Of course, the health benefits of regular exercise (quite aside from losing weight) are undisputed. Exercise makes you healthier, fitter, gives you more energy and helps your mood.

But given that many women over 40 primarily see a personal trainer for weight control, it can still be a source of frustration for trainer and client alike when the weight is not shifting.

Looking at it from each person’s point of view:

The client:

“I have been sweating it out for a year now with this trainer, and I feel so much better for it. But I haven’t lost a pound of weight. What am I doing wrong?”

The trainer:

“I have really helped this client to get fitter and healthier. But I only see her twice a week. I have no control over the other 166 hours in her week. And the problem is her diet. I’ve made some recommendations, but nothing really seems to work.”

This situation is very common. You can’t fault the client, because they have been trying their best. And you can’t fault the personal trainer. They have certainly improved the client’s health and fitness but this has just not translated into weight loss.

So what’s the problem here? And more importantly, what’s the solution?

The underlying problem is that for women over 40, exercise ALONE is not enough to cause weight loss. This is not true for men. And it’s less true for women under 40. But if you ask most women over 40, they will tell similar stories of exercise programmes that no longer delivered the goods when it came to weight loss.

So ultimately, for a woman over 40 to lose weight she has to cut down what she eats.

So what’s needed is advice about changing eating behaviours that takes the smallest amount of time out of a training session and yet is most likely to be stuck with, by the client.

There’s no easy solution to this problem, but for trainers (and their clients) grappling with this, here are four recommendations.

1. Get the client to keep a food diary.

I won’t see a client unless they keep a food diary. Clients who keep food diaries lose more weight than clients who don’t. It’s as simple as that. Food diaries are a form of self-monitoring, and they work in a couple of ways. First of all, they demonstrate to the client and the trainer, exactly where things are going wrong.

I have had so many clients tell me “I eat very little and still gain weight” and yet when we look at their food diaries, it becomes clear where they are going wrong. It’s an invaluable source of information.

Food diaries also help to shape decisions. As one client said to me: “It’s harder to have the fifth canape if I know I have to write it down.”

2. Make small changes.

Rather than overhauling a client’s food diary, get them to make small changes.

For example, cutting back on second servings, reducing portion sizes or changing one snack from high calorie to lower calorie. These are small changes that might not seem like much on their own, but when you add in a few of them over an extended period of time, you can get amazing results. There are literally hundreds of variants of changes that you can make.

3. Keep checking in on the changes that they make.

It’s no good advising something and not checking up on it. Accountability makes a big difference when it comes to making changes stick. Spend a few minutes each session, looking at a client’s food diary, and following up on the changes that they have made.

4. Make sure all the changes they make are sustainable.

It’s easy to recommend different actions for a client. And it might be easy for a client to stick with these changes for a week, or even a few weeks. But a few weeks is not enough. The key to lasting weight loss is lifestyle change.

And for this, the client needs to be making changes that they are happy to make for the rest of their life. Always think long-term.

Keep going

Of course, this is just the beginning. Clients need to be guided through these changes, step by step, each week. Losing weight is not a project. It’s not a short-term activity. It’s adopting a new way of life, which takes time.

Exercise and physical activity are crucial for long-term health. But also finding practical ways to change eating behaviour is a vital ingredient in losing weight.

Dr. Khandee Ahnaimugan (Dr. K) is a medical doctor, weight loss expert and author of the best-selling book, “Slim and Healthy without Dieting”. He provides individual consulting programmes for people wanting to lose weight without dieting. Try his 7 Day “How to Lose Weight without Dieting” Email Course for FREE at www.doctorkweightloss.com

Here is a question I was recently asked:

“I am 53 and have been dieting since I was 14 I am bigger now than I have ever been and yet I watch what I eat and I exercise twice a week. Why is this?”

Is there anything more frustrating than feeling like you’re doing all the right things and still not getting anywhere? And yet the situation described in this situation is so common, especially for women over 50. How can it be?

To read the rest of the article click here.

