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Just because we want to lose weight doesn't mean that we want to be ostracized from society. This is particularly an issue if we happen to be the family chef; nibbling our own lightweight morsels whilst the aroma of 'real food' wafts under our nostrils! This can be frustrating, so let's look at how we can integrate our weight loss program into regular family meals.

First off we need to tackle the amount we eat. Whatever food we consume, if we take in less of it we'll lose weight. It's pleasing to see a plateful of food at the beginning of our meal - so eat from one that's smaller than everyone else's. Eat your food very slowly, chewing every morsel at least twenty times before swallowing. You won't always finish your meal ahead of the others then, but you will feel more sated.

It should be possible to eat the same dinner as everyone else for several days of the week. Just make sure you eat lots of vegetables, and only serve yourself a small amount of carbohydrate. Also, restrict any side portions of bread and butter! If the family like their puddings, prepare ones that you can have a taste of. Check any tinned fruit you have is in juice, not syrup.

But you can get much cannier than that. Serve reduced calorie meals a couple of times a week to everyone - if they're done well they won't have a clue! Add garlic and herbs to macaroni, and bulk it out with plenty of veg. Then use a tin of tomatoes to enrich the sauce. Leave out the oil, but maybe add a touch of Greek yoghurt for creaminess.

At the supermarket or store, always choose low fat meat and dairy products. After a while, your family will get used to these healthier products and enjoy them just as much. Breast of chicken or turkey is a good choice, especially if you eat it without the skin. Boil or steam potatoes rather than frying. Maris Piper is one variety that has a good waxy consistency. There's no need to add high calorie spreads or butter then.

Watch out for breakfast cereals - some are loaded with sugar so always read the ingredients before buying. Cereal bars are best avoided too - they look like a healthy snack, but most are incredibly sweet. We also probably consume a load of hidden calories in our drinks. Choose sodas with artificial sweeteners, and make them last longer than usual by adding ice.

Wine and beer can be very fattening, so try to limit it where possible. Tomato juice with Worcestershire sauce and ice has a good kick and makes a change. As apple juice is particularly strong in flavour, water it down half and half and serve it in a wine glass for more sophistication!

It's obvious that we're not going to lose weight if we continue as we are. But it's amazing how a small shift here and there can dramatically help along the way.

For more efficient weight loss, try eating more slowly. Because it's currently been shown that how fast we eat affects how much we eat. Speedy eaters have a tendency to eat bigger meals than slow eaters, according to recent research. This was proved when diners were asked to eat until they felt satiated.

You can personally empirically test this. At dinner tonight, eat as much as you want very quickly. When you have the same meal next time, slow down the rate that you take in each bite and masticate your food very thoroughly. It's more than probable that you'll eat less the second time around. Additionally you won't feel so hungry a couple of hours on following the slower meal where you ate less food.

We often eat too much when we're speed eating, because we haven't given the food time to reach our stomach. The bloated feeling we can get is a consequence of this behaviour.

What's more - digestion starts when we take the first bite and begin to break up our food. Weight loss is assisted when food is chewed well, as mastication promotes an efficient digestive process.

How much we eat can be strongly influenced by how we actually eat. We really ought to always have our food at a table or breakfast bar, where we can pay attention to what we're eating. Simply doing that seems to lead to us taking more time. When we think more about what we're eating, we also seem to judge more accurately how much to eat.

It might also be the case that we're chatting with others when we sit at the table, and we don't (hopefully) eat with our mouths full! Without doubt a doubled up posture in a comfy chair will not help the digestive process!

If it's been several hours since we last ate, we're also vulnerable to speed eating! To avoid this eat frequent small meals, which consist of slow release nutritional food. Sugary drinks and chocolates give us a quick burst of energy, but it can be very short-lived. For many of us, eating more meals on weekdays isn't practical. So plan ahead and take a piece of fruit, some mixed nuts or oatcakes to your workplace and have a snack every couple of hours.

So just to re-cap - the time we take to chew our food now seems to have a direct bearing on the length of time we feel replete. Relishing each mouthful could be a helpful contribution to losing weight.

When we want to lose weight, we should be careful not to rely on out-dated theories about dieting. For example - You might have always thought that a few snacks here and there are what lead to the slippery slope of weight gain. How true is this in reality?

We've been brought up to believe that three square meals is the most health conscious way to eat. However, more enlightened thinking now suggests that we should eat more than three meals if we want to lose weight. Is there any truth in this?

