There are several factors in winning at weight loss. Sometimes the food isnt the culprit, its your attitude. Heres a list that will help you with your diet and exercise program and you could even modify it to suit other goals.

Take care of yourself. You deserve the time it takes to exercise. Your family deserves a healthy member. You deserve to have a healthy life, feel good, and live a long time even if you have to take time to exercise.

Fear. Diet fear? No, fear of change. What happens when I get thin? Will guys hit on me all the time? Or I might fail, again. Face your fears and tell yourself you can handle them. Its easy to maintain the status quo, change is hard. You can do it.

Forget the scale, eat healthy and exercise and the number on the scale will find you. Focus more on the way you live, what you eat and what you do rather than a number on the scale.

Face the facts, you have to eat. If you are an alcoholic or smoke, you can quit even though it may not be easy. But you cant just quit eating all together. Food is addictive and you have to eat. But what you eat, is a choice.

We also are persuaded with images of people having a good time eating. You have to fight the social aspect of eating and remain true to yourself and eat to survive, not survive to eat.

You have to get the junk food out of the cabinet, but you also have to replace it with good food to eat. You are going to get hungry and you are going to want a snack. Instead of grabbing a cookie, get an apple. If you remove all the food so to speak, then you might binge or feel deprived. Its not about any of these things, its what you eat.

When a routine snack time comes, you have to change what you normally do. Dont take a break with the guys to get a drink and snack. Go for a walk anything just something different. If you are at home, play with the kids, dogs, or yard work. Change your routine snack time to distract your urge to snack.

You have to exercise. You dont have to LIKE to exercise, but you have to exercise. Eating less can take you so far, but our bodies werent made to sit on the couch all the time. Make exercise a routine in your day just like taking a bath and going to work.

Change your reward system. If you are doing great, dont get a cookie. Buy something. Set a goal. If money is tight, give yourself extra time to do something you enjoy (besides eating). You must have small goals to obtain and a reward system of anything other than food.

Do it for you. Dont let others tell you that you need to be a size 6 to fit into society. Do it because you want to live longer, walk a flight of stairs without gasping for air, or just to look younger. Its about you, not your husband or parents or friends. Make the change for a better you. You can do it!