The Singular Success Method

If you have tried those weight loss programs where you have to keep to a strict eating plan and follow a particular exercise regime you may have found it a bit of a struggle to keep going.

Chances are you gave up after a few weeks or even a few days. When we start out full of enthusiasm it's difficult to see the sheer effort that it will take to keep going when the novelty has worn off, it's a wet Tuesday In February and we're just plain tired of it all.

Some people do manage to makeover their lives overnight. It's fantastic if you have the willpower and determination to achieve this but most of us can't handle that much disruption to our lives all at once. We are already struggling to keep up with all we have to do each day.

So what do you do if you know your willpower is likely to give up on you when the going gets tough?

Try the Singular Success Method!

This involves changing your life one habit at a time. You decide which habits you want to adopt and you work on them one by one, integrating them into your life until they feel quite natural.

Once you're happy that you can take on something else, you add that into the mix and you keep adding new habits only at the rate you can handle them. In this way you can transform your life over the course of a few weeks or months without the hugely stressful sudden overhaul in your lifestyle.

You may find you're happy to tackle two habits at once - one where you concentrate on your intake of food or drink and another where you concentrate on moving a bit more and that will make the process faster. You just have to make sure you take on only what you can handle at any one time - given all you have going on in your life.

And the best thing of all about this method? You achieve success after success and that brings its own momentum - you're not constantly left feeling like a failure for not keeping up an impossibly ambitious change in your lifestyle.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for natural permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Are you SAD about Winter Weight Gain?

As spring arrives many of us are left with a legacy from the short days and long nights of winter - a whole heap of extra pounds we could do without. And it's not all due to overeating during the festive season. It seems that whether we have lots of parties to attend or not, we are all programmed to eat more in winter.

It's all to do with our brain chemistry and especially the feel-good hormone we produce called serotonin. This hormone helps us feel calm, balanced and in control of our emotions and without it we start to feel down and depressed. But levels of this hormone drop in the population as a whole in winter and as the nights draw in and the amount of daylight we all receive diminishes, we are increasingly attracted to eat sweet and starchy food in an attempt to raise serotonin levels.

Of course, a sudden intake of sweet or starchy food causes blood sugar and then insulin levels to peak and we actually experience a rapid drop in blood sugar as insulin does its work and reduces the glucose level in the blood. As a result, we crave sweet and starchy food even more!

Whereas all of us experience this drop in serotonin levels to some degree, some 5 to 10% of the population - those who suffer from seasonal affective disorder (or SAD) - have an acute form of this problem and may gain anything up to 30lbs in weight each winter. It's also thought that some 25% of the population suffer a milder form of the disorder. SAD affects not only your eating patterns but leaves you feeling depressed, lethargic and sleepy - none of which contribute to anyone maintaining their summer shape.

It's all very well, knowing why we gain weight each winter, but what can you do about it?

During winter it's important to maintain a balanced diet, keeping blood sugar on an even keel, even if you find you need to eat a bit more than in the rest of the year. If you choose your carbohydrates in the form of whole grains and vegetables and always eat some lean protein with every meal or snack you will take yourself out of the high-low blood sugar trap and will gain less weight.

You will probably also find that with the arrival of spring, the pounds drop off more easily because you will be less attracted to heavy winter foods and are happier to eat salads, fresh vegetables and lean proteins so the start of spring is a great time to lose weight for summer.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth Small is a health and wellness writer and slimming coach. She became interested in seasonal affective disorder after seeing the effects of winter on herself and her clients. For more information about Seasonal Affective Disorder symptoms, causes and treatment see her site at http://www.allaboutSAD.com

How Yoga Works for Weight Loss

Yoga is probably not an obvious choice of activity when it comes to weight loss but despite the speed of the movements it is deceptively effective and here's why.

1. Yoga strengthens and streamlines your muscles

During yoga practise you work your whole body, stretching and toning your muscles, streamlining and firming them. This gives you a lean firm body shape as opposed to the bulkier, short muscles you might get from weight training. With yoga you build strong lean muscle tissue which burn calories even while you are at rest.

2. Yoga calms you and clears your mind

If you are someone who eats due to stress and tension, then yoga will help you reduce comfort eating. The slow stretching movements and deep breathing in every yoga movement calm and relax you. The balance postures in particular necessitate that you clear your mind of all your every day cares and worries and use all your powers of concentration and focus. With regular yoga practise you will find that you become naturally more relaxed and able to cope with everyday problems.

3. Yoga normalises sluggish glands

The toning movements in yoga work not only on the muscles but also on the internal organs of the body stimulating them and normalising their function. Twisting poses, forward and backward bends and inversions are used to stimulate the endocrine system and postures like the shoulder stand and the fish help regulate the mechanism of the thyroid gland in the neck, all of which help boost your metabolism.

4. Yoga gives you energy and increases flexibility

By calming you and gently working on your muscles and increasing the levels of oxygen in your blood and to your brain, you finish a yoga practise (once you are used to the movements) feeling more energetic than when you began. This means that you tend to put more energy and movement into your day rather than sitting around feeling exhausted. And you build flexibility in your muscles and joints so that you enjoy a full range of movement your whole life. Witness the difference between the movements of a young girl and a stiff 80 year old woman. The young girl is bound to move so much more because muscles and joints are less restricted.

