You long to hear the words, ?You?ve lost weight!? Especially if you have been trying for a long time to reduce your weight to what you think it should be. And when you hear someone utter that phrase with surprise and delight in their voice, you are over the moon with joy and a feeling of accomplishment. Suddenly, you will begin to walk taller and your shoulders, usually hunched in self-consciousness, straighten up; you feel confident, your smile gets wider, your face begins to glow and your eyes shine with happiness. In fact, the whole world seems to have become a better, brighter place. I have watched many patients change before my eyes from individuals who were beaten down and despondent because of their excess weight and health problems, to bright, confident persons who appear to have got a new lease of life once they have lost weight. The transformation, I hasten to add, does not come overnight, and involves commitment, discipline, and changes in habits and lifestyle. For some, the process is easier than for others, but experience has shown that a genuine desire to achieve one's goals, a positive attitude and a holistic tried-and-tested plan, go a long way to remove the obstacles, both self-created and external, on the path to success and a life lived well. This book shares the knowledge I have gained over the years of how to lose weight and live a healthy, happy life at the same time. My first book, The Live Well Diet, gives necessary and basic information to achieve weight loss and a healthy life. This book goes one step further and gives you strategies of how to acquire habits to achieve weight loss and how to counteract the impulses that prompt you to make excuses to avoid diets. It is a practical guide to achieving a well-balanced life with adequate and appropriate nutrition, physical activity, sleep and relaxation. In short, a diet and way of life that will help you to live well and to hear the words, ?You?ve lost weight!? together with the phrase, ?You look so good!? again and again. For many of us, unfortunately, the word ?diet? is an unpleasant word. It is filled with all kinds of negative connotations like restrictions, lack of freedom, limited choice, endless suffering, suppression, pain, guilt, unsatisfied cravings, shame, pressure, starvation, and hunger. But worst of all, it seems to imply tasteless, bland and boring food. Our natural reaction is to avoid going on a diet at all cost. We put it off and shy away from any restrictions recommended. We wriggle out of the commitment to healthier eating habits, no matter the urgency and imperative. We convince ourselves of the very good reasons why the dreaded diet should be postponed, or better still, cancelled forever. Some of us, however, begin a diet with great enthusiasm and will power. Then gradually as boredom sets in and our resolve weakens, we look for ways out, and gradually let the diet fade to a complete stop. Only to get a rude awakening in the form of a health crisis, an unflattering image in a mirror or photograph, or a blunt comment. Then, of course, we start all over again. The battle of the diets is one that is enacted by people of all ages all over the world. Today, there is a very real crisis of increasing obesity and lifestyle disease. This may seem at odds with the amount and variety of food choices available to us, including many healthy packaged foods. So how is one to cope with the need to make wise food choices with the demands of a very hectic modern lifestyle, and still come out a healthy, balanced individual who is living well and looking good too? The answer is the Live Well Diet, which is more than just another diet. It is a way of life which is liberating: it offers a variety of food choices; it is very flexible with many options to adapt to life's many surprises, and yes,
