If you are the type of person who has never had to try and lose weight, then you will not be able to understand the kind of desperation that some people feel when they think about losing weight. Some people are lucky enough to be able to eat whatever they wish to and not have it appear on their bodies. These people are in the minority and for most of us; it seems that we only have to partake in the slightest indulgence for it to show immediately.

Gaining weight is very easy to do and we need to be careful about this from an early age. When we are children, our eating and exercise is controlled in part by our parents and it is their responsibility to teach us healthy eating habits. As we gain more independence and have access to more junk food and unhealthy snacks, we tend to develop bad eating habits. It is at this stage that a lot of us will start to gain weight and if we are not monitored by parents or other people, the problem can get out of hand.

The weight gain is not an instant thing and it creeps up on you slowly, sometimes so slowly that you do not even notice it until it is too late. At this point you need to take action in order to try and lose the extra pounds which have piled on. This can be the start of a life long struggle for some people, who will find that their weight will go up and down at different times in their lives, and it can often be a source of frustration and despair for those who struggle with controlling it.

This is when we will start to try different ways of losing weight. At the beginning we will try and control our diet and ensure that we only eat healthy things which will not cause us to gain any more weight. Then we will start to cut down on the amount that we eat, even of the healthy things, if we do not see results. Along with this we will start up an exercise regime and try to stick to it. The next stage is to get obsessed with trying to lose weight and this will lead on to the final step which is the road of cosmetic surgery, in various different procedures.

The term shedding a few pounds refers to losing a little weight but at this stage we are also talking about losing the financial pounds, since most cosmetic surgery procedures have to be paid for privately. The most common procedures for losing weight and looking slimmer are the gastric band surgeries, liposuction and the tummy tuck. All of these come under the broader heading of body contouring and this is just a fancy way of saying re-shaping your body to the way you wish it to appear. All of these procedures are now very popular worldwide.

We have always believed that when we are children we can eat whatever we want to and not to have to worry about getting fat. Well this is only true to an extent. A child can eat a lot more of the bad things before putting on weight, but only if these are tempered with an active lifestyle. If you let a child have fast food, sweets and fizzy drinks every day, and they do not run around and burn it off, then you will be faced with an overweight child, as well as one with rotting teeth.

There is a lot of child obesity in the western world and the predictions for the health of the new generation of children are not good ones. Many parents will brush away concerns with the attitude that the children will be fine when they grow older, but by then it is often too late. A child needs to learn healthy eating habits at an early age and be taught to avoid junk food as much as possible.

I have three children and each of them have gone through various stages of changing eating habits. When they were all young, it was a battle to get them to eat as the bottle was an easier option. Then it was because they were developing their tastes and didn’t like everything at some point. As they got older things got easier as they started to appreciate different food types and by the time adolescence caught up, they were conscious of their diet and body shape.

Even now, I have to admit that I am proud to say, they do not have a lot of fast food, sugary drinks and other items on the list of unhealthy foods. I have always made sure that they know what constitutes a healthy meal and about why should eat at the right times. These things together are important so that the child grows up learning to make the healthy choice and knows that eating certain foods at certain times is better than eating them at others.

Breakfast should never be skipped and this is a firm rule in my household. So far I have been lucky that they all have the weights in the normal range and that they are fit and active. I have seen the many teenagers who want to have cosmetic surgery procedures such as liposuction. Any sensible parent would put their foot down and say no, but this is considered to be a personal choice.

I have seen the way that some people will rely on cosmetic surgery to fix small problems on a regular basis. These people will allow themselves to put on weight and then go under the knife to correct the problem. This is why procedures such as liposuction, body contouring and even a tummy tuck are becoming so popular. This is seen as the quick and easy way to look good and hence to feel good about yourself.

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.

When I was a student in college, I had to frequently use the public library for research purposes (and off course as a meeting place for friends, but let’s keep that as a separate issue shall we?!). I noticed that there was a whole section of the library which was devoted to romantic novels and there were so many different types of these novels. There were two whole bookcases just filled with Mills and Boon novels.

Within these bookcases there were further divisions among the types of romance. There were the standard novels which were set in the modern world, historical novels set at some point in history, but usually in a century which was not too far distant and where the fashion was for the women to wear corsets and voluminous dresses with lots of buttons and petticoats! Then there were the medical novels which were set in hospitals either in large cities or in some deserted outpost. There were also the ones which tried to combine the old Wild West with the modern idea of romance.

The one thing that you could be sure of was that they would all follow a standard pattern and that the end would be totally predictable, in fact for many of them you could know the whole story just from reading the blurb at the back. I got into the habit of reading these novels and found that some were better written than others and soon learned which authors’ style I liked. Some of them were quite funny and all were very light and easy reading that you could do while having lunch at your desk, or sitting on the bus to and from work.

Another thing that always stuck me was the way that all the heroes and heroines were described in the same way. The women were all tall, slim but voluptuous and with long legs. They all had shining flowing locks of hair and eyes that would change colour depending on their moods. They all had pert noses, full lips and wonderful skin. It is no wonder that the modern woman feels that she needs to have cosmetic surgery in order to live up to the ideal of beauty that she has grown up with, and yes most women will have read a few Mills and Boon books in their life. The heroines in these novels would never have needed to have a tummy tuck or liposuction.

As for the men in these books, they were all fine specimens of manhood, with broad shoulders, narrow hips and glossy thick hair which was always slightly long. The eyes were also piercing and the nose always proud. The lips were full (and without Botox and fillers and the skin was tanned and rippling with muscles, which he maintained without working out. Yeah right! How many men do you know who match up to this description, at least outside of the gym and the movies!

We live in an age where we are all used to instant gratification and quick fixes. We find that if we have to wait for something we lose our tempers and start to show our impatience. Some people never manage to find the patience which is required to live a serene life and while this attitude of give it to me now can be useful in some cases, a lot of the time you will find that it can lead to problems.

No matter what the object is that you are searching for, from having your car washed, to trying to make money it seems that we all belief that we are far too busy to stand around and wait for something, even when we know that the results will be worth it. It is not just adults who exhibit such impatient behaviour but even toddlers will no longer wait quietly for their turn to use the swings or the slide at their local park.

I have a confession to make in that I am also a very impatient person and do not like to be kept waiting but I have learnt to try and curb this attitude ever since a funny but eye-opening incident with one of my children at a local play group. My middle child is a lot like me and wants everything done her way although she has been taught that she must be polite at all times. One day she was playing on the slide when she was about 18 months old and I was watching her from the other side of the room. As she was playing a little boy pushed in front of her and climbed to the top of the slide. She went behind him and was obviously trying to be patient. When he sat there for a few moments not listening to her to go down the slide, she bit him on the shoulder!

I often tell her about this when she gets impatient and we have a laugh since she has never done anything like this again. I also remember this as I am struggling in the gym whilst trying to lose those last few pounds and the way that I get so impatient. I read up about some other methods to get the shape that I want but I have heard so many horror stories that I will not shoes the route of liposuctionfor body contouring until I have had a personal recommendation from someone.

When traditional slimming treatments do not work, having cosmetic surgery to remove the fat from stubborn areas sounds tempting in order to get the body in proportion. A qualified surgeon will know not to remove too much body fat in one session as this will lead to unsightly dents in the skin as well as other complications. Liposuction is a common procedure which will give you quick results and make you look better and feel more confident.