Dr. Khandee Ahnaimugan (Dr. K) is a medical doctor, weight loss expert and author of the best-selling book, “Slim and Healthy without Dieting”. He provides individual consulting programmes for people wanting to lose weight without dieting. Try his 7 Day “How to Lose Weight without Dieting” Email Course for FREE at www.doctorkweightloss.com

“I am trying to lose weight by cutting down and thinking about what I eat. However, I don’t know what to do when I feel hungry.

I know you’re going to say ‘eat something’. However, if I choose the sensible option, I’m not satisfied and if I choose something else, I either end up not losing any weight or putting some on! What’s the solution?”

What should you do when you’re trying to lose weight, and you feel hungry? This is a common situation that many people come across. And working out a good response to hunger is crucial to successful weight loss.

Here are a few things I would suggest:

1. Hunger can be from cutting meals too much.

In the question above, the person says that the hunger they feel is difficult to satisfy. What can often happen is that people cut back their meals too much and then feel extra hungry in between.

This is really a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. You think you’re doing something really virtuous by cutting back what you eat at mealtimes, but actually you’re making yourself too hungry between meals.

And what happens in these scenarios is that you end up “chasing the hunger”.

Most of us have been in this situation, where we end up having one snack after another trying to “scratch the itch”. We end up eating more calories in snacks than we would have had, if we’d just had a more substantial meal.

2. There is no “one-size-fits-all” answer to dealing with hunger.

Hunger is not always the same. Even for the same person! Your hunger at 11am is different from your hunger at 5pm which is also different to the hunger you feel at 11pm.

You’ll know that what you need to satisfy your hunger at 11am is quite different to what you would choose to satisfy your hunger at 11pm.

And so, this requires trying different things and finding the best snack response. What is the best response? The snack that gives you the most satisfaction of hunger for the fewest calories.

3. Thirst vs Hunger

Always check that what you’re feeling is definitely hunger. A common tip is when you feel hungry, have some water, because sometimes you may mistake thirst for hunger. Leave a few minutes after drinking water to see if it has satisfied the feeling.

4. Hunger Isn’t an Emergency

If you had half an hour before your next meal and you felt hungry, what would you do? For some people, being hungry is the worst thing that can happen. It’s a disaster and they have to do something about it immediately. It’s no coincidence that these people tend to be overweight.

If you can learn to tolerate small periods of hunger, knowing that you’ll be eating very soon, you will prevent yourself from indulging in unnecessary snacks.

A Crucial Skill

Ultimately learning to cope with hunger is a crucial part of becoming slim and healthy without dieting. This means understanding your particular mindset and habits around hunger and coming up with more useful ways to deal with it.

Dr. Khandee Ahnaimugan (Dr. K) is a medical doctor, weight loss expert and author of the best-selling book, “Slim and Healthy without Dieting”. He provides individual consulting programmes for people wanting to lose weight without dieting. Try his 7 Day “How to Lose Weight without Dieting” Email Course for FREE at www.doctorkweightloss.com

This is a very common situation. A question I often get asked is: “How do I stay ‘in the zone’ when I’m trying to lose weight?”

It’s an important question because it relates to what I call the “diet mentality,”which prevents people from losing weight successfully.

When most people go on diets, the changes they make are quite big. A diet requires you to overhaul your entire eating life, and do something completely different to what you normally do. Often these changes aren’t just drastic, they can also be unpleasant.

Think of a recent diet you tried, and think about the planning and attention required. You may have had to prepare different meals for yourself and different meals for the rest of the family. You might have had to shop at different places for new foods. There might also have been a new exercise regimen that you have to fit into an already busy life.

It’s a lot of work! And it’s not easy to sustain.

As an example, imagine if you decided you were going to walk three miles in the morning before work every day.

That might be easy to do on a bright morning in the middle of summer, but it’s not so easy on a freezing day in winter. Other factors inhibit you, too: a bad night’s sleep, an early meeting at work, one of your children becomes ill. All of these things can so easily push you off course.

What this shows is that when most people try to lose weight or start a new exercise regimen, they make changes that are very fragile. When the changes are fragile, you’ve got to rely on everything going your way to succeed.

