This is a guest post from Mary Ward.

Many people look at the weight loss, but neglect to think of just how hard maintaining it all can be. For many, that can be the biggest struggle and obstacle to overcome. Here we look at some blogs of real life accounts and journeys of those going through such activities and how they make it all work.

1.    Diet Blog

The whole purpose of this blog is not just for the individual that wants to lose the weight, but who wants to keep it off. This blog is based on a community of people who understand how hard it is not just to take off the weight, but to keep it off and the networking and tips can be invaluable for this segment. A must read!

2.    Tales of a (Recovering) Disordered Eater

She offers such a real life account that you can relate no matter where you are at in your weight loss or maintenance cycle. Her mission is to bring awareness and reality to what it is to maintain weight loss efforts and she is very real about the struggles and challenges as well as the accomplishments one can feel.

3.    My Angle on Weight Loss

Don’t let the title fool you as this is a very real person who has lost their weight but who is honest about just how hard it is not to go back to old habits. As many people feel that the struggle ends when you lose the weight, he offers a real accounting of just how hard the maintenance phase can truly be.

4.    Another Weight Maintenance Blog

She has found her solace in yoga and practices it to keep herself sane and active. She offers one of the most real blogs out there stating just how difficult maintenance can be and how she feels it’s harder than the active weight loss in many different ways. She is also quite interesting as she chronicles her everyday adventures.

5.    The Road to Beautiful

Her words are as inspiring to other readers as they are motivational, and she is very down to earth. She repeats mantras about not giving up and is very honest about the struggles that she keeps with maintaining and oftentimes having to get back on the weight loss bandwagon. She wants her words to count and they really do!

6.    Hungry Hungry Hip Girl

She’s lost the weight, put it back on, and now struggles somewhere in the middle working towards proper maintenance. She speaks to her everyday adventures, the necessity to keep up a workout routine, and how all of this affects her and the self esteem she works so hard for. A normal girl with very inspirational words!

7.    Taking Back Control

This is all about nourishment for the soul as much as the body because here you can see how she struggles to believe that she’s beautiful in spite of all her hard work. If you are looking for a bit of inspiration, you are sure to find it here.

Mary Ward blogs about various job issues in the health care field, including how to study in CNA courses online.

I’ve just been on holiday (that’s “vacation” to US readers) for the last week … enjoying long walks, castles, and various bumpy bus rides in Northumberland (north-east of England). Oh, and enjoying rather a lot of cake and ice-cream…

It’s back into sensible eating this week, and sometimes a dose of encouragement and inspiration can help me get over that end-of-holiday feeling. So I was delighted to find out that The Office Diet has been included on a list of “Top 50 Incredibly Inspiring Weight-Loss Blogs“.

If your motivation’s at a bit of a low ebb, why not check out some of the other great blogs on that list?

With any big goal that takes daily effort, you need to stay motivated. This is especially crucial when you’re trying to change your lifestyle to lose weight or get fit.

Spend five minutes today thinking about why you want to lose weight (or maintain your current weight, or get fitter). And don’t feel bad if your motivations aren’t all “worthy” ones. Being desperately keen to fit back into those jeans you wore as a teenager just might be the thing that keeps you on track when the chocolate cookies are calling your name!

Do you…

• Want to lose weight for a special occasion? (Mark it on the calendar, and think about how great you’ll feel on the day! Don’t try to rush things, though. Maybe you can’t lose 100 lbs by Christmas 2009, but Christmas 2010 might be a realistic goal.)
• Want to get fitter to take part in an event? If you’re struggling to stick to your exercise routine, how about looking for a bike ride, walk or run that you could take part in? It doesn’t have to be the London Marathon – but make it something that challenges you.
• Want to maintain your current figure? Focus on all the things you love about how you look now: I really like being able to find clothes that fit (and suit) me in any shop. I also like being fit enough to do plenty of walking and cycling.

If you’re struggling to stay motivated, one way to give yourself an extra boost is to use your goal to help someone else. I recently received an email about the Pound for Pound challenge where Americans can sign up with their weight loss goal and track their progress. For every pound you lose, 10 cents (enough for one pound of food) is donated to a food bank to help families in your area who might otherwise go hungry.

(You can also donate directly, or collect Pound For Pound lids and seals from specially-marked General Mills products.)

For those whose goal is to get fitter, why not find a charity bike ride (such as the London to Paris Big Issue one) or a run which you could do to raise money for those in need?