5. Yoga uses calories

This is where people believe that yoga is not helpful when it comes to weight loss and it's true that aerobic exercise may very well burn more calories. However you will still use about 240 calories in an average 1 hour classic hatha yoga class and burn many more (about 400) with some highly physical forms such as astanga yoga. And you can practise yoga every day without over-exercising your muscles which is not the case for many forms of aerobic exercise

6. Yoga offers psychological benefits

Through yoga practise you tend to retune into your body and increase your self-acceptance and self-esteem. You build positive body confidence and help quiet any negative messages that may arise in your mind. Yoga teaches us to respect our bodies and this helps us when choosing our food and avoiding junk food and alcohol.

7. Yoga is for everyone

Most people can take up yoga even if they have been inactive for a while although you should always get your doctor's approval before beginning an exercise program if there is any doubt about your health. While jogging and working out at the gym might seem too much to contemplate you can start wherever you are with a yoga class and make steady progress.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Are You Thinking Right for Weight Loss?

Everyone knows that you lose weight if you eat fewer calories than you need each day. But if it were that simple there would not be such a problem with obesity in the Western world - we'd all have the key to weight loss. The problem is that so much to do with succeeding at weight loss rests in our heads and not our bodies. To succeed we need to get our heads working for us and not against us.

Ask yourself these ten questions to see if you are thinking in the right way to lose weight.

1. Have you decided to succeed?

Until you make a definite decision there will be no change to your actions. If you just dabble with "losing a few pounds" you're unlikely to get anywhere. Make a definite decision and stick to it.

2. Have you set a realistic target?

You need to know where you're going or you'll never know when you've arrived. What is your target weight and when do you plan to reach it? Plan on losing no more than a pound or two a week. If you set an impossibly high target you'll get discouraged as soon as it looks like you won't make it.

3. Do you believe your will succeed?

If you keep telling yourself you'll never do it, you won't. Look for reasons why this time will be different. Decide to do things differently to make it so!

4. Can you picture yourself at your new weight?

If you can see yourself in your mind's eye with your new slim figure, your subconscious will feel more comfortable with the changes you are making and you'll feel less like creeping back into your comfort zone.

5. Are you clear about your reasons for losing weight?

If you don't know why you're doing this, what will keep you going when the going gets tough? Make a list of all the benefits you will get from losing that weight and review it often.

6. Are you open to change?

The only sure thing is that if you keep on doing what you've always done you'll keep on getting what you've always got. So think about what you are prepared to change and change at a rate you are comfortable with.

7. Are you a friend to yourself?

Sometimes we are our own worst enemy by offering an endless stream of criticism rather than encouragement. Give yourself a pat on the back for everything you do well and accept any set-backs - just make sure you learn from your mistakes.

8. Are you patient with yourself?

Weight loss rarely happens on a straight path. You may find you lose a lot at the beginning as you often shed excess water then. You may hit one or more times where you lose hardly anything at all despite your best efforts. Nothing that was worth achieving was arrived at overnight. Just keep on keeping on.

9. Have you put your life on hold because of your size?

You only have one life so don't wait to get slim before you enjoy it. Whatever you want, go for it now, and let being slim be the icing on the cake. Goals don't suddenly become reality because you reach your target weight. Why wait? Make eating out of boredom a thing of the past.

10. Do you value yourself enough?

You are unique and very special whatever your size. You are not perfect and neither is anyone one else but you are perfectly human. Value your personality, your life, your ambitions, your skills and, yes, even your body that does so much for you despite all the abuse you give it with junk food and no exercise. Learn to respect yourself and your body and give yourself the care you so richly deserve.

Copyright 2005, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

How to Improve Your Life Exponentially

With the amount of excellent material available in books, courses and on the internet these days, it's unlikely that you are short of ideas about how to improve your life.

But how many great ideas have you read and then forgotten? Probably a fair few, even most of them, if you're honest with yourself. And somehow it's all too easy for life to go on, despite your interest in making things great, just getting more of the same old results you were always getting.

Why not try making the very most of your life by putting this simple system in place to gather and implement the changes and ideas which capture your imagination?

1. Record your ideas

Keep a special notebook where you jot down all your ideas and notes about improving your life as you come across them, noting down only those ideas you definitely want to try out. Ideas can be as simple as drinking 8 glasses of water a day or as complex as following the whole process in the latest self-development book you have been reading.

2. One-off actions

Every week select an action, small group of actions or next stage in a process you want to implement. Have a set day and time to make your selection each week so you don't forget and then make sure that you complete the action before it's time to choose again. Result : 52 one-off actions or steps towards implementing a program completed every year for the rest of your life.

3. Habits to encourage

In addition, select a great new habit every week. And spend the week focusing on that habit and making it happen. View this as an experiment to see if it does anything for you. If it works you can keep it. If it doesn't show any signs of being of benefit, you can discard it. Monitor your current set of habits daily until each one becomes so automatic it's simply part of your routine. Make a game of seeing how well you can do each day in keeping up your new habits. Result : potentially 52 great new habits a year, realistically 30 to 40, building your success week by week for the rest of your life.

