Weigh Yourself Slim

By M. Holmes

Are you truly fed up with being overweight and struggling with fad, yo-yo diets? Are you ready to lose weight forever and invest more than ten days into a diet?

If you answered yes to these questions, then this book is for you.

Weigh Yourself Slim is a new and unique method that

will not only help you lose weight, but will turn you into a slim person, physically and mentally;

does not endorse strange diet or exercise programmes;

is unique to you;

provides no dietary restrictions; and

is natural and healthy.

In contrast to most current diets, this method doesnt make silly promises about unrealistic, quick weight loss, but it does promise long-term results with no danger to your health. It goes down to the root of the problem of obesity, which is that people have lost their natural ability to balance their diet. With a little help of weighing scales, this book provides a dynamic program on how you can reintroduce that ability and begin your personal journey to your ideal weight. Equally as important, this system will enable you to maintain that ideal weight for the rest of your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jul 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504944885

M. Holmes

Retirement at this time is not in the works for M. Holmes because she believes that her work is not done. M. Holmes believes that everyone has an assignment and that assignment is to give back to the community in a positive way. M. Holmes says that at this juncture in her life she wants only to live in a crime free community. She enjoys teaching through her writing. She holds two degrees, an Associate Degree and a Criminal Justice Degree which she is grateful for the opportunity to utilize to serve the community at large.

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AuthorHouse™ UK

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Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

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© 2015 M Holmes. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   07/06/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4492-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4493-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4488-5 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Part I    Weigh Yourself Slim Attitude

1  Introduction

2  Are Both Your Heart and Your Mind in It?

3  What Is Your Turning Point?

4  Envision the Perfect You

Part II    Weigh Yourself Slim Method

5  Scales

6  Other People

7  Food

8  Weigh Yourself Slim and Adjust

9  A Little More about Weighing Yourself Slim and Adjusting

Part III    Weigh Yourself Slim Practice

10  Brain Power

11  Planning Your Day Ahead

12  Exercising

13  The Goal

Part IV    Weigh Yourself Slim Eight Practical Tips

14    TIP 1 The Unnecessary Part of a Meal

15    TIP 2 Preparation of Food

16    TIP 3 Substitutes

17    TIP 4 The Ritual of Eating

18    TIP 5 Amount of Food

19    TIP 6 Drinks

20    TIP 7 Distractions

21    TIP 8 Dress for a New Shape

Part V    Weigh Yourself Slim For Life

22  Losing Weight Is a Temporary Challenge

23  Maintaining Weight

24  Enjoy Your Success

25  Step-by-Step Programme

26  Summary (Recap)

27  Paul’s Story

28  Weighing & Adjusting Diary

29  Questionnaire

About the Author

To my husband Paul

for his continuous support

that made this book possible

Part I

WEIGH

YOURSELF

SLIM

ATTITUDE

1  Introduction

Before we begin, let me ask you a few questions. Are you truly fed up with being overweight and going up and down with your weight – and constantly having to battle with the ups and downs of yo-yo diets? Are you ready to lose weight forever and become a slim person – permanently? Are you serious about it, and you are willing to put more than ten days into this diet?

If the answer to these questions is yes, then I have good news, and you should continue reading. So why all these questions? Mostly to clarify your expectations. This is not just another book about losing weight as quickly as possible. Instead, it will take you to a journey to your ideal weight and teach you how to maintain it for the rest of your life. You may not be able to appreciate the full difference at the moment, but by the time you have finished this book, it will be very clear to you. There are no recipes to follow, and I will not be prescribing daily plans, but I can guarantee that if you follow all the methods I have set out in these pages, you will be in charge. This book will help you develop your own personalised plan and implement all the necessary changes in your lifestyle – changes that you will be happy to maintain. In a nutshell, the Weigh Yourself Slim program offers you a way to help you develop your own method of being slim.

A lot more about that later, but now let me introduce myself.

A Bit about Me

Most people who see me for the first time assume I am one of those women who make a habit of nibbling on salads and starving themselves all day – and they are therefore surprised when they see me eat. The truth is that I really enjoy my food – and one of the great pleasures in my life is a good, filling dinner.