Our natural inclination would be to think that more mealtimes will equal more calories. Long spaces between meals make us feel as though we're getting somewhere with our diet. What's really happening is quite interesting though.

We're likely to feel weak if we leave several hours between meals. Our enthusiasm for food therefore can be excessive when the next meal arrives. And often this leads us to eating larger quantities than we should. This predominantly occurs with our last meal of the day. Then we end up with more food in our stomach at completely the wrong time - shortly before we go to bed!

If instead we altered our day and prepared six small 'meals', that hungry feeling never develops. Our body appreciates the regular food input. This means it knows it can send food efficiently through our system and dispose of waste.

When the body is frequently starved of food, it retains fat for possible future energy reserves. Thus people who go hungry for long stretches of the day find their weight loss starts to slow down.

By eating several meals before the end of the afternoon, our calorific intake is geared towards the earlier part of the day. This allows the body to use food to effectively power our system, and not retain excess supplies of fat. If we start a meal feeling starving, we are also tempted to eat the wrong things.

Low fat/carb options go out of the running! What seems most appealing are the carbo loaders like bread, chips and pastries. Which are not going to do anything for a would-be slimmer! To sum up, we are much more likely to feel satisfied AND lose weight if we eat small regular meals and avoid starvation tactics.

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. Make a note of all the things you have, and be scrupulously honest! 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.

Patently if your record shows a higher consumption of alcohol or fatty foods than you'd realised, you might begin by reducing those initially. However, if you've only written healthy food and drink down, then it's probably just a case of decreasing the portions. Whether it's the first or the second situation, you'll be able to see how to adjust your intake from the entries in the diary.

Create a regime for the following week. Think of what you're going to eat and drink, and what exercise you want to include. With regard to food, note what you can't eat, and what you'll only eat occasionally. And follow on with the food that you will be eating plentiful supplies of.

As far as alcohol is concerned, keep it to a minimum. Write down when it's not allowed, and when and how much it is allowed. Cans of soft drinks containing sugar are out. Next look at exercise. Decide what you are going to do each day and write it down.

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. And write down how heavy you are at the beginning of each week.

With a plan like this, you're in complete control. Little illustrations of what's gone well and what hasn't will encourage and remind you once you're several weeks in. Also enter the exercise you're doing, to make sure this isn't getting left out. It's amazing how much easier it is to stick with something if it's all written down.

However, this won't give quick fix results. 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! Motivate yourself by concentrating on the lifestyle you'll enjoy as a fitter person, not the effort it's taking to get there.

If you lose your way for a short while, try to get back on track quickly. Could your diet do with a bit of modification? Try to catch up by taking more exercise. Are there any fitness classes you could attend in the evening?

Be proud of your achievements. Rewarding your efforts will keep you much more motivated. 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!

An easy way to measure the extent of our weight problems is to look at our body mass index. A BMI ranging from 18.5 to 25 indicates a healthy height to weight ratio. If it's any higher, then we're too heavy for our height. Above 30, and we join the category of obesity, moving into morbid obesity above 40.

To work out your own index - Use a metric rule to measure your height. Then record your weight in kilograms. Start with a multiplication sum - your height times itself. Then take that answer and divide it by how much you weigh.

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). As a BMI of more than thirty has been classified as obese, action would definitely be required in the above example.

We can't lose weight if we continue to consume foods highly saturated in fats and sugars (save for the odd treat now and again!). We can lose weight by eating more healthily, and eating less. Then the fat that's previously entered our system will be converted into energy.

You should avoid crash diets which usually end up with you either feeling ill or giving up in desperation. So stay away from programs that restrict males to 1,400 daily calories and females to 1,000. Radical weight reduction can result, but it's usually very short-lived!

It takes re-education and time to achieve lasting results. Cut back your calorie consumption to 75 percent of what you eat now, and you should see a few pounds come off every month. So not the un-realistic promises fed to you from the instant remedy brigade, but a real solution to help you stay out of the danger zones.

It's well understood that foods saturated in fat contain the highest calories. So the easiest way to drop the calories is by cutting out fatty food. Instead, eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, and increase the amount of whole grains in your diet. It won't take long before you notice you're actually feeling better.

Avoid skipping meals - this really doesn't help with calorie reduction. (Missed meals usually lead to high-calorie grazing). 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. The body metabolises more when it receives frequent healthy portions of food. This leads to an efficient system of weight loss.