But that’s not a good long-term strategy.You’re setting yourself up for failure if everything needs to be perfect when you’re trying to lose weight.

The sad thing is that so many people try to lose weight this way that when things go wrong, they blame themselves. “Why can’t I just stick to things?” they ask. But that’s not the problem. The problem is setting yourself up for failure by establishing too-rigid rules.

So a good question to ask before you embark on any weight loss program is:

“Do I honestly believe I’ll be doing this in five years?”

In other words, do you think you can stick to the changes, or are you being unrealistically optimistic?

So, going back to our walking three miles in the morning example, ask yourself:

“Do I honestly believe I’ll still be walking three miles in the morning before work in five years?”

Sometimes, if you’re honest, you’ll realize you’re unlikely to stick to it for even five days!

You’ve got to make sure that whatever you’re doing, you’re going to stick with it in the long run. If you don’t think you can complete a task, then you’ve got to modify it to something you’ll stick to.

If you keep asking that question for every weight loss change you make, you’ll be much more likely to succeed.

We can deceive ourselves into thinking, “I’m sure I’ll be fine eating boiled vegetables for dinner for the rest of my life,” but you know that’s not going to happen. You have to be honest with yourself and make sure that whatever you do, you’re happy doing it for the long term.

Dr. Khandee Ahnaimugan (Dr. K) is a medical doctor, weight loss expert and author of the best-selling book, “Slim and Healthy without Dieting”. He provides individual consulting programmes for people wanting to lose weight without dieting. Try his 7 Day “How to Lose Weight without Dieting” Email Course for FREE at www.doctorkweightloss.com

You’re not alone. And in my experience, getting stressed about your weight loss is one of the biggest obstacles to success.

People who get stressed about their weight loss are much more likely to give up.

But when you think about it, it’s no surprise that people would associate a lot of stress with losing weight.

After all, for many of the clients I see, they have struggled with their weight for decades. And with a long history of failures behind them, it’s no wonder that even the thought of trying to lose weight fills them with dread.

But it’s more than that. We, as a society, are in the grips of a diet mentality. We believe that weight loss and dieting are the same thing. They’re not. But what it means is that people think:

1. Weight loss = deprivation
2. No pain, no gain
3. The quicker the better

Ask most people what things they associate with losing weight, it will most likely be deprivation, missing out on good times and spending long stretches of time feeling hungry while watching other family members eat heartily. In other words, weight loss is misery.

But more than the deprivation, is the overarching feeling that if you’re going to lose weight, it has to happen quickly. This sense of urgency coupled with unrealistic expectations means that when things don’t go to plan, it stresses us out.

So what’s the antidote to weight loss stress? Relax.

But to be more specific:

1. Abandon all deadlines

Don’t try and lose weight in a hurry. It will just make you do short-term things (like starving yourself) instead of long-term things that are sustainable. Don’t try and lose weight to a schedule. It can’t and wont’ happen.

I often say to clients “in a year’s time, you’re not going to remember if it took your four months or five months to lose your weight”, which is another way of saying, when you take the time pressure out of it, and think long-term, then the stress is off.

2. Enjoy life

Stopping all pleasurable activities like eating out or going on holiday (vacation) is a big mistake. And yet this is what many people do when they are trying to lose weight.

If you can’t do all these things while losing weight, then how likely are you going to be able to do these things once you’ve reached your ideal healthy weight?

If you make weight loss a fun-less experience, of course it’s going to create more tension and make you want to get it over and done with as quickly as possible.

3. Think long-term

Many people treat losing weight like it’s a project. But weight control is a way of life.

And so whichever ways you cut back what you’re eating or whichever changes you make to your exercise or activity regime, always make sure that the changes are ones that you’re willing to do for the rest of your life.

A Stress-free zone

Life can be stressful enough as it is, without adding to it by getting stressed about losing weight.

You should be more stressed when you’re doing nothing about your weight, than when you’re taking positive healthy action.

The best strategy is to remove the time pressure, abandon your expectations and always think of the long-term.

Remember: “If weight loss feels like a struggle, then you’re doing it wrong.”

