It is not easy to overcome these pressures and in some way it is good to have them, to help you keep motivated and achieve your goal.

But sometimes you can get too caught up in all the pressures. I became rather grumpy a few months ago. I was seeing a natropath to help me lose weight, and each week I would get more and more uptight if I didnt lose any weight or if I put it on. I was weighing myself everyday, which made matters worse as your body tends to fluctuate from day to day.

How do you balance and deal with these pressures?

I found once I stopped seeing my natropath and not getting weighed each week, I relaxed a bit. I wasn’t so stressed and pressured into losing lots of weight.

Losing weight doesnt happen over night. Don’t get sucked into the pressures. If you put on weight one week, don’t fret, just try and increase your exercise and eat a little bit better than the week before, and that should help.

It is not a race. Take your time and enjoy the process of slowly achieving your goal weight.

So apparently we are overweight or obese. We are criticized for not losing weight by tabloids. We are surrounded by unrealistic models in magazines who are anorexic. Where is the medium? WHAT is the medium?

We have the biggest loser playing on tv with critically obese people who lose massive amounts of weight in a week. This is a bad influence for people who may be heavy. They think that they too can lose that much weight in that short a period of time. This is FALSE. Yes it can be done but be prepared to suffer the consequences when you stop dieting. You will easily gain weight faster than before and as soon as you know it you are the same weight as when you started.

The key is to lose weight slowly. Ideally 1 to 1.5 kilograms a week is the healthiest way. Losing weight slower means your body acclimatises to the food and exercise changes better and will be able to cope with your body changes, hence being able to keep the weight off.

So how do you get started?

Here are a few tips to starting:

• Include protein in every meal and snack as protein fills you up
• Eliminate/lower sugar and fat intake
• Exercise at least 4 times a week for 1/2 hour or more
• Drink 2 litres of water a day as it cleans out the toxins in your body

I will be back later with more interesting facts for losing weight and about my weight loss journey!