Is Your Future Health at Risk?

Do You Need to Take Action Now?

As we age most of us gain weight, Michael Harrison of Blog: 101 Practical Weight Loss Tips explains the dangers of ignoring progressive weight gain.

This article is created to help anyone who has weight issues they would like to address. Provided it is not changed in any way you are free to print it off and

send it to anyone you think may benefit from what it explains.

Your future health could be at risk! Do you need to take action now?

Understanding Weight Loss and How to Manage Your Weight Successfully….

ByMichael Harrison

Blog: 101 Practical Weight Loss TipsIf you feel this article is helpful for anyone wanting to start losing weight please feel free to

send it to friends, relatives, colleagues, anyone whom you think it may help.

Introduction.I’m a senior male blessed with good health but with a weight problem. Only recently have I taken my weight seriously.When my moderately overweight older sister died within a day from a heart attack was when I got serious about losing weight as I had to tell our 98 years old mother. IHaving reached a weight of 20 stones and feeling breathless, unhealthy and walking slowly because of a poor fitness level I realised I needed to get control of my lifestyle.It doesn't seem much!Think about it this way. 12 stones when I married to 20 stones is 112 pounds weight gain in around 40 years. This works out at about 3 pounds a year. 3 pounds a year may not seem much but over he years it leads to problems, and here’s the kicker;Realising I had to face the issue of my weight and health I also had to face this fact, I don’t have 40 years to get back to a healthy weight and for you each year, month, day you ignore an apparent slight weight gain you are putting your future health at risk. So yes you do need to take notice and start taking action now.Depending on how much you are overweight will probably determine what action you decide to take. But when you do decide to do something about controlling your weight you can't expect to reach your target quickly. This may be where people go wrong. They decide they need to lose weight, crash into a diet, take some weight off, become bored with the fixed diet, resume old habits and lo; the weight comes back. This happened to me a couple of times when my Doctor tried to get me to accept that weight gain as you get older is unhealthy. But stay with me there’s more to come.I like my food, a good lifestyle and to be perfectly frank the thought of losing weight back then was a bit of a joke. Travelling the world for work was fun and living the

high life on expenses played it’s part. I was energetic and healthy so reality never really took hold.My wife is a good cook and generally over the years I have eaten what was put in front of me. Once I had decided to take action to lose weight and take control I realised how ignorant I really was about food, eating habits and lifestyle.Don’t despair read on there is a way out of this fix. It also became clear that my objective had to be to make changes that led to a loss of weight steadily and securely for success and for the weight loss to be permanent.That said I still had to find out what to do.Obviously eat less comes to mind but surely there had to be more to it than that. My Doctor had prescribed diets before with little success. This time it had to be change for weight loss and permanent control of my weight in future.Logically you would think if you eat less and exercise more you should lose weight. I had been on so called diets but the amount I was allowed to eat and what recipes were allowed proved near impossible in the corporate world. I played golf at least twice a week and thought that was good exercise!Get support, help!Luckily my wife was committed to the weight loss project and was able to be generous enough to not feel her cooking was being slighted when I started to take control of the make up my meals and persuaded her that the composition of our main meals needed to change.What started to happen will surprise you.At 6' 4" tall my self-delusion had been that as I am a big man weight was not really a major issue. As mentioned I had noticed that I was not walking well, shuffling more like, and getting some feelings of breathlessness. Not good signs. These issues and the fact that clothes were not comfortable any more plus my sister’s death all made me stiffen my resolve.As I read and researched my project showed, if you really want to lose weight healthily you must;Make up your mind that you are going to be serious about losing weight, getting control, deciding on your program and committing to it with self discipline.You must also set a specific target that is measurable, achievable, realistic and time limited. It’s no good saying ”I’m going to lose some weight”, without having a target weight to aim for and a specific time in mind by when you intend to reach your target. My target was to lose 4 stones in twelve months. I nearly made it.Here now are some things you can do that will help you reach your goals;

