Here we are again, another birthday and another day to reflect upon my life. I have to admit that I am one of those people who still enjoy celebrating my birthday and last year I even threw myself a party. There are those who say that once the children come along, there is no need to celebrate your own birthday but I disagree. I believe that there is an even greater need to enjoy the day because you spend the whole year doing everything for others that it is nice to have one day when you can be as selfish as you wish to.

On the whole I am content with my lot in life, even happy with a lot of things. Like everybody else, there are things which I am not happy about, but I have a lot to be thankful for and on this day I will be counting my blessings. The first thing that I have to say is that I have a loving partner, beautiful children and a supportive family. These are enough to be thankful for but I have to add that I also enjoy good health and a good standard of living as well as being respected. There are always things which you can find to complain about, but I have realised that you should not moan about things which you cannot change, and never complain about things which you can change but do not.

The only thing that I have decided today is that I am going to start a routine which will enable me to lose weight and tone up before my next birthday. I know that this sounds familiar and I will own up to the fact that I have tried to do this before, but this time I have been given an added incentive. Somebody I love very much told me that even if I did not lose weight for myself, I should do it because there are so many illnesses attached to being over weight and that she did not want to lose me just yet.

So I am determined to lose the excess weight in order to improve my health and appearance and I know that it will not be easy. There are many slimming treatments around but the best way to do it is through sensible eating and exercise. It is really quite simple, you need to use more calories than you consume and the weight will start to fall off as long as you continue.

However these days there are alternative methods to losing weight and a lot of people are turning to anti aging treatment and cosmetic surgery when they find that conventional methods are not enough. Some of these include liposuction, which means having the fat sucked out of you by machines and then there are the other procedures such as skin tightening where excess folds of skin are removed and the body is shaped to look sleeker and firmer.

Along with ninety per cent of the women in this country I always seem to express the desire to lose some weight, at least a couple of times each week and a lot more than that when it comes around to the festive season or the wedding season. If you talk to ten women at any given time you will find that eight of them will be on a diet and the other two will say that they are thinking about trying to lose a little weight. It seems that even men are showing more concern about their weight and are being more careful about what they eat. They are even turning to slimming treatments and aesthetic medicine, previously the domain of women.

The reason for this obsession is often said to lie with the pressures that women face to conform to the ideal body image that is so popular within the media, that all women should be no larger than a size 8, when the reality is that the majority of women are a size 12-14. Young girls are being constantly bombarded with images of skinny models and this then seems like the normal body shape that all women should have. Some are lucky enough to have the good sense not to buckle under the pressure and others are lucky enough to have the perfect body shape anyway, but for the majority, it is an uphill struggle trying to maintain a perfect figure.

When a woman has tried to lose weight, and failed for whatever the reason, by the use of controlling her diet and exercising, she then often decides to resort to cosmetic surgery. This could take the form of a variety of procedures including body contouring, liposuction and other slimming treatments. There was a time when a person who had been “under the knife” (another term for cosmetic surgery) did not broadcast it to the world at large and stayed in hiding until everything was back to normal. However, in this day and age, people are proud to be able to say that they have had cosmetic surgery and will own up to almost any procedure.

There are clinics which offer to do procedures like a tummy tuck or skin tightening during your lunch hour and as for simple Botox and mini- facelifts, well they are just like visiting the dentist these days and probably a lot less stressful and painful! The fact remains that the best way to lose weight is through controlling your calories and sensible eating habits combined with an active lifestyle with plenty of exercise. Weight loss needs to be slow and steady in order for the results to be long term, as crash dieting will only lead to problems.

If you find that you do wish to use the aid of anti aging treatment, make sure that you do some research and find a reputable cosmetic surgery clinic with fully trained and qualified personnel and that they offer after care facilities.

I once saw a picture in a magazine of Joan Collins, which showed her looking as well turned out as usual and the story was about the fact that she looked so much younger than her actual years. She did look good and the photos had shown her in a flattering light. However, the one thing which had gone unnoticed was the fact that her hands were prominently displayed in one of the pictures. Not that there is anything wrong with her hands, but the fact remained that they did not match up to the rest of the image which was created around her.

Her hands were wrinkled and the veins were prominent. No matter how much make up and other camouflage techniques are used on the face and body, the hands will always show your age. There is not a lot that you can do hide them and even make up will just cover them up to an extent. So when you are considering lying about your age, remember that your hands will tell the truth. There are some procedures which can be used to make your hands look plumper and less wrinkled but these are only temporary.

