be used to describe a victim who remains in bed because he’s given up! B is for blame, E is for excuses and D is for denial.

A victor doesn’t rely on others to show the way - he or she takes ownership of the mission. He takes account of his actions by taking them seriously. He sees things through by tackling problems instead of creating them. And finally he assumes responsibility for everything he does, and doesn’t make excuses about anything.

The victim always has a reason for not achieving, and it’s rarely to do with him or herself. He can always find fault with another person - as if that person was in control, not him. So he can always find an excuse for his lack of accomplishment. The pattern of blaming others and making excuses leads to an existence of absolute denial. The victim is then sure beyond doubt that he can do nothing about his lot.

A mental overhaul is no bad thing for anyone looking to address weight management issues. Thinking like a victim will simply block all chances of success.

Both the victor and the victim thought processes are down to habit. Both can be changed over time. Take note of what you’re saying to yourself. If your internal voice sounds like a victim - cut it short immediately and change the tone. It’s not true that it’s much easier for some than others. Those who’ve achieved have just worked on their attitude.

“There is no such thing as a hero, only those who rise to the occasion”. Those were the words of Winston Churchill, and they’re just as valid today. In order to maintain successful weight management, we first have to maintain a successful attitude.

Copyright 2010 Scott Edwards. Navigate to Diet To Lose Fat or www.weightlossdietwar.com/LoseFat.html.

As we consider how our lives should be in the future, mental images pop into our heads. Perhaps we think of having a really good relationship, with more expensive holidays and a luxury home. It’s probable we’ll view our figure differently - with less body fat and a more toned physique.

Honing in on the new things we want to have is a good starting base when thinking of which goals we want to reach. Achieving successful goals isn’t going to happen if we don’t see them in our minds eye first.

But before we can have all these great things, we have to be prepared to make some changes. As Albert Einstein said, “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.” Put simply, we won’t move on if we stick to what we’ve always done.

For big leaps forward in what we have, we need to make huge changes not only to the way we do things, but also (more importantly) to the way we think. Knowing that there’s going to be a deal of exertion to do to get the things we want to have isn’t a great revelation. The relationship between giving and getting is well understood! But doing the work alone won’t necessarily bring the results we want.

Success is achieved by behaving and thinking like an achiever; by adopting the beliefs and attitudes of a successful person before we’ve got there in reality. So the person who’s objective is a weight reduction of 35lbs in a year’s time has to change to being a conscientious dieter who each week makes exercising a priority for a pre-set amount of time.

Hanging out with friends comes after the work-out’s been completed. A success-oriented person believes in delayed gratification, where the right effort will bring the right rewards. Slimming with a positive attitude brings results in faster and makes the whole discipline much easier.

Achievement isn’t the luck of the draw! We have to build the attitude of an achiever to act as a deterrent against the hits, doubts and criticisms that may be aimed at us.

Reading accounts of how achievers survived their journeys to success can help. Almost all the stories tell the same tale. The winner visualised being a winner from the beginning and internalised the process. It makes a lot of sense - be the person we need to be, enjoy what we do on the journey and have the results more rapidly.

(C) 2010 S. Edwards. Look at Fast Slimming Diets or www.weightlossdietwar.com/Slimming.html.

How are we supposed to know which advice to take about the best way to lose weight? A multi-billion dollar slimming industry constantly preys upon us with the latest ‘California Beach Babe’ diet that just gets discarded after two weeks of misery! Yet like many others, we were after something that worked. This is how we went about it…

We wanted to find people that weren’t just selling us their latest fad product. Authors that could teach us sustainable habits. Facts are what make the difference. We didn’t want to have to purchase costly diet products week on week. Our approach was to find a re-education program that we could happily live with.

The three we liked best are all reassuringly sound. They don’t push the latest ‘quick fix’ pills. (We weren’t that naive!)

The creators of the programs we’re recommending have really got to grips with how it feels to be too heavy. They teach no-nonsense practical solutions on resolving obesity issues for good. As you read through these programs, you’ll start to realise the benefits they’ll give you both now and down the road. People will start asking how you manage to look so well, once you get into the swing of things.

There Is A Way Forward Then? Without doubt - though few have discovered it under the mass of rubbish! But you can rest assured we have found practical workable solutions that will give you what you want.

We’re aware that battling with diet after diet has been a reality for many of us. Some regimes result in weight loss for a time, but then it all rolls back on again as soon as we stop. The vast majority of diets fail. Sometimes the program just isn’t sustainable, and sometimes we don’t see results.

It’s a little known fact, but professional sports people attribute a great deal of their performance to their diet program. Optimal, tuned-up fitness may not be something you strive for, but the research benefits more than just sports men and women. Taking these results and developing them into optimal programs for real men and women has given us all the chance for successful weight management.

But we have to stop putting things off. Real results can come very quickly once we start. But we’ll get no-where if we always put things off. Just make the effort to get going. Then congratulate yourself!

Author: Scott Edwards. Browse around Weight Loss Diet or www.weightlossdietwar.com/Slimming.html.