Actually, I am slim, but I am not too skinny. I am at my ideal weight for my size and age (I am now forty-one years old, five feet three inches (163 centimetres), and fifty-one kilograms (eight stone). I have been at that weight – more or less – for the last fifteen years, during which I have gained three kilograms (six pounds, nine ounces) in total, which was probably required to iron out a few wrinkles that started appearing on my face. (According to some dieticians, it is essential for people to gain two to three kilograms [four to six pounds] every ten years.)

In the past I had a lot of problems with my weight, but I now think of myself as a truly slim person. By this I mean that I am no longer afraid that I will ever gain weight. I think about and control my weight as all naturally slim people do: effortlessly and without constant experimenting with new diets.

The reason I am telling you this is not to brag about myself. I simply want to level with you so you know that I practise what I preach. Most importantly, I am true evidence that it works. The issue of trust is so important when handing out advice on dieting, and I believe that it’s vital to be a true representative of what you are trying to ‘sell’.

All through my teenage years, I struggled with my weight, gaining and losing ten to twelve kilograms (twenty-two to twenty-six pounds) every year. I tried everything, all sorts of magazine diets, including some very strange ones. One recommended eating only yoghurt on the first day, apples on the second day, grapefruit on the third day and so on. Other diets weren’t much better. Some turned out to be nutritional disasters, some were medically dangerous, and others were hugely complicated, with ingredients I couldn’t find anywhere or with meals which required a degree in culinary sciences to prepare. Each time, there was no option but to give up sooner or later – but usually sooner.

I have also attempted weight-loss holidays, calorie-counting, various psychotherapies, and extensive exercising, but although they were better than the ‘yoghurt and apples only’ diet, after a while, I would forget and revert to my old eating habits and lifestyle.

And it wasn’t just me. My mum was constantly on weight-loss diets, trying the latest ‘scientific’ methods, but she rarely lost any weight, and even in the best-case scenarios, like me, she yo-yoed in her weight from fat to thin and back to fat. My interest in this subject started very early and has continued throughout my life. I grew up observing my mum and one of my best friends failing with different diets, and when I got married, my husband, Paul, also struggled with his weight. Maybe all this was fate, as I wouldn’t have come up with this wonderful method if I hadn’t been so exposed to the problem.

A Simple Philosophy

What I am about to offer you in this book is a simple philosophy, using an easy-to-follow and common-sense approach, but also with structured steps to help you get there. In addition to that, we will talk about a series of techniques and practical tips that I have gathered through my own experience. I have also tried and tested them not only on myself, but also on people close to me, and I know that they work.

The aim of this book is to help you reduce your weight down to your ideal weight and maintain that weight forever. I do not intend to put you through some kind of adult boot camp or subject you to a miserable and painful process which you will have to endure over a long period in order to look a little better and then suffer for the rest of your life. Neither is the Weigh Yourself Slim a ‘ten-day therapy’ to make you lose weight, after which you will go back to your old ways and regain the weight again. It is meant to be an enjoyable experience so that you will be only too happy to keep on doing it for the rest of your life.

My main ambition is not just to help you lose weight but to turn you into a slim person. There is a huge difference between those two things, and you probably know that very well, especially if you have already managed to lose weight, but you keep putting it back on. All those who struggle with weight tend to think of themselves as ‘us’ and slim people as ‘them’, and we don’t understand what those slim ones are doing that is so dramatically different. If you look from the overweight person’s perspective, you see that most truly slim people are not afraid to indulge in restaurant meals; they enjoy eating cakes and even chocolate – and at first sight, they look like they don’t care about what and how much they eat.

So, how do they do it?

They seem to eat as much as you do, but in spite of that, they are slim, and you are not.

There are some slim people who eat only salads, but they are in a minority and just another extreme where we don’t want to go. Just to be clear, we are only talking about those healthy and truly slim people.

Nowadays, I consider myself a slim person. I have a very healthy appetite, and I eat everything – there is no food that I don’t like. I eat three meals a day, I have snacks, and I will not shy away from a good meal or dessert. My cousin once took me for a pizza with her new partner, and the first thing she said to him was, ‘Look at her – how slim she is. But she eats like a horse’.

And not to disappoint her, I finished almost a whole pizza. Saying that, I still very much care what and how much I eat, and most importantly, I know how to balance my diet.

That is the skill I want to transfer to you through this program. It is a misconception that slim people can just eat whatever they want. They are the same as you, but the only difference is that their ability to balance their diet has never been significantly disturbed, so they are able to do it naturally (and, to some extent, subconsciously). They may look like as if they don’t think about that and don’t care, but they do.

