There are a few common misconceptions about how to lose weight, so I’d like you all to take a quiz.

Read More: The Fat-Savvy quiz

Healthy eating is an integral part of maintaining your optimal healthy weight, but let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to maintain your best weight if you also add an exercise program to your daily regime.  The two go hand-in-hand.

In addition, getting outside and moving around - whether it’s walking, jogging or biking or playing some kind of sport, is simply an enjoyable activity.

Read More: Book: The Complete Guide to Walking

I couldn’t decide on what I should call this entry. I toyed with Winter Woes, or even The Winter of My Discontent, then ended up with the feel good sentence, “Pick yourself up.”

Because of course, it is always possible to pick yourself up and start all over again.  “Never give up, never surrender,” as Captain Jack Taggart says (for those fans of Galaxy Quest.)

Read More: Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again

When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies: Freeing Yourself from Food and Weight Obsession, by Jane R. Hirschmann and Carol H. Munter. Fawcett Columbine, 1995

This book was written ten years ago, but it’s still relevant today, and indeed, needed now more than ever, as women and young girls, as well, continue to obsess over their appearance to the detriment of their health.

Read More: Book: When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies

Diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness in people ages 20 to 74. The leading eye problems caused by diabetes are diabetes retinopathy, cataracts, and glaucoma.

The threat of blindness is yet another reason to ensure that, if you have diabetes, you find the appropriate treatment.

Read More: Diabetes and blindness

There’s new hopes for sufferers from diabetes - a natural treatment that doesn’t have any side effects.

The news was released in this article: All-Natural Solution for Diabetes–New Clinical Trial

Read More: Diabetes in the news

I remember reading an article in the paper a few months ago, talking about a study in which scientists tried to figure out how anorexics could actually stop eating as they did. If most people skip  a meal, they’ll feel hungry and eventually eat. Not so anorexics. According to this study, anorexics didn’t taste food the way most people did.

Read More: How to control your appetite

Hunger Free Forever: Tame Your Appetite and Tune Your Metabolism for Lifelong Weight Control. By Michael T. Murray and Michael R. Lyon. Atria Books. 2007 

 This was a book that “had me” - for a second - with the cover, then lost me when I got into the “nitty gritty.”

I was delighted to see this book on the New Shelf of my local library, less pleased to see the advertising blurb: “Reach your ideal body weight almost effortlessly.”

Read More: Book: Hunger Free Forever

I’m still on Healing the Hungry Self, because it has so much good information in it. Indeed, I could get 20 or more entries from this book, but I’ll stop after this one. But once again, I highly recommend that pyou pick up this book. You will never have to diet again - for a simple reason - you’ll be eating sensibly your entire life, and have no need to “diet.”

Read More: Four Dangerous Eating Habits

I cannot recommend the book Healing the Hungry Self: The Diet-Free Solution to Lifelong Weight Management highly enough.

This is the common-sense way to lose weight, and below I present the 26 points points used to “reduce your food obsession.”

Many of these I’ve mentioned in other blog entries, as they’re just common sense!

Read More: 26 Steps to success