Whether your motivations are a little bit “selfish” (like “I want to impress my relatives with how much slimmer I am, next Christmas”) or utterly selfless (“I’m training as hard as I can for this marathon so I can make lots of money for charity”), keep them in mind. Next time you’re tempted to have a second slice of cake, or to skip your planned workout, you’ll find that you’re that bit stronger.

One of the bloggers who I’ve been reading for a long time (over two years now) is Steve Pavlina. In fact, it was his articles that first inspired me to start The Office Diet – so this blog’s very existance is probably owed to him!

As you can imagine, then, I was delighted (in an over-excited fan girl sort of way) when Steve announced that he had a book coming out. I duly snapped up a copy from Amazon as soon as it was available in the UK, and read it cover-to-cover in the space of a few days.

So, what’s Personal Development for Smart People (PDfSP) about, and why should dieters get themselves a copy?

Overview of Personal Development for Smart People

Perhaps the easiest way to start a review about PDfSP is to explain that it’s quite different from many other “self-help” style books. My frustration with these books in the past is that they seem to trot out a series of fairly common-sense ideas, along with the occasional trite maxim – there’s rarely anything in them which gives me a new flash of insight about any life problems I’m having.

PDfSP, though, is an extremely in-depth and well-thought-through take on personal development. It’s clear that Steve invested a huge amount of time in thinking about this book, rather than just writing it. The first part is quite abstract, dealing with seven principles for “growth” in all areas of your life. Steve presents this as a diagram, with three “core” principles (Truth, Love and Power) combining to form the secondary principles (Oneness, Authority and Courage), and all six of these forming “Intelligence”.

The second part of the book deals with the nitty-gritty of applying each of these seven principles to different areas, such as “Career”, “Money” and “Health”:

Keep your fitness routine simple and direct. Don’t overcomplicate your life with fancy or expensive exercise equipment; and don’t mistake manufactured supplements, powders, and shakes for a healthy, natural diet. Here’s a simple rule of thumb that will save you a lot of money: if it comes in a can, bottle or canister, you don’t need it.
- from Health and Courage

I personally liked the abstract, almost quite academic approach, and felt that it gave the book a coherence and structure that many standard “self-help” books lack.

What I liked most about Personal Development for Smart People

A few things stood out for me about this book, that made it well worth the money:

• Steve’s style is extremely motivating. He’s challenging at times, but in an inspiring way (not like an Army boot camp instructor or anything). Just reading PDfSP made me feel energised and encouraged in my health goals – and my other life goals.
• The book is detailed, in depth and packed with material, not fluffed out with cute cartoons, quizzes, and so on.
• Steve presents some genuinely new ideas and ways of thinking (new to me, at least!) My post a couple of weeks ago about Set goals which change your life NOW was sparked off by reading Steve’s words on goals.
• This is a book that you could return to time and time again. I read it through quite fast (I tend to be greedy when it comes to books – and chocolate…) but I want to go back and work through the chapters slowly, taking some notes and doing the exercises along the way.

I also liked the way that Steve is looking for “principles” of growth, so that his advice can be applied to any area of life. So often, self-help books seem aimed at putting a sticking-plaster over the holes in one part of our life, whilst not providing any help with other problem areas. As part two of PDfSP demonstrates, Steve’s principles can be applied to a number of areas, from “Money” to “Health” to “Relationships”.

Steve is also very honest about his own experiences, particularly ones which might not be considered especially glowing! His Introduction opens with:

Do you remember the exact moment you first became interested in personal development? I certainly do. It happened in January 1991 while I was sitting in a jail cell. I’d just been arrested for felony grand theft. This wasn’t my first run-in with the law, so I knew I was in trouble. I was 19 years old.

What I didn’t like about Personal Development for Smart People

Enough with the good – what’s the bad stuff? On the whole, very little! There were just a few aspects of PDfSP that I found didn’t really work for me:

• Steve places a lot of importance on fitting everything into a neat structure (here, the seven principles). I felt that in some cases, the principles weren’t sufficiently different (I kept getting muddled between “power” which is one of the primary three, and “authority” which is the expression of “power” plus “truth”), and sometimes the structure felt a little forced. Anyone with a strong maths or science background, though, might find this a refreshing approach to self-help.
• I’m a committed Christian, and whilst I try to stay open minded (and certainly do my best to respect other people’s views and beliefs), I did find Steve’s chapter on “Spirituality” hard to agree with. Again, this is not exactly a criticism of the book, more just reflective of what I brought to it as a reader.

