Deciding that you need to lose a bit (or a lot) of weight is easy. Following through is the tough part!

So how to motivate yourself?

A good idea is to write down how you think you'll feel if you succeed in losing however many pounds you want to lose.
Will you feel more energetic?
More confidant?
Happier?
Healthier?
Will people be happier to spend time with you?
Will it be good for your love life?

Whatever it is that you yourself feel will be the results of losing weight, write it in a list and put the list on your fridge.
Then add a 'before' and 'after'picture of you when you were slim and you as you are right now.
Then every time you go to the fridge, look at the pictures and read one of the items on your list.

Now start another list (for the fridge of course) with what you are going to eat to transform yourself back to your slimmer self.
Maybe decide that for one month you will eat nothing but raw foods and that at the end of a month you are going to evaluate whether this has made you closer to the way you want to be.
If that is the route you are taking, then fill the fridge with cantalopes, celery, carrots, watermelon, lettuce, cucumbers, spring onions, tomatoes, all sorts of berries, apples, raw nuts and seed etc. Make sure that there is plenty of all your favourite fruits and veggies and nuts and seeds.
Make yourself fresh juice at least once a day, maybe fresh carrot and celery juice with a little garlic and basil once a day, and an apple juiced with nuts and blueberries at another time.

Whatever you do, don't go hungry. Eat until you are full! Depriving yourself that way is a sure route to failure.

Many people eat too much because it gives them a feeling of being comforted. Maybe this is from when we were a baby and maybe whenever we screamed we were cuddled and fed so we associate food with comfort. Most people know about comfort foods!

Our lives are and always have been full of a mix of good and bad things. Probably some very good things and some very bad things.

If we dwell on the bad things too much, if they are things that cannot be changed then clearly we will want to be comforted. If that means overeating and the overeating makes us way overweight, then we just have one more bad problem with lots of potential health problems.

And just maybe we'll be so upset because we don't look good or feel good that we'll need comforting, and what will we turn to for that but more starchy fatty foods to make us feel better for a short while.

Your body is a finely tuned instrument that knows when it is hungry. When you are hungry eat some healthy food in a reasonable portion. It may take the stomach a bit of time to send a message to the brain that you are full, so eat slowly and thoughtfully. Enjoy what you do eat, and listen to your body. When it tells you you are full, then stop eating. Be busy with something else that you like doing so that you don't obsess about food.

But most of all, look at all the bad things that have happened to you all your life. Write them all down. Be your own good parent - sympathise with yourself for all the bad things. Then tell yourself that that was in the past. The past can't be changed, but there is no need for it to ruin the rest of your life. Look the at all bad things straight on. Tell yourself that they were not your fault and that you are not going to continue to suffer because of them. That this is the beginning of a new happier you.

For a while you will feel different - your stomach is used to being filled up more. But if you don't overeat all the time your stomach will get used to not being filled up so much.

Don't go hungry and starve yourself. That is not going to work in the long run. After a while you'll feel deprived because you are trying to deprive yourself and then you'll quit, and because your body thinks that there was a famine it will have created a pile more fat cells so that when you start binging again you get fatter than ever so that you can survive the next famine.

Well, I've been on holidays for a couple of weeks. Just got back and I haven't had a chance to weigh myself on a reliable scale, but I did have to put a new notch into a belt I had been wearing just before I went away. My waist line was down 3".

Over the 2 weeks I think I had 5 cooked meals (mostly because of the social situation I was in at the time. The rest of my meals were 100% raw and I was eating as much as I wanted to.

Raw means different things to different people. For me it means that the food contains plenty of natural enzymes still - that they haven't been killed by heating etc.

So I have raw live yoghurt (both milk and soymilk yoghurts) in my diet and cheeses. The milk that they are made from has probably been boiled, but then some natural cultures have been grown using the milk or soymilk as a medium, so that these foods have plenty of enzymes alive and well.

I have to say that I feel way more energetic on this diet.

It's important to make sure that you drink plenty of water when you are trying to lose weight. - up to 10 x 8 oz glasses of water a day!

The water helps to flush toxins out of your system, lubricates your joints, carries nutrients in your blood and is essential for many of the chemical reaction in your body.

It seems hard to drink that much water. Spread it out fairly evenly over the day, about one glass an hour or so.

Carry a water bottle with you when you go anywhere to make it easy.

Spring water is better than distilled water. Spring water contains essential minerals which are not present when water has been distilled. Tap water straight from the tap is not so good. It may contain chlorine which is something you don't want inside you! If you want to filter your tap water, a charcoal based filter may be best.

Exercise is something that you need every day. Try to build it into your life.

It doesn't just burn off the calories (though it does that too).

It makes your mind sharper.

It makes you feel less tired! Try it if you don't believe me - when you get home from work and just want to be a couch potato because you had a tough day, instead walk around the block and enjoy the gardens and trees and birds etc. When you get back home, don't you feel better?

Also it helps you to have better quality sleep. Which means that you feel better the next day and can achieve more with ease.

Now that summer is here, it's time to put your car away and get out your bicycle.

Cycling to work, to the stores, to visit friends and family can give you all the exercise you need while doing the things that you would be doing in any case.

Start off slowly at the beginning of the summer. Short rides at a slow pace so that you get your cycling muscles in shape before going for long rides.

A bonus is how good your legs will look when you cycle a lot! Nicely toned muscles!

If you are going to lose weight and keep it off, more exercise will certainly help.

But if exercise is boring and repetative after a while you'll start finding excuses for yourself as to why you just can't do it today. Or the next day. Or this week ......

The solution? Make the exercise fun.
For instance, you and your partner could take some dancing classes. Then when the classes are through, go dancing with your partner. Enjoy yourself and keep in shape. What more could you want?