When it comes to showing our age, we always try to cover up the evidence. It used to be that you never asked a lady her age, but these days there are men who will also be offended if you ask them how old they are. It seems that we all wish to appear younger than we really are and there are some people who will go to extreme lengths to deny the fact that they are no longer spring chickens.

I have always liked the saying that the face you have in your twenties is the face you have been given, but the face that you have in your forties is the face that you deserve. This just means that if you look after your health and take care of your appearance with a healthy diet and regular exercise, you will look better as you get older. There are many ways of looking younger than we are but the trend these days is to get cosmetic surgery done, if you can afford it, and if you are brave enough. A lot of the processes involved with cosmetic surgery are painful and can take a few days to heal from.

When it comes to your face, the most popular anti-aging treatment as far as cosmetic surgery is concerned, is the breast augmentation. This will make you look immediately younger since the facelift will re-define your features and make your bone structure more prominent. A nose surgery used to something which was the domain of Hollywood celebrities but now it is so common that is discussed at dinner tables and is something which is de rigour among anyone who is in the public eye. Even normal people often go for a little nip and tuck session to look younger.

We all know that it is inevitable that we are growing to grow old, in fact that we are growing older all the time. That is off course if you do not die young, which is quite likely these days due to the unhealthy lifestyle that a lot of people are leading. If we do manage to get to the old age stage, it would be nice if we could live with dignity and enjoy all our faculties. One way to do this is to try and prepare while we are still young.

This is mainly a matter of looking after our health, mind and finances. The finances part is the way that we invest our savings and the spending habits we develop. We need to realise that we could live for many years after we retire and that we need to be able to support ourselves at a comfortable level. Also, we will need to spend a lot more on healthcare and need to budget for emergencies too. For the mind we need to try and keep it alert and active and there are certain foods which do encourage thought processes and help the memory.

As for the body, there are a few things that we can do which will help us to be healthier as we get older. The first thing is that we need to try and keep our weight down as there are a lot of illness associated with being overweight, such as diabetes and heart disease. We need to try and keep ourselves active so that our joints stay supple and we do not have difficulty in moving around. Also, the more active we stay, the more our bodies will function better.

When it comes to our diet, we need to make sure that we eat a variety of foods and that we have something from each of the food groups. There are certain foods which will ensure that our bodies remain healthier and if we cannot manage to eat these foods, and then we should make sure that we take vitamins and supplements to try and ensure that we get all the vital nutrients.

These precautions cannot guarantee that we will not have any problems as we get older, but they will act as an anti aging treatment to some extent. If you keep your weight down and stay active then you will hopefully not need to have varicose and spider veins treatment as you get older.

Even the appearance of our faces can be affected by the way that we live. You will notice that a person who is slim and active looks younger than one who is overweight. You will have less need to resort to cosmetic surgery for a facelift if you try and look after your skin and have a healthy lifestyle. These things all seem like such obvious measures, but the problem is that we do not give them importance until it’s too late.

The first time I heard this phrase, I did not have a clue as to what it meant. It was used in reference to a teacher at my high school and it was only later that I understood the negative connotations attached to the phrase. It is used to describe any woman who is deemed to be inappropriately dressed for her age, and who is trying unsuccessfully to appear younger than she is. It is not a very nice thing to say about somebody but some women do seem to invite derision with the way that they portray themselves.

There are some people who will disagree with me and say that a woman should be able to wear whatever she wishes to without being ridiculed. They will say that dress and make up are a matter of personal choice and that it is nobody’s business how a woman chooses to appear.

On the other hand, there are those people who will say that once a woman reaches or passes a certain age, she should alter her dress and make up style to fit in with her age. That she should wear clothing which is suitable for a woman of her age group and that her make up should be more subtle and discreet than that of a younger woman.

The same arguments are also applied when we are talking about behaviour and deportment, that a woman, and to some extent, a man too, should act according to their age and position in life. There was a book I saw a few years ago called something along the lines of “When I Am An Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple”, and in it was a list of all the fun and interesting things which this lady was looking forward to doing in her old age.

These days there are a lot of pressures on men and women to try and look as young as possible, for as long as possible. We are not only talking about people in the public eye or in jobs such as modelling, but the average person on the street and holding down a normal job. Everybody likes to be told that they look good for their age, and we all like it when we tell someone our age and they say that we look younger than we are. In fact, thanks to modern cosmetic surgery procedures, people can look so much younger than their actual years.

Cosmetic surgery alone is not sufficient to be able to mask your age; you need to be aware of other factors such as genes and lifestyle. However, there are a few procedures which can be counted as a reliable anti aging treatment and these include things such as skin tighteningand special skincare treatment. All of these can help to make you look younger for a while but you need to be careful that you do not go overboard and have all the treatments done at once.