Should you buy Personal Development for Smart People?

Whether you’ve got a shelf-full of self help books, or whether the idea of self-help makes you grimace, I think this book could be very valuable. Why not at least download the free sample chapter from Steve’s site, to see if it might be for you?

If you do like it, you can buy it here:

• Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth (Amazon.co.uk)
• Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth (Amazon.com)

In the US tomorrow, it’ll be Thanksgiving, and although I’m in the UK, I think having a day focused on gratitude is a great idea.

Whether or not you’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, it’s worth taking a few minutes to think about what you’re grateful for – especially when it comes to your body, your physical health and your diet.

These are just a few areas you might like to think about:

Being thankful for your health

I don’t know what your personal circumstances are. You may be reading The Office Diet because you have a medical condition that predisposes you to being overweight. You may be suffering from stress or depression, or you may have severe food allergies. But I imagine that, on the whole, you readers are a pretty healthy bunch. You have access to medical care, you get sufficient nutrients from what you eat to keep you well, and you’re knowledgeable enough to know how to take care of your body (even if, like me, you sometimes slip up in practice!)

Even if you’re not currently as healthy as you’d like to be, be thankful for what you do have – and be thankful that you have the power and self-awareness to take positive steps to improve your health.

Being thankful for your physical ability and strength

If you’re like me, with two left feet and a distinct lack of co-ordination, you might feel rather a long way from being the world’s best sportsman/woman. Notice the way your body feels after exercise, though: do you have a satisfying glow of strength and achievement? You might not be as fit, strong or active as you’d like – but your body is an amazing piece of equipment, resilient and with an impressive ability to get fit and strong through a moderate amount of exercise.

What activities can you do now that you perhaps couldn’t do, through lack of physical ability, a year, or two years ago? I’m certainly not claiming any great prowess in the gym, but compared to myself a few years ago, I’m a lot fitter and stronger!

Being thankful for your job

One of the focuses of The Office Diet over the past year has been on the “office” part – I know that many of you are employees in 8-4 or 9-5 type jobs. As a former full-time office worker myself, I know that it’s sometimes hard to be thankful for your job! You might feel that without the stress, or the long hours, or the boredom of your job, you’d be much better placed to suceed in your diet.

Thanksgiving is a great time to focus on the positive aspects of your job. That could be simply the fact that you have a job, in the current economic climate.
But if you can, go further, and list some of the things (however small) that you enjoy about your work day.

Being thankful that you’re self-aware

Something I know about everyone reading this is that you’re interested in living a healthy lifestyle that nurtures your mind and body – good for you! You’re not succumbing to the junk-food and sloth-like habits that many people adopt without even bothering to question them. Even if your health, your fitness and your weight aren’t yet what you want, you’re on the right path.

Be thankful that you’ve got this self-awareness, and that along with it, you’ve got the willingness to change. The fact that you’re reading this says a lot about you: you’re someone who cares about your health and who knows that a few lifestyle tweaks are enough to pay dividends for years to com.

What are you thankful for?

Try to find just five minutes this week (maybe during a dull meeting, in your lunch hour, or on a coffee break) to scribble a list of things you’re thankful for. Make sure you include at least one thing about your body, at least one thing about your eating habits, and at least one thing about your exercise. They don’t have to be big (“I’m thankful that I can now walk up a flight of stairs without being out of breath” is fine), but do try to find something for all these aspects of your healthy living journey.

If you’re celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, I hope you have a wonderful, joy-filled day. And you hereby have my permission to enjoy yourself without thinking once about calories – one day won’t ruin your diet (just get straight back on the wagon on Friday).

Don’t forget that you can get email updates from The Office Diet straight to your inbox. Just pop your email address in the box on the top right of this page.

Wish you didn’t have the day job? Convinced you’d do better if you could just get away from the pressures of work? Think again! You can make office life a positive influence when it comes to eating healthily and losing weight by joining – or starting – a workplace slimming group.

Here in the UK, Weight Watchers has announced a scheme to start clubs in workplaces, called, imaginatively enough “At Work”. (In the US, this has been going for a while.)