1. Find out and work out what you need to do and take action, start to do it! You can for example buy my tips book. That may seem a simple statement but it can be the key to your success because it covers all I did to achieve my successful 3 stones weight loss. 2. Involve your spouse or partner in what you are doing and why you want to do it, their help and encouragement will be invaluable and they may join you.3. If you can partner with someone, do so as it will stiffen your commitment and help keep you going. You will compare progress and share ideas on what is working and what’s not.4. Be honest with yourself and others at all times. This is very important. You are going to need to develop will power and staying power. If you are tempted to think the scales are reading high and make imaginary corrections the only person you will be fooling is yourself. As I read and researched I realized that without change my wife's care and feeding were not going to let me lose weight. In fact over the years what we had been eating was all the time making us put on weight. As my wife was the person who prepares my food and looks after me we had to face the need for change and she needed to be ‘onside’! You will realise from this statement the tricky situation I found myself in.This is where the honesty comes in. Think about it. Yes my corporate life and attitude didn’t help but who prepared most of my food? It had to be faced we were on the wrong track for a very long time. Still so what? I had now found a way to lose weight and we did change.We found we had to be prepared to make changes to how much we ate and also what we ate.As mentioned she is a great cook. She is also what would be described as traditional in the sense of creating wholesome meals in ample quantity. Plus as children we had grown up during the second world war when we had to ‘eat up and clean our plates’.We discovered and realised we needed to move to a more vegetable oriented balance in our meals with smaller portions less carbohydrate and more protein. We soon discovered a lot of new information that gave us more understanding on what was contributing to the gain in weight and the need for change.Understand and embrace this from the start.One of the biggest changes is to control impulses and desires. Over many years you are driven by hunger, taste, smell and appearance but what tastes, smells and looks appetising is not necessarily good for you.When you are hungry you tend to eat too much or graze between meals, usually eating carbohydrates in the form of sandwiches, cakes, biscuits etc., and drinking ‘refreshing’ carbonated drinks.

At this point it's probably good to understand some of the many emotional reasons we eat in such a way that it makes us put on weight. You will need to be very honest with yourself about this but if you are I’m sure you’ll agree.Here are a few suggestions as to why we put on weight;Habit.We're unhappy.We're happy and celebrating.In for a penny, in for a pound - literally. I'll start tomorrow. I'll catch up tomorrow.We don't know what to do.We make excuses.We're greedy.We're weak and seduced by all of the advertising.We're seduced by smell and taste and appearance.We think we need to eat more than we actually need.We spend more on food than we need because we have disposable income.We think we must always empty our plate.We think it rude to not eat everything that we are served.You will be able to think of many more, but I'm sure you get the idea.BUT let me explain, eating won't make you happy, won't stop you being greedy, won't make you understand what you need to do. Only you can take personal responsibility – and you must commit to it.As you are get a greater understanding and the results start to show you will tell friends about what you are trying to do and what your objectives are, they will support you. But be careful!Everyone it seems has an opinion on how to lose weight, knows what you should do and they don't hesitate to tell you. Even if they are overweight themselves! Eventually when they notice you are succeeding by losing some weight they will comment on it, you will get a real morale boost, so do stick to your guns.I'm now going to give the outline of what I did.In short this is it,1. Learned about carbohydrates and ate less of them.2. Ate more fruit and vegetable.3. Drank more water.4. Took a small amount of REGULAR exercise. No more than walking.It’s understanding what’s behind these headings that’s the key to successful weight

loss and that’s where my tips book will help you.There is a lot more to understanding what to eat for effective healthy weight loss and I have covered all of this in my new guide to healthy weight loss. What is explained worked for me as I lost 3 stones in weight in a few short months and I have not put it back on.You too can do it!At 101 Practical Weight loss Tips you can find a free report with loads more information at the link.If you would like more information on how to get your copy of mt new guide '101 Practical Weight Loss Tips' please email me at mhadirect@gmail.comI'm pleased with what losing 3 stones has done for me and recommend you think seriously about taking control for yourself without delay.

Good luck,

MichaelBlog: 101 Practical Weight Loss Tips