Dr. Khandee Ahnaimugan (Dr. K) is a medical doctor, weight loss expert and author of the best-selling book, “Slim and Healthy without Dieting”. He provides individual consulting programmes for people wanting to lose weight without dieting. Try his 7 Day “How to Lose Weight without Dieting” Email Course for FREE at www.doctorkweightloss.com

The ‘diet mentality’ emphasises the ‘no pain- no gain’ approach to weight loss, which makes weight loss seem painful and intimidates many people. This stops them taking action.

This is so destructive because it means that people who could be taking action on their weight, don’t. Remember even losing 5% of your body weight can be beneficial for your health for people who are overweight or obese.

So rather than take the extreme, take-no-prisoners approach to weight loss, I always prefer that people stick with the basics. The truth is, you don’t need to traumatise yourself to lose weight. In fact you maximise your chances of success, when you make it as easy and pleasant as possible.

So here’s five things you can do right away to start losing weight.

1. Keep a food diary

This is one of the best strategies you can try. A food diary enhances your awareness of all the different food decisions you make each day. It’s best to write down in the food diary as soon as you eat something, or otherwise, if you wait till the end of the day, some things get forgotten (especially snacks). And even better is if you can get someone else to look at it.

2. Remove all unnecessary food from your environment

Got a packet of chocolates sitting on your desk at work? Get rid of it. Any food that is in your line of sight, either at work or at home is a threat. If it’s there it’s tempting. If it’s not there, you won’t even think about it.

3. Cut back portion sizes by 5-10%.

You don’t need to go overboard. Just make small changes. That’s the essence of a behavioural approach to weight loss. So rather than removing all food from your life, just make a small cut in portions. The difficult thing with this, is in the beginning it seems like it’s not enough. But trust me, it is enough. Over a few weeks, this alone will make a remarkable impact on your weight.

4. Remove one “bad” food from your life

Some people decide that when they want to lose weight that they’ll remove all the “bad” foods from their life. I don’t see any foods as “bad” per se. But some do have a “moreish” quality to them that makes them hard to resist once you start.

Identify one food that is like that for you, and stop eating it. You can still have all the other “bad” foods, but just avoid that one. It’s much easier to remove one particular food than all of them. And this alone will make a big difference.

5. Avoid thinking about weight loss

Make the above changes and try not to think about weight loss. Don’t second guess yourself. Just do the 4 things mentioned above, and go about your normal routine.

After a few weeks, weigh yourself. You will be amazed at what has happened. You will have lost weight. When you take out obsessive worries about whether this is working or not, and just stick with small changes, you will be absolutely amazed with what you can accomplish.

It’s Simple But Could It Work For Me?

These five steps might seem overly simple. You might feel tempted to think that they couldn’t possibly be a solution to your particular situation.

But the simplicity of this approach is its strength. It’s easy to apply. It’s much easier to stick with than your average diet. Give it a try and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Dr. Khandee Ahnaimugan (Dr. K) is a medical doctor, weight loss expert and author of the best-selling book, “Slim and Healthy without Dieting”. He provides individual consulting programmes for people wanting to lose weight without dieting. Try his 7 Day “How to Lose Weight without Dieting” Email Course for FREE at www.doctorkweightloss.com

And given that what you eat is probably one of the few things that you do have absolute control over, doesn’t it seem even more bizarre?

I have met many clients who express absolute frustration and dismay that they just can’t figure out how to lose weight.

Even the most determined, motivated woman, who is able to solve almost any problem in their work or family life, cannot seem to work out what to do when it comes to their weight.

How can this be?

The Problem

I think there are a number of reasons, but the most pertinent is that weight loss is not as simple as we would think. After all, we know that eating more makes you gain weight, so simply eating less would mean you would lose weight. But eating less is not easy.

For a start you are fighting against innate biological urges to eat. You might want to cut back on after dinner chocolates, but your body doesn’t want you to.

On a societal level, we live in environments where we are surrounded by food in the form of all night supermarkets, convenience stores, and ever-present food advertising amongst other things.

On top of this, the solutions that most people turn to, diet and exercise, are simply not up to the job.