4. Projects Big and Small

You can even tackle a big project to lose weight or get a new job in this way by breaking it down into one-off action steps and habits. For example, action steps you might jot down in your goal to lose weight might be to buy a healthy cookbook, join a gym and get a chosen weight loss program checked out by your doctor. Habits you can implement step by step might be to take a walk each lunchtime, replace sugary soda drinks one by one with water and include 7 portions of fruit and vegetables in your diet each day to add bulk and nutrients without too many calories.

5. Focus for Visible and Motivating Progress

If you focus on specific areas of your life for 4 to 6 weeks at a time, you will find that you make huge leaps forward in a short time. For example, 6 weeks on health and you will have taken 6 action steps towards a healthier you and added 6 new healthy habits which you can consoldate while you focus on another area, such as your home or your relationships.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

The Magic Diet Book

A glut of new diet books hit the shelves every year and we buy them in our millions.

Every book is full of promises that this will be the only diet book you'll ever need, the answer to your prayers. But there you are again, just a few weeks or months later buying another diet book, hoping that this one has the true magic formula that will help you lose weight and stay slim forever.

But actually there is no magic formula in any of those books, there never will be. You are the only one that has the magic formula - the desire, the determination and the ability to take action.

Many of those diet books would work if you could bring yourself to follow the "easy" food plans in them. Many of the exercise programs would tone and slim your body if you could drag yourself to the gym to do the routines or even get yourself out of bed in the morning early enough for a toning session at home.

But that is so very hard to do. They ask too much, too suddenly for ordinary mortals. We know in our heart of hearts that those diets work, and that it is we who do not. But we continue to buy the books because we are buying not just a book but hope when we hand over our cash.

Instead of pretending that you have a will of iron and are likely to turn your life upside down this time (despite evidence to the contrary from the past goodness-know-how-many attempts) why not just select any of the books you already have from your shelves and work out what you can do to make a start towards implementing the plan.

Success does not have to happen in a day. But making small changes one after the other brings about huge success. It gives you the chance to adapt bit by bit to a healthier lifestyle.

On the other hand, if the lifestyles in the books do not appeal as a way of living forever then that's another story. Diet books generally offer a quick fix rather than an attractive way of life (quick fixes are what give us the hope and sell the book after all).

In that case, why not design your own healthier lifestyle - one you're prepared to live with forever and put that in place step by step? Create your very own magic diet and exercise plan that will work for you for life and keep you slim permanently.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Dieters : When you feel like Quitting

As the saying goes "Quitters never win and winners never quit!" but sometimes it's hard to keep going when you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel and you know there's a long road ahead.

If you're wavering in your latest weight loss goal, ask yourself these questions before you throw in the towel. If you are able to step back and understand what is going on, it will help you to adapt your approach a little, and then get back on track with renewed enthusiasm.

So ask yourself:-

• Why do I want to lose weight? What will achieving my aims give me?
  
• How will I feel if I quit?
  
• Am I always quitting before I reach my goal? Why?
  
• How will I feel if I succeed?
  
• What is making this so hard?
  
• What have I been doing (or not doing) to make this more difficult or less successful?
  
• What's working ok?
  
• What do I need to change?
  
• What do I need to learn?
  
• What strategies could I use to get back on track?
  
• How can I adapt this to make it work for me?
  
• How could I get more support?
  
• What will help me keep going?
  
• What will I achieve by quitting?
  
• What would I do then?

The fact is you can achieve anything you want if you keep going. So if you want to lose weight, just don't quit - adapt whatever you're doing, try a new plan, just don't quit and you'll get there. You can do this! You really can!

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Now is the Right Time to Lose Weight

There are good and bad times to start a diet - that much is true.

It's no good starting to eat to a special regime when you have a big week of socialising coming up and you need to eat no more than 30 grams of carbohydrate a day or 10 fat grams. Or you're doing any one of those plans where you have to weigh or count everything or follow a fixed set of menu suggestions. And you know you'll never find time for all the exercise you're supposed to do.

It isn't going to work is it? When you're busy, you are not going to be able to stick to a plan which dictates what you eat so rigidly and uses up so much of your time at the gym.

And that's exactly why diets don't work in the long term.

They don't fit in with real life. You can't be forever calculating and fretting about whether something is allowed or not. Or being told what to eat every day.

So you live in a situation where you're either on a diet or you're not.

And when you reach your goal weight chances are you give up all semblance of healthy eating and start gaining weight again until you're back where you started.

But any time is a good time to get on the path to losing weight and keeping it off forever.

Here's why.

So-called naturally slim people simply have slim habits which are part of their behaviour all year round - yes, even when everyone else is growing rounder than ever during the festive season, even when they are away on business and eating out a lot and even when they are on an all-inclusive all-you-can-eat cruise around the Caribbean.

They eat when they are hungry. They eat what they really want to eat and not everything that's in front of them. They move about a bit more during the course of the day even if they are not big on exercise. They enjoy a big meal now and again but only on special occasions and even then they don't stuff themselves silly. They stop eating when they've had enough. They know there'll always be another opportunity to eat.

