Live Well, Live Slim

Again and again we go on a diet, along with friends or alone. That cannot be the right way to lose weight, whatever the diets offer or promise.

Limiting your meals, eating too little to bring the feeling of hunger into your life, while spending money on an expensive diet, that cannot be the right answer, can it?

What should you do to get leaner and stay slim? What is the secret that those people know who always keep the same weight? That secret is not so difficult to discover, there is no need to search the internet for more diets.

The secret to become and stay slim is not to start a diet or lose weight at the moment you find that you have become too fat. The secret is your lifestyle, as well as your attitude to life.

There are a few things you can do to make your life healthier and keep slim

• Start by not going to the supermarket anymore, but instead buy your meat at the butcher's, your bread at the baker's and your vegetables at the greengrocer's. Apart from a number of different advantages that will improve your life, this will save you money. You're going to walk more, but in a natural way because you have to go to three or four stores, instead of going to one supermarket in your car. Of course you should buy the groceries on foot!

Your purchases will be fresher because you can see what you are buying without having to look through shiny cellophane. At the greengrocer's and the butcher's you can buy directly. That will make it easier to watch out for the quantity you are buying, and you will end up buying less of everything.

• After you have done this for a while you can gradually change your groceries. A few things will stand out, at the butcher and greengrocer you can actually not buy spaghetti or macaroni. Your shopping list can change even more by having a look at what you buy. You will end up consuming less carbohydrates and more meat and vegetables.

Shopping at the bakery has to change as well. Fresh white bread is out of the question, and no more factory bread. Find a bakery that still sells home-baked bread and your bread will be fresher than at the supermarket. Multigrain bread, or rye bread for example is much healthier than white bread. It contains a lot of fibers that are essential for the digestion of your food.

Does your baker not the have bread for your diet, please ask for it. It is possible that an artisan baker for the next morning will bake diet bread especially for you for the next morning, and then place a few more in his store to see how the market is.

• That brings me to the next trick that you should use. Tell the people around you what you are doing. Let your partner know, let your family know that you do not want to follow a diet anymore but want to start living a new lifestyle. This guarantees that you get will allies instead of uninterested responses like, "oh, one more new diet." Together with your family, the changes will more easily find their place in your life and in that of the whole family.

Also tell people at work and of course the butcher, the baker and the greengrocer. They are professionals with a lot more knowledge about their products than you have. They can help you find other products and resources to adapt your life. Fruit drinks for example from the greengrocer, or organic meat at the butcher's.

Because you're eating fresh produce, walking more, and you're more concerned with your health, you will begin to notice that there are some changes. Losing weight is not easy, but it will be less difficult this way. More vitamins, more fiber and healthy proteins from fresh produce means that your weight will drop slowly.

The next change in your life should form around more exercise. A simple way to include exercise is to go on with what you are already doing. Go for another walk after dinner, with the dog for example. Or take your kids to their sports club and ask if there are programs to help you, and others, with weight loss. Swimming is a great sport to make your body stronger and healthier and keep it that way, but that is only one example.