Advantages to an office diet group

The office can be full of temptations and pitfalls for the unwary dieter. Whether it’s the buffet at a meeting, the colleagues who (unwittingly or otherwise) sabotage your diet, or the effects of stress, it’s easy to pile on the pounds whilst at work.

Being part of a diet, health or weight-watching group, then, could make all the difference. Having the support and encouragement of workmates who share your goals can be a huge boost to motivation – very much needed when it comes to turning down a cookie during that mid-afternoon energy slump. And the occasional element of competition might not go amiss either; if you know you’re having a weigh-in on Monday, your office diet club might boost your self control even when you’re not at work over the weekend…

Some dieting groups like to use slimming as a way to donate to charity, perhaps with each member giving $1 or £1 each week that they lose weight, and paying a “penalty” of $2 or £2 for no loss or a gain.

As well as the support of colleagues, the plans used for work-based clubs are more likely to fit into your lifestyle — and the meetings can be easily arranged during a lunch-hour or straight after work.

The Weight Watchers AT WORK program is a group participation program designed to support the special weight loss needs and concerns of working people.
- UFC – Classes – Healthy Living

Weight Watchers at Work is a respected, popular, successful campus program. Hundreds of UVM employees have successfully lost weight and reached their goals since the Weight Watchers at Work started five years ago. The convenience of having the weekly meetings on campus has enabled busy employees to take advantage of this successful program.
- Weight Watchers at Work, The University of Vermont

(Possible) Disadvantages to an office diet group

So what are the drawbacks to dieting along with your office-mates? Usually, all will go well, but you might want to be prepared to deal with any problems that do arise. These might be:

• Some people getting too competitive and being insensitive towards members of the group who haven’t lose weight.
• Coworkers who are overweight but not in the group getting pressured to join. (They may have health issues that mean they can’t diet, or they may simply be happy with their size – either way, it’s not fair for an overzealous diet group to make them feel uncomfortable.)
• Dieting talk taking over the office, and boring everyone else to tears!

In general, so long as the group members are sensitive towards one another and to other colleagues, it’s likely that an office diet group will be a supportive, fun and motivational experience for all involved. Many office dieters have commented that sharing something personal like weight concerns is a good way to feel closer to colleagues and to get to “really know” people.

Talk your boss into it

Could you get your employer on board, either with Weight Watchers or with a similar club-based plan? The Daily Telegraph (a national UK newspaper) notes that:

With 18 million working days lost annually to weight-related illnesses, there is an incentive for companies to join the NHS in tackling the obesity crisis.

The work-based weight loss clubs which require a fee (such as Weight Watchers) are great ones to encourage your boss to pay part or all of the costs for! If you do decide to go for this route, try getting together a few like-minded colleagues who can help you persuade the management team that healthier, fitter employees are happier and harder-working.

And if you do start a group, make sure you get all the others to bookmark The Office Diet. You can even sign up to free RSS updates and/or email updates (pop your address in the top right corner).

Do you feel that you should do more exercise, but hate the thought of spending hours in the gym? Do you want to be more active, but worry that you’ll need to shed those extra pounds first in order to have a chance of keeping up?

If you’re avoiding exercise because you see it as an “all or nothing”, start thinking instead about ways to make your current lifestyle just a bit more active. You don’t need to go to the gym three times a week to see health benefits.

Just get moving

Cranky Fitness had a great guest post from Drew Harvey of Diet Tired a few days ago. Drew wrote:

What constitutes the best form of exercise for weight loss? Here is a shocker: anything that gets you moving on a regular, preferably daily, basis.

Although, as Drew points out, weight loss does depend on calories in being less than calories out, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the best sort of exercise is the one that burns the most calories. After all, what do you think will have more benefits for your body in the long run: six months’ worth of daily half-hour walks, or two weeks of daily gym sessions followed by five and a half months where you’ve been completely put off exercising?

Something which “gets you moving on a regular, preferably daily, basis” is something that fits easily around the rest of your life. I’m a big fan of:

• Having an active commute (even if the only way to do that is to get off the bus a couple of stops early, or to park your car further from work).
• Escaping from the office for your full lunch hour, and enjoying a relaxing walk – or working off some energy with a quick jog, cycle ride or gym session
• Making activity something fun that involves friends or family members.