You can't change from a person with overweight habits to one with slim habits overnight. That's the short sharp shock diet approach which we are so poor at sticking to.

But you can start with two or three habits right now (or even a single one) and just follow those habits for 21 days until they are part of you and you've put another brick (or two or three) in the wall of staying slim forever.

And you can do this at any time. Adding another "brick" when you can until you've built a new lifestyle to match your new body.

Now doesn't that sound a bit more feasible as we come into this period of constant social whirl and activity?

Start a slim habit today and you'll be on the right track to losing weight and keeping it off for good.

And when someone recommends the next fad diet you can just smile and carry on building your habits instead of struggling with a ridiculous regime again.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Prepare to Succeed at Losing Weight

"Right, that's it, I'm starting a diet on Monday!"

How often have you said that to yourself? And how many times have you decided that this year will be the one you finally lose weight?

Do you know what goes wrong when you start a new regime full of enthusiasm only to ditch it within a few days or weeks?

One reason might be that you aren't mentally and physically prepared to make it happen. You have the best possible chance to succeed only by preparing yourself properly.

Good preparation means:-

1. Knowing your target

What do you actually want to achieve? How much weight do you want to lose and by when? Check that your target is realistic by aiming for no more than 1 to 2lbs a week on average.

2. Choosing a strategy

How will you lose that weight? A vague notion of eating less will not get you there. Choose a system to follow that fits in with your lifestyle and preferences or plan your own system from the knowledge and experience you have of what works best for you.

3. Making Plans

Decide what actions you need to take to be ready to follow your chosen system on day one. What do you need to buy? What do you need to find out? Who do you need to talk to to get support?

Write your plans down so that you can check the actions off as you complete them and then start taking those actions. If you need to look for recipes or shop for special foods, do that now. If you have decided to join a gym, visit and join and have your introductory session. If you need walking shoes or a tennis racquet get it now.

4. Building your Personal Motivational tools

Taking action to prepare yourself will put you in the right frame of mind to start your weight loss program when you intend to. Of course, it gets harder as you go along. Motivation dwindles for many people very quickly without regular input.

While your motivation is still high, write down a list of all the reasons you have for wanting to lose weight - a list you can refer to again and again if the going gets tough later on.

Also spend some time thinking about how you will look and feel and how your life will be when you succeed. Write down a full description as a second motivational booster for when you need it.

5. Committing to make it happen

By going through the planning stage you will become aware of the effort involved in losing weight. Are you prepared to commit to the changes you will need to make and the actions you'll need to take? Are you willing to do what it takes to achieve the benefits?

Many people start a weight loss program or diet without thinking this through.

If you're not prepared to follow your chosen strategy there's no point in starting. You're setting yourself up for failure and another blow to your self-esteem.

But if you know what you are planning to do, you're fully aware of what's involved and you're willing to give it time and energy and to make it a priority in your life you WILL succeed. So think it all through, consider the pros and cons and decide whether you're prepared to make those changes before you begin.

Copyright 2005, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

10 Healthy Ways to Give your Energy Levels a Boost

1. Feeling overwhelmed and got to keep going? Drink a glass of water and go for a 10 minute walk. You'll feel 100 times more refreshed on your return.

2. Instead of drinking coffee to get a caffeine-induced high try sipping ginger tea to pep you up. Add a little honey if you like.

3. Give the chocolate bar a miss and eat a banana. The chocolate bar will give you a sugar-high but you'll come quickly crashing down to earth - the banana releases its energy more slowly and will keep you going for longer.

4. Sprinkle a cotton handkerchief with a few drops of peppermint oil. Sniff it whenever you need a quick lift.

5. Try some yoga stretches or even just stretching your arms high above your head for an instant lift.

6. If you generally feel tired in the afternoon, have more lean protein at lunchtime and include protein with your afternoon snack to keep your energy levels steady.

7. Take a warm (not hot) power shower to feel clean, fresh and re-energised.

8. Reduce your social commitments so that you can catch up with sleep and get an early night a few times a week.

9. Anything hanging over you? If you have a task which you've been putting off for too long, make the effort and do it. You'll feel so much better once you do.

10. Other people often have either a boosting or draining effect on us. Think about who has an effect on your energy levels and make plans to see less of any friends or family who drain your energy and more of those who give you a lift.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

How to Lose Weight even if you have No Willpower

If you have tried those weight loss programs where you have to keep to a strict eating plan and follow a particular exercise regime you may have found it a bit of a struggle to keep going.

Chances are you gave up after a few weeks or even a few days. When we start out full of enthusiasm it's difficult to see the sheer effort that it will take to keep going when the novelty has worn off, it's a wet Tuesday in February and we're just plain tired of it all.

Some people do manage to makeover their lives overnight. It's fantastic if you have the willpower and determination to achieve this but most of us can't handle that much disruption to our lives all at once. We are already struggling to keep up with all we have to do each day.

So what do you do if you know your willpower is likely to give up on you when the going gets tough?

Try the Singular Success Method!

This involves changing your life one habit at a time. You decide which habits you want to adopt and you work on them one by one, integrating them into your life until they feel quite natural.