The good thing is that with this method, you can become that slim person and learn how to balance your diet until it becomes second nature to you. The Weigh Yourself Slim program is not a quick journey – but it will be an enjoyable one, and only one way.

No Pain, No Gain?

I have deliberately written this book in plain English, without many scientific references. The whole concept is quite simple and presented in a way for everyone to understand, and although I can see you raising your eyebrow at the word ‘enjoyable,’ I can also sense your hope.

In theory, any solution that is natural and gets us where we want to be, with no pain, should work (although, of course, in practice, the dictum ‘No pain, no gain’ is generally true, and I am certainly not suggesting that Weigh Yourself Slim will not require any effort, and even in the short term, what might appear to be ‘pain’ when we have avoided any discomfort in our lives, and grown fat as a consequence.

However, it is also true that most of us think life is too short and we are who we are. We may accept the fact that we must endure pain and suffering for a short while to achieve a greater good, but sooner or later, we will want that pain to end. We will not put ourselves through suffering our whole lives, which is what most of the current weight-loss programmes are offering if we want to stay slim. Yet as soon as we stop their regime, we will go back to the same situation as where we started. There is no point in eating apples for ten days and then reverting to a crisps-and-chips diet. A little exaggeration maybe, but you know what I mean.

Unless we are desperate, we do not want to eat grapefruit and salad all day every day. The same can be said with high protein diets or slimming milkshakes full of artificial ingredients and chemicals. Even after twenty years, I can still remember the sickening taste of strawberry milkshakes, which made me hate anything with an artificial strawberry flavour. I have heard stories of people falling sick and having bad breath during a protein-based diet or damaging their health while trying to eat like cavemen in the twenty-first century. (Happily for me, I didn’t try those. It sounded so bad that it was not even worth trying.) Equally, I can’t help feeling sorry for people in boot camps trying to do exercises that they cannot do and feeling that torture is the only way to be healthy and slim. I am also not very keen (nor do I have the time) to count calories or weight-loss points and then sit in a circle discussing my weight issues with a group. While I am not prepared to criticise other methods – and maybe they have worked for some people – I would be surprised if they achieved permanent results.

If we want to lose weight, look better, and feel better, under no circumstances should we damage our health.

No diet is worth that.

After saying all this, I am actually hoping that instead of being disappointed, you are pleasantly surprised to open a diet book and not find ludicrous claims such as ‘Lose a stone in one week’. There are no such promises with this program, because we all know that these kinds of gimmicky approaches are not going to work in the long run. On the other hand, while this program is so simple – you may even think at some point that it is impossible or naive – don’t you think that it is much more naive to put your faith in empty, unsustainable promises? We may be eternal optimists and hope for a miracle, wanting to believe that a diet like that will come (and work), but deep down, we know that it is not going to happen. In my experience, waiting for one of these ‘miraculous’ diets led me nowhere and only left me disappointed (and still overweight).

We rarely think of the word ‘diet’ in the context of normal eating habits, but instead, we associate it more commonly with a prescribed process, often involving a weird eating and exercise regime. In my opinion, the latter context for the word ‘diet’ should be forbidden. That’s why this program, as I prefer to call it, is about adjusting your normal eating habits and not blinding you with unrealistic promises. However, results can be achieved quickly or slowly, depending on what suits you and how much effort you want to put into it.

Nowadays, when I look back and think of all the days, weeks, and months I tried all those unrealistic diets in the hope of losing weight quickly (and unnaturally), it reminds me of a student wasting time thinking of ways to cheat on an exam, instead of using that same time for actual studying. There is little point in cheating, because sooner or later, we’ll get caught. Even if not at the exam, it will catch us later in life when we don’t know how to do things we are qualified in. It’s the same with feeding our body with just protein (or onion soup) for a certain period and not knowing what to do later.

On the other hand, with the program I am proposing in this book, you will learn how you can continue to enjoy food but in a balanced way.

As humans, we often think that a solution must be better if it is complicated and more scientific, but the reality is completely different. The best solutions are normally very simple and natural and right in front of our nose, but for the same reason, they are very hard to see. We are also very good at blinding ourselves with preconceptions that something is too difficult, knowing in advance that we will fail, that it is too late for us, and so on. All these amount to negative thoughts, filling us with fear, anxiety, and