Exercise is good for you. But especially for women, as they get older, it is not enough to lose weight.

And diets don’t work. You might be able to lose weight temporarily, but the weight comes back when you stop.

And so this is the problem. Most women don’t know how to accomplish their goal.

So what’s the answer?

The Solution

A complete change in how we think about weight loss is needed. It’s not enough to delude yourself into thinking that you can starve yourself or exercise yourself to slimness. You have to understand the way the body and the mind work.

And it starts off with something as basic as your aim.

What is your aim? Let me tell you, that your aim should not be to lose weight. There is no point losing weight and then gaining it back straight away. Your aim should be to lose weight and keep it off.

And your success at losing weight and keeping it off, relies completely on whether you can change your habits. When you change your habits, you change the way you do things day to day. By changing your habits, you become a different person. You become the kind of person who manages their weight naturally.

If you don’t change your habits, you won’t succeed. And if you change your habits, you can’t fail.

A Different Focus

Rather than simply following the next diet, make your focus on changing habits.
Or to put it another way, ask yourself: “How do I make changes in the way I do things, that I know I can live with for the rest of my life?”

It’s a totally different attitude to “How fast can I get rid of this weight?”

How do you make changes to your life, that you know will last? This requires making sure that every thing you do:

Remember, you’re not just losing weight for a few weeks. You want to lose weight and keep it off for the rest of your life. It’s when you keep sight of this, that you make the right decisions about how to lose weight.

Dr. Khandee Ahnaimugan (Dr. K) is a medical doctor, weight loss expert and author of the best-selling book, “Slim and Healthy without Dieting”. He provides individual consulting programmes for people wanting to lose weight without dieting. Try his 7 Day “How to Lose Weight without Dieting” Email Course for FREE at www.doctorkweightloss.com

Click here to read it.

Dr. Khandee Ahnaimugan (Dr. K) is a medical doctor, weight loss expert and author of the best-selling book, “Slim and Healthy without Dieting”. He provides individual consulting programmes for people wanting to lose weight without dieting. Try his 7 Day “How to Lose Weight without Dieting” Email Course for FREE at www.doctorkweightloss.com

For weight loss, what does “showing up” mean? It means making a commitment to stick to your weight loss programme no matter what.

Weight loss is not a short-term “project”. A few weeks on a diet is not going to set you up for a lifetime of healthy weight. For you to maintain your weight for the long-term, you need to change your habits. And this requires commitment to stick with the process, through thick and thin.

But how can you apply this to your weight loss effort?

Here are a four ways you can “show up” and therefore maximise your chances of weight loss success.

Make it as easy as possible to stick with it

Often, people don’t stick with their weight loss programme, because it’s unpleasant and drastic. If you make changes that are very different to what you normally do, it’s really difficult to stick with it.

For instance, if you decide to run four miles a day to help you lose weight (even though you are normally a couch potato) it all sounds great in theory. You might manage it the first day. You might even be able to do it for a week. But this sort of change is very “fragile”. It’s too drastic, and too different to previous behaviour. Consequently, the smallest thing can derail your efforts. For most people this can be anything from getting busy at work to a few late nights that make waking early to exercise that much more difficult.

And it’s no good telling yourself you “should” be doing it. Because as we know, “shoulding” doesn’t make you stick to anything.

Allow yourself to have fun

Most people associate losing weight with suffering and deprivation. But the fact is, if your weight loss programme relies on deprivation and a lack of enjoyment, then you will struggle to maintain your efforts.

No one wants to live a life of deprivation. Make sure that you are still able to eat out, travel and have fun while losing weight. Otherwise, the pressure will build up, and you will be looking for reasons to give up.

When the going gets tough, keep going!

This is really the difference between those who succeed and those who fail at weight loss. It is almost impossible to lose weight without going through a rough patch (or few).

This includes:

1. A “bad” day or week, when you eat more than you planned to

2. A plateau – where you’re following your plan, but your weight is not budging.

For most people, either of these two things is enough for them to give up. You can’t allow this to happen to you.

Indeed, bad days and plateaus are actually part of the weight loss process. You must expect them, and learn how to cope with them.