Once you're happy that you can take on something else, you add that into the mix and you keep adding new habits only at the rate you can handle them. In this way you can transform your life and your shape over the course of a few weeks or months without the hugely stressful sudden overhaul in your lifestyle.

You may find you're happy to tackle two habits at once - one where you concentrate on your intake of food or drink and another where you concentrate on moving a bit more and that will make the process faster. You just have to make sure you take on only what you can handle at any one time - given all you have going on in your life.

And the best thing of all about this method? You achieve success after success and that brings its own momentum - you're not constantly left feeling like a failure for not keeping up an impossibly ambitious change in your lifestyle.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Top 10 Tips to Stay Motivated on your Exercise Program

1. Know your Reasons

Think about why you want to exercise and write down every reason you can think of. Explain in full detail what working out is going to do for your life and your health. And reread your list whenever your motivation needs a boost.

2. Set Daily and Weekly Goals

Although it's good to think big, don't just set yourself a long-term goal because it can seem too distant from where you are now. If you have a daily or weekly challenge then you have something to achieve and motivate you right here, right now. Make sure your goals are just a little bit stretching - doing too much too soon is a prime cause of injury and exercise drop-out.

3. Track Your Progress

Keep a log of all your workouts. It's amazing how quickly your fitness will improve and seeing your progress in black and white will help spur you on to keep going. Even in the early days when the going is tough and you might not have noticed any changes in your body and fitness levels an activity log gives you something to be proud of.

4. Plan to Succeed

You have to set aside time for working out and schedule it as if it's an appointment that can't be missed. Block out the time in your calendar and treat it like a doctor's appointment. Your health depends on it just as much.

5. Do Something Daily

Once you've got an exercise program going it helps if you do something active every day just so that you keep your mind focused on your goals. You probably don't have time to fit in a workout every day but any activity is fine - walking, dancing, housework, gardening - just something that keeps your mind and body in exercise mode.

6. Have a Plan B

The path towards fitness doesn't always run smoothly. Be flexible if muscle strain or extra work pressure prevents you from doing your usual routine. Try going to the gym before work or plan a different activity which does not affect your injured muscle to keep going when life gets in the way.

7. Don't Ask Whether Ask When

Consider working out as an important element of your life and make it part of your routine. Don't even get into a conversation with yourself about whether you'll exercise today, just make plans and do it. No matter how much you don't feel like working out, you'll be amazed how good you'll feel once you get going.

8. Find a Workout Buddy

Look for a workout partner with similar goals and level of fitness to make exercise more enjoyable and add a little healthy competition. Plus, you'll find it's harder to skip a workout if someone is relying on you. If you don't have a friend who wants to get fit, consider investing in a personal trainer to keep you motivated.

9. Make it Fun

Prevent boredom by trying new activities and using a variety of ways of working out. Just because it's fun doesn't mean you won't get fit. How about trying salsa-dancing, scuba-diving, skiing or roller-blading? Even something as simple a adding intervals to your usual routine can give you a new level of interest.

10. Believe You Can

You'll be healthier, fitter and change your whole body shape if you stick at your exercise program. Change is possible for you just as it has been for so many others before you who have transformed themselves with exercise. Acknowledge that you can experience those results for yourself just by keeping going with your fitness program. You can do it, you really can!

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Lose Weight Permanently with the Power Pause

If strict diet and exercise routines are not for you and just make you feel like a failure because you don't seem to be able to keep them up, then why not try a new approach? Start with something you know you can do, which needs no special equipment and which you can do anywhere. This is something which is so powerful, so simple it will serve you all your life. I call it a "Power Pause" because it means using a moment to regain power over your decisions about what and when you eat.

To make the "Power Pause" part of your life ask yourself just 3 questions before you eat anything

* Am I physically hungry right now or could I wait?

* How will I feel after I have eaten this?

* Is there a better choice?

The Power Pause is a tool you can use whenever you're faced with food. You can use it before you buy food in a restaurant or shop. And you can use it before you open the fridge or freezer, before you reach into the cupboard for a snack, before you have a second cookie. You can even use it during a meal to help you think about whether you have eaten enough. Use it to remind yourself to stop eating whether or not there is food left on your plate or on the table. It simply helps you avoid eating when you're not hungry.

We all tend to eat food without thinking. We see food, we eat it. We get offered food, we accept it. We pass a burger bar. We suddenly feel "hungry", go in and order. We anesthetize our minds with food when we're upset. We hardly notice the food going in.

And eating food without needing it is the primary cause of our weight problems. We eat and eat without thinking whether we're hungry right now or whether that food is the best choice we can make for our bodies and our health. We eat without thinking about our desire to look good on the beach this year, to do something about our threatening health problems, to feel good about ourselves.

But what does it take to pause for a moment before you make a decision to put food in your mouth, to think twice before you add those calories to your hips? A few seconds at most! Certainly less time than you will spend regretting your bout of over-eating.

You may not succeed in stopping yourself every time especially at the beginning of using this tool - so don't look for perfection from yourself - look for progress. Keep going because it will eventually become second nature - a habit for the rest of your life - one which will help you stay slim forever.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Weight Loss Tip : Five Minutes is Better than No Minutes

Starting an exercise routine for weight loss can be daunting. Many exercise programs expect you to put everything aside to follow some kind of physical activity for an hour, five times a week. How will you ever fit that in? How will you ever have the strength and energy to keep going that long when the most you've ever done before is a brisk walk between the sofa and the fridge?