A stressful lifestyle with not enough sleep is now thought to add another problem - it could be the reason for our weight problems. We find it hard to say no, and so end up rushing around doing far too many tasks - often skimping things instead of taking the time to do them well. There always seem to be so many things to get through - small wonder we become tense and fraught! At this time, our natural inclination is to eat.

But it could be there's a connection between food that's laden with calories and feeling stressed. Stress-related weight gain does exist. The process is thought to be something like this - Cortisol, a stress hormone is exuded by the body at particularly stressful times.

Then in an attempt to stabilise our blood sugar, an insulin release is stimulated. Insulin ups our appetite, and particularly makes us crave fats and carbohydrates. And so we give in to our cravings, and our energy picks up again.

For a short time we feel replete and the stress reduces. However, before long we're back where we started feeling exhausted! It's known that this is due to the released insulin grabbing hold of the glucose in the blood and dropping it into the areas where we store fat, such as our waist.

Consequently we'd be well advised to de-stress our lifestyle before embarking on a new weight reduction program. In conjunction with this idea is a theory about sleep and weight management. Some years ago, the average night's sleep was eight hours - now we're lucky if we manage seven.

Alongside this, is the fact that weight problems have increased. One theory is this is due to hormones. If we're run-down through lack of sleep, hormonal changes create hunger. Because we're awake, our bodies are tricked into thinking it must be day-time, and so believe more food is needed.

Evidently our longing for food rises as we become more tired, and again we veer towards carbohydrates and fatty food. Taking back that extra hour for night-time recuperation may well lead to eating fewer calories.

And so to our conclusion. If we aim to reduce the tension in our lives, we might just find it easier to reduce our weight as well. We might try delegating more family and work responsibilities and say no to people's requests sometimes. And then at the close of the day, instead of grabbing another bite to eat, simply play some relaxing music and snuggle up in bed...

Look at any Best Seller list in bookshops today, and it will be full of works about the rich and famous. We learn that it's not that they didn't experience tough times, but that they didn't allow the tough times to dominate their thought processes. That's how it is; life's achievers allow positive reasons why 'they can' to fill their minds, and ignore negative reasons why they can't.

So if you're dieting, develop a positive approach to losing the pounds. Tell yourself how good you are at healthy eating. Thinking positively opens up a wealth of solutions to any problem. A pessimistic approach though does the opposite.

This is because we have a mechanism, called the Reticular Activation System. It tells the brain what to think about. We become familiar with many things over time that don't continue to stay in the forefront of our minds - as we store all our previous experiences in the sub conscious bit, or the back so to speak.

Then, when we have a need to refer to something, our automatic RAS (reticular activation system) goes through our sub conscious to check if we're holding anything relevant. So when we're strolling down a road, things that have meaning to us come to our attention, but everything else doesn't.

Therefore, if our conscious mind has generally been transferring positive, upbeat messages to our sub-conscious mind, that's what it will send back. But if our sub-conscious has been given loads of downbeat messages, then that's equally what will be sent back.

We have an element of control over this. Successful people have generally worked on their attitude and restricted the amount of negative being stored. And so the reticular activation system emerges as a brilliant mechanism for fulfilling our dreams. The sub conscious has no way of knowing whether information sent to it is imaginary or not.

In other words, we need to build a very detailed picture of our goal in our conscious mind. Dutifully, our RAS will then store that image sub consciously, ready to assist us with our objectives. Because when we need to retrieve our old information on losing weight, the message is that it's a done deal!

A positive mental attitude has long been understood. Abandon negative thinking and keep the focus on hitting the goal. On the other hand, if we set our mind on doubt and failure, we have very little chance of reaching our goals.

What Is Your Optimal Diet Program? Obsessing over food, and then getting poor results, is all too common when we're on a diet. Hence finding a dieting routine that complements our lifestyle is what we need. We don't live in a make believe world, as some advertisements suggest.

We just won't keep on with diets that are too rigid or limited in scope. If we're not allowed proper food for several meals we'll never feel satiated.

There are regimes out there that are a million miles away from that.

We've chosen a select few regimes that offer what we're all looking for. They all contain well reasoned studies of the weight loss phenomena. Fundamentally they explain why we've been unsuccessful on our prior endeavours. They'll even on occasions have us consuming more than we do at the moment.

Unlike many diets that consume our lives, these programs free up our lives. Your energy levels will surge as you watch the weight fall off.

Getting through the day carrying too much weight is tiring - when you've lost the weight you'll feel great! Life's physical struggles will start to diminish very early on in the program. People around you will be inspired by your results. Let's face it, life's too short to waste it being tired all the time!

