A great many people in middle age or older (i.e. 40 years+) seem particularly to have a problem with weight loss. I think that this can be for a number of reasons including the fact that, as we get older, we get more set in our ways and bad eating & exercise habits become ingrained, and then we find it more difficult to jolt ourselves "out of the rut" and get into a proper weight loss program.

Also for many of us there are more "real" constraints such as limited physical mobility and/or joint problems which inhibit us from becoming more active as part of a structured weight loss regime.

I am speaking from experience here, as I had to overcome all of these "obstacles" myself -and a few more besides. The real key to managing this of course, like so many other things in life, is attaining the right mindset. Human beings can achieve incredible things with determination and the right attitude, so how difficult can it be just to lose a little weight?- However this is easy to say but harder to do for most of us. This thought is worth holding on to however because it highlights the fact that losing weight is as much about the mental processes involved as the physical side of things.

Attaining the right mindset often starts with the question of motivation. Without sufficient motivation your chance of achieving a significant loss of weight is the only thing that is likely to be slim! Motivation can come from either an internal or external stimulus, of course. It is certainly possible to "psyche yourself up" to lose weight and there are various techniques that can help with this including things like 'constructive visualization', subliminal messages' and even 'self hypnosis' For many of us unfortunately it is an external stimulus, often medical, that tells us that we have to lose weight-"or else...!"

This is just what happened to me. I had been overweight for most of my life, but as I got older the weight kept creeping on until, in my mid fifties, the scales hit 260 pounds! I started to have problems with my knees and eventually the doc told me that if I didn't lose some serious weight I was looking at knee joint replacement surgery within a few years. Well, this was the motivation that I needed and I determined that I would finally crack my weight problem once and for all.

But it wasn't easy. The biggest problem that I found was my own ignorance of everything to do with diet, nutrition, healthy exercise and simply understanding how the human body deals with all the factors that determine whether you gain or lose weight. This problem was compounded by the fact that a large proportion of the information available in the weight loss arena is either flawed or biased in some way, because the purveyors of the information "have an axe to grind" (or they have pills or patches or some other such "magic bullet" solution to push).

In the end I took myself on a real educational tour of this whole subject until I was convinced that I understood enough about it to give myself a fighting chance of not only losing a significant amount of weight, but also of keeping it off in the long term. As a result of attaining this "enlightenment" I came to realise that the way human physiology works provides a virtual "assault course" of obstacles for the unwary and uninformed that really stacks the odds against you, if you are not very careful.

One outcome of this journey has been for me to write a booklet in the form of a free online report, that shares the knowledge that I have gleaned about this topic, and which I hope casts light onto a number of "hidden secrets to long term weight loss". In order to achieve my own success in losing 30% of my starting body weight, which I have now maintained for over three years, I certainly found that I had to throw out a number of wrongheaded ideas and prejudices myself, one of which was the idea that I could lose weight by dieting alone without incorporating an exercise component.

The whole matter of exercising of course gave me a potential cop out- How was I supposed to exercise with "wonky knees"?! With my newfound determination I was not going to let myself off the hook that easily however. I researched what form of exercising would give me the physical stimulation that I needed without causing undue pressure on my joints and I found that the perfect answer was the recumbent exercise cycle. (You can see some examples of these at the foot of this page that are available on Ebay and Amazon).

This is a great piece of kit that does not put unnecessary strain on your joints and provides the nearest thing to "civilised" exercise that I have found, which you can "enjoy" in the privacy of your own home and you can even listen to good music or watch the TV whilst you are exercising.

This is just one of the "tips" that I discovered in putting together a weight loss program that worked for me, that not only produced a meaningful drop in weight, but meant that I could sustain this successfully over time. This new "enlightened" approach also incorporated an understanding of important facts such as the need to focus on "fat loss" rather than just "weight loss" (see hub page entitled "Weight Loss Pounds") and the whole vexed question of proper nutrition.

I also wanted to be able to share with others the approach that I myself had taken to achieve successful long-term weight loss. Therefore I decided to document this in a methodical fashion and lay it out as a program that anyone could follow if they chose and I then put this into the form of an ebook called "Weight Loss Made Simple" (also see links section below).

I think that the moral of this story is that it really is never too late to improve yourself if you can find the motivation and the determination to see it through. I hope that I have certainly demonstrated that attaining success with midlife weight loss is entirely achievable and that this achievement might serve to inspire others, including yourself, to emulate this.

If it does, then I will really be very happy for you, because I now understand the enormous benefits that flow from improving your health and fitness in later life. My whole quality of life has improved immeasurably as a result of undertaking my own weight loss journey. I no longer get breathless when climbing stairs or have difficulty in tying my shoe laces and best of all I can enjoy to the full once again my favourite pastime of hiking in the glorious English countryside-and not a squeak of complaint from the knees!