But you don't have to start with a full-blown exercise routine. If an hour seems impossible, set aside half an hour. If that looks too much, just start with 10 minutes or even 5.

Any exercise is better than no exercise at all when it comes to weight loss!

Obviously check with your doctor before you start with any kind of exercise or weight loss program, but most people can manage to walk at a moderate pace for 5 minutes. Maybe once you're up and doing it, you'll feel like more. Maybe not. You never know until you try. Pat yourself on the back for the 5 minutes you've done.

After a few days of walking for 5 minutes, see if you can manage 10. Feeling the benefit of 5 minutes, you'll probably find that you want to do this. And let's face it most of us can find that amount of time each day to improve our health. If you truly can't fit that in, then you have real problems and not just with your weight!

Continue to add in as much time as you can. And once you've really no time to do more, increase your speed little by little. Enjoy the level you can achieve, whatever that is. Feel good about yourself again, rather than berating yourself for not being able to do an hour a day.

Exercise on your own terms. You know your body and its capabilities, your life style and what you can manage, more than any of the diet and exercise gurus out there.

Just don't use the impossibility of a full-blown exercise routine as an excuse not to bother with any at all. You owe it to yourself to do the best you can for your weight loss efforts and if that starts with 5 minutes that's great - you're on your way to a fitter, slimmer lifestyle.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Dieters : When Moderation doesn't Work

If there's one habit which will make you lose weight more than any other it's reducing the amount you eat by eating only when you are hungry and stopping when you are satisfied rather than stuffed.

You can usually lose weight with this habit no matter what type of foods you eat - because we are generally eating far too much of everything these days.

The temptation to eat too much is everywhere. Standard portion sizes have grown out of all proportion to our needs so that the mini muffins of today were the standard size of a few years ago. A "tall" coffee is the smallest size you can get. Snack foods come in multi-packs and jumbo bars. We get mounds of food served up to us in restaurants and we are generally serving bigger portions at home too. You simply get used to indulging in an amount of food you can do without.

Most people can pick up on the portion size idea and reduce their normal intake when they want to lose weight. They relish being able to eat the foods they like, even if they are not eating so much of it. They use a bowl, take a handful of tortilla chips out of the bag and put the rest away. They leave half a muffin on the plate (better in the trash than on their hips) and they reduce the pile of food on their plate. They order less in restaurants and leave what they don't need without a qualm.

This is great to avoid a feeling of deprivation that dieting so often brings about. Reduce portion sizes by just a third and you drop 500 calories or more from your daily intake losing about a pound of fat (3500 calories worth) a week without making any other changes. Although this is not the best way to eat healthily - for that you'd be better switching foods to include more nutrient-rich items, it does bring results without having to change too much at once.

While this is all very well for many people, there are some who struggle with this whole way of losing weight. That's the group who crave a particular item or food group.

In this group, eating just small amount of the food they crave leads to eating a packetful no matter how much they want to eat in moderation. It may be the case with chocolate or other high-sugar foods and sometimes with salty snack type foods.

In this case it's better to stay away from the food entirely for a short time while you learn to control portion sizes using other foods. Then, when you have a sense that you can control how much you eat with other foods, you're losing weight and feeling good, reintroduce a small portion of the food you used to crave and see how you get on.

It can be a case of trial and error to get this right for your circumstances. We are all different and have different emotional and physical reactions to food. It takes longer for some than for others to be able to cope with a particular craving. Experiment with reintroducing the food after 3 or 4 weeks to start with - that's generally enough to have seen good results from portion control with the rest of your meals and snacks. If it leads to eating too much then leave it for double that time before retrying. Some people have given up eating chocolate or ice cream forever because it's almost like an addiction but this is unnecessary for most people once they get the moderation habit.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Weight Loss Magic

Even if I could wave my weight loss coach's little magic wand and make you instantly slimmer I would not do it - no matter how much you begged or pleaded. It's not because I want to keep you overweight and make you unhappy but because I want to see you succeed - permanently.

A magic wand would simply do you no good at all! You would just be back for another wave of the wand in a month or two when you had eaten yourself overweight again. You would be there with your tail between your legs, feeling like a failure, asking "How could I let myself get into this state again?". But without a change in lifestyle and attitude, it's natural that you would get right back to where you were before.

In any case, I don't have a magic wand to offer you - no one does. There is no safe and effective magic pill, potion or patch out there, no matter what the ads say, so quit putting your faith in these things and spending your hard earned cash on every so-called miracle solution.

If you want to find weight loss magic, you already have all you need inside your own brain. You can decide right this minute that you will transform your life, your health and your body. If you take that decision, and mean it, you will get there.

And you don't have to magically transform your life overnight. Unless you have iron willpower, drastic changes to your regime rarely last.

But there is magic in changing your life one or two steps at a time. Start with changes that are relatively painless. Eat less junk, replace it with delicious nourishing food. Move a bit more every day. Eat enough to satisfy your appetite, don't gorge on all the good things on offer.

