To lose weight requires motivation and that can be harder to find than diet books or exercise machines. Experts suggest setting goals and rewarding yourself when you reach those goals. Other suggestions include going to exercise classes, working out with a partner and keeping an exercise log. Although one exercise guru suggested putting a before picture on the refrigerator, I think this quote from Margaret Thatcher would be more effective. "You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it". That's how England's prime minister dealt with the weight on her shoulders and it should work just as well for other parts of the body.



Sixty-four percent of American bodies are overweight and the other thirty-four percent think they know what to do about it. One blogger suggested overweight people should pay more for gas because extra pounds require more gas to move them. It seems the blogger didn't understand that requiring more gas requires more to be purchased and thus overweight people already pay more for gas. It seems many solutions for weight problems come from lightweights.

Another solution may be grapefruit. According to a recent study, eating grapefruit before each meal will make it easier to lose weight. In the study ninety-one obese patients added grapefruit to their regular diets. This resulted in an average loss of four pounds in twelve weeks. The researchers attributed this to grapefruit having compounds that improve insulin resistance and that facilitate fat loss. When eight ounces of unsweetened grapefruit juice were substituted for the fruit, the average loss was three pounds in twelve weeks. If gin were added to the before-dinner grapefruit juice - making a greyhound cocktail - the loss would undoubtedly be less; but would we care as much?

Experts at the University of South Carolina say we should care about walking. They say walking an easy three miles per hour - which is twenty minutes per mile - for thirty minutes five times a week provides enough exercise to protect us cardiovascularly, as well as to increase our longevity. For those of us who don't think we have an extra thirty minutes in our day, there's plan B. The same results can be achieved by splitting the time into smaller segments - as long as each segment is at least ten minutes. Not being able to find three, ten-minute segments in our day would itself be a weighty problem.