Exercise boosts willpower

It can be depressing to watch the numbers slowly tick round on the calorie-counter at the gym or on your heart rate monitor. When I’ve been sweating away from thirty minutes, it’s galling to be told I’ve only burnt as many calories as there are in a Wispa (one of my favourite types of chocolate bar…)

However, I know that exercise for me isn’t just about the calories I burn – it’s also about the calories I don’t eat. As Drew writes:

It is a well known fact that people eat healthier on days that they are active. By simply being active and consequently feeling good about yourself, you decrease your daily calorie intake through better food choices.

I’ve definitely seen the truth of this in my own attempts to live healthily. When I go to the gym, take a long walk, or commute by bike, I’m much more ready to resist that cookie or slice of cake – because I don’t want to undo all my hard work. And if I’m exercising, I know that I need to eat extra “good” food (protein, unrefined carbs) for sustained energy during my workout, instead of skimping on lunch then wasting calories on chocolate.

How will you get active?

Try to find some way of being active every day – even if it’s just a half-hour stroll after dinner, or a quick power walk during your lunch hour. You might find some of these articles useful for further inspiration:

• Exercising: Before and after work
• Exercising: In your lunch hour
• Five ways to find ten minutes to exercise
• Five reasons to walk more
• Exercise: Getting started, staying motivated, seeing improvements

As regular readers of The Office Diet will know, I’m a big advocate of food diaries – keeping a record of what you eat.

Something I’ve been thinking about over the past week is this post from You On A Diet: Lose Weight By Logging. Whenever I’ve successfully dieted, I’ve done it by writing down what I eat, and the calories. However, as I’m sure many of you will have found, weighing foods and working out calories can be a pain – especially when you’re busy.

Plus, if your goal is to eat more healthily – not necessarily to lose weight – then tracking calories is often unnecessary, and can lead you to concentrate too much on a number than on getting a balanced diet.

Just log what you eat … and lose weight?

You On A Diet explained that:

It started with a group of researchers who were going to conduct a study on a new diet plan. The first instruction they gave the participants was to keep a detailed food journal. The point was to gather information in order to have a good idea of what people were eating on their usual routine, then see what was going to have to change. But the subjects came back in two weeks and surprised the team: they had already lost weight!

I can definitely echo this in my own experience: writing things down invariably makes me think twice about having a second cookie or an unnecessary snack. I don’t need to make any efforts to deliberately restrict my food intake, and I certainly don’t go hungry – but I do find myself making more sensible choices.

For the past week, I’ve been logging everything I eat, with some vague health goals in mind (“eating at least five fruit and veg a day” , “drinking less alcohol” and “cutting down on sugar”). I found that:

• I ate about the same amount, but made healthier choices. Rather than having a small sandwich and some chocolate at lunch time, I’d have a larger sandwich and skip the chocolate!
• On days when I was out or busy, I made the effort to eat enough fruit and veg.
• My chocoholic tendencies were noticeably diminished!

I’ve lost about half a pound, too, which is pretty good for me (I’m five foot two, and well within my “healthy” weight range, so I don’t tend to lose weight easily.)

Do try this at home

If you’ve been avoiding keeping a food diary because you can’t cope with all the faff of weighing things, counting calories and guesstimating restaurant meals – just keep a very simple log. Write down everything you eat, with portion sizes like “2 thick slices of bread” or “a small side salad”, rather than getting obsessive about grams and calories. You’ll almost certainly find that keeping the log vastly reduces your snacking urges, and helps you to concentrate on healthy choices.

It might also help to set specific goals or targets. Some great ones are:

• Five fruit and veg each day
• Six glasses of water per day
• Reducing caffeine intake
• Reducing alcohol intake
• Cutting down on sugary snacks
• Only having certain foods (for me, chocolate!) on certain days

Check out one of my early posts on The Office Diet where you can download several different types of food diary template – the “Food and mood” one is particularly useful if you’re an emotional eater, as you can jot down notes on how you were feeling during the day.

Snacks are the downfall of many dieters. You plan healthy meals, you eat healthy meals … but you find yourself nibbling in between. That’s fine when the nibbles are fresh fruit and vegetables, but when you’re eating cookies, cake and chips, you’ll be getting all the nutritional baddies (saturated fat, refined sugar) with precious few goodies like vitamins, minerals, fibre…

So how can you distract yourself from the “bad” sort of snacking? Here’s what to do when the cookie jar is calling your name:

If you’re genuinely hungry, eat something healthy

Don’t suffer through hunger pangs when you’re trying to lose weight. If your stomach is rumbling, have a healthy snack. Fruit, crispbreads, a small sandwich, or even a handful of mixed dried fruit and nuts (go easy on this, though) are great options.