Abandon all deadlines and expectations of speed of weight loss.

It can be frustrating for some people when their attempts to lose weight don’t follow the pattern they expect. Sadly, their expectations are often shaped by ridiculous fad diet claims like “Lose 30 pounds in 30 days”.

It might be hard for you to do, but you need to abandon any preconceptions about how fast you are going to lose weight. You are doing this for life. So take your time and do it right.

It’s Too Simple?

We recoil at the idea that something as simple as “showing up” can be so crucial for losing weight, but I can tell you that it’s true. When you decide to lose weight, make the commitment that you will “show up” no matter what.

Dr. Khandee Ahnaimugan (Dr. K) is a medical doctor, weight loss expert and author of the best-selling book, “Slim and Healthy without Dieting”. He provides individual consulting programmes for people wanting to lose weight without dieting. Try his 7 Day “How to Lose Weight without Dieting” Email Course for FREE at www.doctorkweightloss.com

What’s the best way for a woman over 40 to lose weight? The most common advice is to go on some kind of diet.
As a weight loss doctor, I spend my working life helping women over 40 lose weight and what I most frequently hear from them is that diets that used to work when they were in their twenties and thirties, stop working as they get older.

If you are over 40 and want to lose weight (and most importantly keep it off), it’s clear that it’s time to look at weight loss in a different way.

One thing I have found is that most women who come to see me, especially those who have been through lots of diets, have developed much healthier expectations about weight loss. In most cases, rather than looking for what works the quickest (which is what might have been important to them previously), they are more concerned with what works for the long term.

If you are thinking “I don’t want to have to do this again” then you already ahead of the pack. You have the right attitude towards losing weight, that will enable you to get lasting results.

So let’s look at four better ways to approach weight loss:

1. Give up on diets or anything that resembles a diet.

How do you define a diet? I think of a diet as any weight loss programme which is unlikely to last. This can actually include a lot of things that you wouldn’t normally think of as a diet. And of course this can vary between people. One person might have no problem eating boiled vegetables for dinner every night, while for others it might be their idea of purgatory. Whichever way you choose to lose weight, you should always feel that it is something that you are willing to do for the rest of your life. Many people start doing things and if they’re being honest with themselves, they are unlikely to continue in that manner for longer than a few weeks. This is not the way to lose weight for good.

2. Change your habits

You don’t want to be a person who has to rely on “diets” to lose weight. You want to be someone who is able to maintain their weight naturally. How do you maintain your weight naturally? Well, if your habits have changed to ones that help you maintain your weight, then your job is much easier isn’t it? You change your habits by repeating behaviors over and over again. And the behaviors that you are more likely to repeat are ones that are relatively easy and fit seamlessly into your life.

3. Abandon “overhauls” and “detoxes”

I’ll admit it. It often feels like you’re being good, when you go on a “health kick”. Overhauling your entire diet or going on a detox can feel mighty virtuous. But these kinds of drastic changes are not designed to last. A better approach is to make small changes in different areas of your eating, that you hardly notice. But over a surprisingly short time, these small changes add up to large weight loss.

4. The Double P’s.

A lack of persistence is one of the biggest causes of disappointment in weight loss. Especially as you get older, your rate of weight loss slows. People often trip themselves up by expecting to lose weight as quickly in their fifties as they did in their twenties.

The point here is that you need to be patient and persistent (the double P’s). As I tell my clients, the only way you can fail is by giving up. And if you’re making small changes that you barely notice and are happy doing for the rest of your life, what’s the reason to give up?

The Approach Makes All the Difference

Diets don’t work, especially for women over 40. It’s time to abandon them as a solution for weight loss. Instead change your perspective to doing things that you know will last. This is the true path to long-term weight loss.

Dr. Khandee Ahnaimugan (Dr. K) is a medical doctor, weight loss expert and author of the best-selling book, “Slim and Healthy without Dieting”. He provides individual consulting programmes for people wanting to lose weight without dieting. Try his 7 Day “How to Lose Weight without Dieting” Email Course for FREE at www.doctorkweightloss.com