Feel the power of small successes and use the motivation and momentum they create to help you become slimmer and healthier. You will not have a magic wand but you will see the magic of creating a healthy lifestyle bit by bit in melting away unwanted fat permanently.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

How to Become the Type of Dieter who Succeeds

Are you the kind of dieter who starts full of enthusiasm embracing a new plan on day one yet falling by the wayside a few weeks or months later?

Or are you a dabbler - someone who tries a bit of this plan a bit of that and never really gets anywhere?

Or are you someone who gets to your target weight, more or less keeping to your diet, and then ditches it with glee only to put all the weight back on again?

It doesn't matter what type of dieter you have been in the past, you can be successful from now on, but you will need a change in approach. After all, if the ways you've tried to lose weight and keep it off in previous attempts haven't worked for you, chances are they never will.

How do the people who succeed at losing weight actually do it?

Among my coaching clients I have established four factors that make a huge difference (and you don't even need a coach to put them in place). You become the type of dieter who loses weight permanently by:-

• making your mind up to succeed no matter what
  
• being ready to change your habits for the long term not just to meet your target weight
  
• having a simple plan to follow that fits in with your lifestyle and preferences
  
• arranging support by having the right routines and structure in place and having someone who you know will be there for you when the going gets tough

With these four elements in place the effort of losing weight is easier than you might imagine. For example, if you are absolutely determined to succeed you don't find it so difficult to choose healthy food options and to fit more movement into your life even if you don't want to take formal exercise. If you are happy to change your habits for life, you avoid the problem of losing weight and then putting it all straight back on when you go back to eating what made you overweight in the first place. If you have a simple plan, you don't get bored with counting and calculating, measuring and weighing food - you make changes which are easier to maintain. And getting support - from family, from friends, from the routines and structure you put in place, simply makes things go more easily, whatever system you're following.

Think about which of these elements are missing in the way you are going about losing weight. What do you need to change to become the type of dieter who reaches and maintains his or her target weight and stays there? Increase your chances of success by making sure these elements are present in your next weight loss program whatever way you choose to lose weight.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Want to Lose Weight? Plan for Pleasure

Inclined to head for the fridge when you're feeling low? You're not alone. There's no doubt about it, food makes us feel good, at least for a while.

But it's a false friend when you want to lose weight because you end up eating when you're not hungry and those unneeded calories end up right where you don't want them - on your hips. The momentary pleasure of eating and forgetting your troubles soon passes and you're left with regret and even more weight to lose.

Do your best to get out of the habit of cheering yourself up with food. Ice cream or chocolate won't really help. Ideally you would face up to what is wrong and make a plan to do something about it, rather than trying to squash your feelings. But sometimes you just won't want to go there and need to find other ways to cheer yourself up.

Rather than waiting until you're feeling low to think of something to help, put together a Personal Pleasure List now. Think of all the things you love to do (other than eat!) and write them down ready to remind yourself when you need a lift. Make sure you include as many as possible for all different situations because not everything on your list will appeal or be available to you at every moment. Here are a few things on my list to start you off.

• 10 quiet minutes on the sofa with a good novel
  
• Listening to uplifting music (create a collection of tracks just for this purpose)
  
• Watching a comedy video
  
• Cuddling my family
  
• Window shopping
  
• Giving myself a manicure and pedicure
  
• Having a nap in the middle of the day
  
• Planning my ideal day for the future
  
• Calling a friend
  
• Having a bubble bath
  
• Reading an inspirational or self-help book
  
• Going for a walk in a local beauty spot
  
• Stroking a pet
  
• Doing a puzzle
  
• Looking at old holiday photographs
  
• Clearing out a drawer
  
• Planting some flowers or sowing some seeds in my garden
  
• Having a facial or massage
  
• Buying a glossy magazine
  
• Planning a trip
  
• Thinking about all the good things in my life
  
• Dancing (at home)
  
• Going to the movies (nothing too heavy)
  
• Remembering the good times

As well as using your Personal Pleasure List when you're feeling down why not plan some of these actvities more often into your everyday life to keep your spirits high? Positively look for ways to make yourself feel great, think about all the great things you have going for you and make comfort eating a thing of the past.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Weight Loss Tip : Don't Let them Profit from You!

Food can be wonderful or plain awful. At its best, it nourishes us, gives us energy and delights our taste buds. At its worst it clogs up our arteries, fills our bodies with unwanted toxins and makes us fat.

The secret of losing weight is to choose the delicious natural healthy kind and to eat just enough of it so you feel great.

But with so much awful food on offer out there, it's easier said than done.

No one is paying huge sums to advertise fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds and organic lean meat.

Instead we have major food manufacturers with big budgets pushing snacks we can do without and products loaded with thickeners, sweeteners, salt, corn syrup, mechanically recovered meat, preservatives and every other semi-edible chemical known to man.

Sure, the food tastes Ok - after all it's full of sugars (or artificial sweeteners) and salt for that very reason. Food manufacturers aim to bring you palatable food otherwise you wouldn't buy it. But it has to turn in a huge profit too so they pile in preservatives to give it a long shelf life and use the cheapest ingredients they can get away with, padding them out with fillers. But is that really how you want to nourish your body?

