Weighty Ideas

For my daily reading regime I have recently being reading a book published in 2011 called Celebrity, Inc.  this book written by Jo Piazza talks about how celebrities make money. How they cash in on their fame and make their retirements just that little bit easier. Today in fact I read a chapter about Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian. It is interesting how they are both cashing in on their celebrity and I say all power to them. If you have it why not use to get ahead. Blair says "Good on 'em."

However I don't want to talk about Paris and Kim although I could think of worse things to talk about, I would like to talk about chapter 3 of the book. The chapter is entitled, Valerie Bertinelli: Turning pounds into dollars. First of all I looked up who Valerie Bertinelli is. (Isn't the internet a wonderful thing? I mean what did we do in the past when we woke up in the middle of the night wondering what the main ingredient in ambrosia was? We wouldn't know. Our mates at school wouldn't know and we would lose sleep. Anyway back to the subject.) If you don't know who Valerie Bertinelli (VB) is, click here and it should give you a hint.

It turns out VB is famous in America now for weight loss and has made a lot of money out of it. Overweight celebrities have found ways to profit from their problems and inspire thousands of people. They can make anywhere from $500,000 to $2,000,000 a year to endorse products and services. (That's almost enough to want me to go down to McDonalds. Although to be fair I would go down to Maccas for less than that.)

Oprah Winfrey has made a ton of money from her weight loss regime as did the former Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson. Like the aforementioned Paris and Kim I hold no malice to these people and the fact that they lost weight in the process is great. We should follow their lead which is what the marketers want us to do. In fact when I looked up Amazon.com to find the listing for the Celebrity, Inc. book the fifth book in the list was a celebrity weight loss book so if I was in any doubt that proved it to me that weight loss is a big industry.

I am overweight. I weighed myself this morning and was less than the same time yesterday but still have a long way to go before I reach my goal. I like sports and love throwing a ball around with the guys and have played sports for most of my life however I do overeat on junk food. I have an over evolved sweet tooth. I'm starting to realize that the pain of being overweight is more than doing the exercise and changing my lifestyle and I believe it is at that stage in which people spark into action.

How would you go about it? Well, to some people they would go out and run a marathon and eat carrots and lettuce and drink water. Yep, done that, it doesn't work as you arise from bed all charged up on Monday morning and go for a big long run and then eat celery sticks for breakfast. What happens by dinner time you have a huge dinner because you have deprived yourself all day and even worse, the next morning and for the rest of the mornings throughout the week you stay in bed because you are stuffed from running on Monday.

Lets see, how would I go about it? What are my ten ideas? (Warning, I am no expert. This is just my opinion from years of trail and error. For an experts opinion click on the link below.)

1. Set up a menu and shopping list on Sunday. This menu is for the week and do all your shopping on that day.
2. Have one day off a week where you can eat anything to excess and do no exercise.
3. Have someone nagging you daily about your protruding stomach. (Can be annoying but in the end they will probably win.)
4. Drink lots of water. (Easy for me. I like drinking water. Sometimes I put a little lime juice in it.)
5. Do daily exercise. (I would love to throw a ball around with mates everyday but that just isn't doable so I joined a gym and that can be quite fun if you devise systems to push yourself.)
6. Go walking. Walk to the shop to buy your chocolate bar ... I mean your Men's Health magazine. Carry a pedometer too.
7. Find a training partner or a weight loss partner who you can compare notes with.
8. Cycle/walk to work/school occasionally. Not only will this help with your fitness it is also something different. As they say, variety is the spice of life.
9. Set up some kind of reward system so if you get to a goal weight you do something special.
10. Start a graph that charts your weight loss progress. This is very motivating for me as I watch the line trend down.
11. Take action. Just don't think about it. Do it.

I hope that helps. Actually that was 11, wasn't it? As soon as I have finished writing this I'm putting my pedometer (actually an iPhone) in my pocket and walking to the gym. As I said before my weight is down over the last few days and I like to keep it there so am looking forward to it.

Finally I would like to say to the people out there that it is a difficult road but if you act slowly and patiently you can get to your goals. I'd also like to endorse this guy here although I'm not getting any money to say that. Poor me!!!