Enough From Us - Judge For Yourselves! It's best to let the authors of these regimes explain the science themselves. Their authoritative reports are very easy to follow. Go to this synopsis site right away, and get on the road to your new life.

PS At the time of producing this report, I'm very happy to say I have lost and kept off over 45 pounds in weight. I studied all the 3 programs in detail, and personally opted for a combination of 2 of them. I've been given a new lease of life - and I can't tell you what a difference it makes! There's no way I'm getting back into my old habits. I genuinely want you to review these programs for yourself. Then you too can benefit from the same life changes that I have. Enjoy the journey - Scott (The husband of a very happy wife...)

Trying To Lose Weight Can Be Frightening! And huge business empires have grown out of this. The turnover of the weight loss industry is colossal - it amounts to billions of dollars - and so there are plenty of opportunities to profit from our ambitions to be slim.

OK, How Large Has This Got? Maybe you're not classed as obese, but you're probably somewhat overweight if you're reading this. Statistics taken recently suggest that weight issues are a problem for around seventy per cent of Americans. Put another way, that's 210 millions! And many other countries will shortly have a similar situation. But we don't want this to happen!

Surveys in the UK show that getting on for one fourth of all adults suffer from obesity. But what's worse - In just 40 years it could reach 90 per cent of adults.

It really does not have to happen though. Nobody would wish this problem on either themselves or others. But we don't have to fall for the commercial pills and potions - what we need is reasonable, workable advice.

It's a well known fact that obesity can lead to many major problems - Type two diabetes; mental health problems; high blood pressure; heart disease & heart failure; cancer; liver disease; osteoarthritis and high cholesterol. This illustrates that we don't just need to lose weight so that we can look more attractive.

Reducing your weight and getting into good physical shape is more important than being thin. In truth, we most likely have a gut feel for the weight that works best for our body.

When we have a family, we need to consider how they can learn to eat well. It's our responsibility as the adults in the house to help our children adopt sensible habits where diet is concerned. The odds are on that our children will grow to be obese if we don't change things now. Who wants to be that kind of benefactor?

So not to put too fine a point on it - we have to become more nutritionally aware before the problem gets any bigger. We're all very influenced by each other, so once you've mastered a lifestyle of healthy eating, those around you will take note. Just think of the long-term advantages of taking action now. Let's face it, the health of our grandchildren could well depend on it!

Are you aware that our behaviour patterns very often reflect those of our friends? The theory is that we turn out to be very much like the individuals we hang around with. For the most part this is interpreted as we hold the same belief structure or values; we quite often support the same sports clubs and political parties as our friends, for instance.

Lately though, studies are claiming that we will have more tendency to be overweight if we hang around with others who are overweight. According to a recent news article, we have a tendency to consume more when eating with heavier people who we know well. A US research team looked at kids eating habits. They found that the heavier ones ate more when they were with their heavier pals than when they were with their slimmer friends.

Indeed, all the young people studied (aged 9 to 15) ate more when they were with friends than strangers regardless of their size. But the greatest calorific intakes were observed when overweight chums snacked together. The results of this study revealed several key factors. It found that friends have a key function where consumption is concerned.

Certainly, it's human nature to feel more secure in our actions when we're amongst friends. We're not so self-aware with people we like and know well. But there's possibly more to it than that - we intuitively view friends as permission givers. We grant them the right to define acceptability - in this case in relation to food quantities.

The researchers observed a whole mix of young people for this study. They were split into groups of two friends, or groups of two strangers. All were furnished with nibbles, fruit and vegetables. They also had various games to keep them occupied.

The familiar couples put away more food than the unfamiliar ones. But overweight friends ate the most of all. Below is an illustration of what was consumed.

An average of seven hundred and thirty eight calories was eaten by overweight teens who paired with a friend. But the overweight youngsters with slimmer friends ate nearly three hundred calories less. The slimmer ones ate a fairly stable five hundred calories whatever the size of their friends. This ties in with the commonly held view that in early teens many kids' decisions to smoke or drink alcohol are strongly influenced by what their friends do.

The research team looking at food consumption had to conclude that peers played an influential role in a young person's dietary habits. This sounds very negative, but of course it means that if youngsters were to associate more with friends who eat a balanced diet, then they too are likely to adjust their habits over time. A good argument for teaching sound nutrition!

(C) Scott Edwards. Check out WeightLossDietWar.com for intelligent diet advice on slimming products and weight management program.