If you buy cakes and cookies, snacks and processed foods without thinking about what you are really putting into your body, you are doing your health a huge disservice and playing right into the hands of the food manufacturers. You are paying good money for food which has no value to your health and questionable ingredients which you really don't want to feed anyone you care about (including you!)

Now there are some good processed foods out there - but you do have to seek them out - they are not the major profit producers of the big advertisers. Most of the advertising money goes into persuading us to purchase vast quantities of worthless soft drinks, chocolate bars and salty snacks.

Read the label on any product you're considering buying to check that the ingredients include only those items you would use if you were making the product at home. If there's anything that sounds like it belongs in a chemical laboratory leave it on the shelf and choose something else.

And whatever you choose make sure that you accompany it with ample fresh vegetables or salad - very few processed foods will contain adequate amounts of these. After your meal, if you need anything else, swap sugar and sweetener-laden profit-making desserts and cakes for fresh fruit.

Even better than being highly selective in the processed food you buy, get a good cook book full of healthy delicious recipes and learn to make fantastic food for you and your family. Enjoy the whole process of nourishing yourself and the ones you love from fresh basic good quality ingredients. Taste the difference and you'll never look back.

Our health is precious. Be super critical about what you put into your body and don't let the food manufacturers profit from feeding you and your family junk food.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Losing Weight and Loving it

Would you love to lose weight but hate to go on diets? Would you love to be fit but hate exercise? Then you're in good company.

The majority of us would love to find a magic wand which would take all the effort out of losing weight and getting in shape. Yet it's unlikely that there will ever be a pill, potion or patch in our lifetime that is healthy, safe and delivers on hyped-up promises of effortless weight loss.

It seems that there's a simple choice here - learn to love your shape as it is now (and continue loving it as you get bigger) or learn to love a new healthy lifestyle.

But that's not the whole story.

Most weight loss programs expect you to embrace huge lifestyle changes almost overnight. But it's pretty hard to learn to love a complete lifestyle overhaul so quickly. It's just like deciding to get married on a first date.

You'd have to be lucky to be a good match. It's more likely that eventually the cracks will show, you'll regret your decision and you'll agree to part ways.

And so it is with a new weight loss program. You join a gym, try a new tough regime and abandon it with a sense of failure in a couple of weeks. You start a new meal plan, can't cope with the hunger, miss your normal foods and give up on that too.

The problem is that we want instant success (ironically so that we can go back to the lifestyle that made us fat in the first place!)

But let me make a plea for permanent weight loss rather than speed. Get to know the new lifestyle, diet or exercise program you're considering before you decide if it's for you. Try out the diet, sample the activities and decide which parts you can live with and which you can't. Try out different approaches, different foods, different ways of fitting exercise into your life and gradually adopt the ones which feel good.

The more gradually you build new healthy habits into your life and the more you choose the ones which suit your preferences, the more they will feel comfortable and have a chance of becoming a permanent part of your lifestyle. Build up those new habits one by one, add more and more healthy delicious meals into your repertoire and add a little more activity week by week to your schedule until you have gradually transformed your way of life into a healthier version.

As you adopt the new healthier habits you will be delighted with the changes in how you look and how you feel and this will motivate you like nothing else to make further improvements. That is the easy way to fall in love with losing weight.

Copyright 2005, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!

Weight Loss : It's Routine

Losing weight is a battle, a struggle, a pain, right? That's most people's experience whatever diet they follow.

And nearly everyone finds keeping the weight off is even harder.

There's no doubt about it, the majority of diet and fitness regimes are hardly a bed of roses. And those pills, patches and potions, which are supposed to make it easy, are either dangerous or don't do what they promise.

So how CAN you make this easier?

The answer lies in your routines.

What you habitually do shapes you - quite literally. If you habitually go without breakfast and stuff your face at 11am with cookies because you're starving, you'll end up with one kind of body. If you habitually have a yogurt and fruit on waking and take an apple to eat at 11am (when you'll still be starving) you end up with another kind.

If you habitually walk everywhere your shape is likely to be different than if you jump in the car to go a mile down the road.

Routines are just patterns of behaviour. Things we feel comfortable doing once we get used to them. We don't even have to think about them. They're easy for us - automatic.

The answer to easier weight loss AND KEEPING IT OFF then , is in adopting the right routines and habits so that we don't even have to think - we just do whatever is good for our shape - automatically.

The skill is in moving from one set of routines (the kind that keep you overweight) to another - the kind that will result in weight loss and then weight maintenance for the rest of your life.

An all-out drastic lifestyle change rarely works, but if you gently change your habits and build them gradually, taking on changes that you are happy to live with for life, then you WILL find a permanent automatic solution to your weight problems.

What routines are you following today? What small changes could you make which would be your first steps to permanent natural weight loss?

Now it's time to take action and change your habits step by step to lose that weight!

Copyright 2005, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth is a weight loss coach, slimming club owner and author of "The Diet Exit Plan", an 8 week coaching program for automatic permanent weight loss. Get her FREE 15 page report "How to lose weight without dieting - 7 secrets the diet industry doesn't want you to know" at http://www.SimplySlimming.com TODAY!