Not eating when you’re hungry can eventually lead your body into “starvation mode”, where it clings to fat as stubbornly as possible. And it can also lead you to binging when you finally do eat, because you’re so ravenous.

Get busy – race through your to-do list

If you’re not hungry, chances are you’re thinking about snacking because you’re bored. Most office-workers inevitably have the occasional time when the clock seems to be dragging v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y through the day.

Even if there’s nothing urgent in your in-tray, make a list of all those little nagging jobs you want to get done – then see how fast you can get through them! Set a timer, and challenge yourself.

Go for a walk

Sometimes, the urge to snack is a passing craving for some particular item. If you feel you really must have chocolate, or chips, or whatever your snack-food vice is, then go for a half-hour walk. By the time you’re back, you’ll probably have lost interest in the snack.

Of course, unless you have a very accommodating boss, it may not be possible to wander off for half-an-hour whenever the urge to snack arises. Instead, take a five minute break to walk to the water cooler, or spend some time making phone calls (you won’t want to eat and talk on the phone at the same time, so this is a good way to beat those cravings.)

Further reading

That “snacky mood” can be hard to beat, so here’s some more articles on The Office Diet which might help you conquer it:

• Five great tricks for the healthy office worker’s mind – learn about the “I’ll just…” tricks. These aren’t just for snacking, they’re also for general peace of mind in the office.
• Stop workplace boredom and stress from ruining your diet – being bored, or being stressed, can lead to unnecessary snacking on unhealthy foods.
• Having a perfect dieting day, every day – don’t ruin your day part-way by succumbing to snacks – and don’t let it all go pear-shaped after dinner, either!

For more tips, tricks and advice, make sure you’re getting free updates from The Office Diet – grab the RSS feed, or pop your email address into the box on the top right of this page to get each new post straight to your inbox.

If you can put off a habit change / life change until a new year rolls around, that’s a sign that you just don’t have much motivation to make it happen. You may wish it would happen, but you don’t really want to do the work to get it (and that’s why you’ve been putting it off). You may have a whole new year ahead of you, but you’ve still got all the old desires that will keep you trapped in the place you’re at now.
- Why Your Resolutions Never Change Anything (And The One Thing That Does), Dave Navarro

The above quote really struck me earlier in this week, especially when I read a piece by one of my fellow writers on Diet-Blog, suggesting that would-be-dieters should start right now and get ahead for the new year.

Do you want to make changes in your life, but think it’s not worth getting started till January? An awful lot of people go on diets at the start of the year (just look at Google Trends for the word ‘diet’ to see the peak every January). And lots of us take up impressive fitness regimes, try to overhaul our lives, start hunting for a new job in earnest …

… and all too often, this motivation fizzles out by mid-January.

You don’t need to wait until some arbitrary date to begin working on your goals.

All you need to do is:

• Be clear about what it is you want to do (e.g. “eat five fruit and veg a day”)
• Work out all the reasons you want to make this change
• Write them down (you’ll be much more likely to succeed)
• Figure out the first step – make it a little bit challenging, but not too daunting
• Get started!

Not feeling motivated enough? Here are a few popular health/fitness related resolutions, and reasons to start on them today.

• Losing weight – if you’re overweight, you could easily be 6lbs lighter by Christmas. You’ll have more energy, you’ll feel great about yourself, and you won’t be so tempted to have a complete pig-out at every Christmas party.
• Eating more healthily – you’ll see the benefits every day with increased energy and zest for life, if you make an effort to cut out high-fat, high-sugar foods. And with Christmas just around the corner, you’ll want all the energy you can get…
• Exercising regularly – why not get into good habits now? If you feel a bit down during the dark winter months, exercise is a great way to lift your mood. Regular exercise is even prescribed as a treatment for mild-moderate depression.
• Quitting smoking – put the money you’re saving in a jar, and spend it in the January sales on a fantastic outfit, or that new gadget you wish you could afford. And, of course, you’ll be enjoying the benefits of clearer lungs long before Christmas begins.So what are you waiting for? Get ahead of the game, and start your New Years’ resolution today!If you want to know a bit more about me and about why I started The Office Diet, you might like to read an interview with me on the “Ditch Diets, Live Light” site.