Physical: Height Weight Shape General Appearance Hips Chest Arms Legs Posture Ways You Move Attractiveness Grooming Hairstyle Wrinkles Looks What Age Voice Age-Appropriate Taste In Clothes Make-Up Expertise Bearing Teeth Fingernails Appearance - Strongest Points Appearance - Biggest Shortcomings

Other: Usual mood Politeness Attitude Confidence Level Empathy Level Honesty Rating Personality - Strongest Points Personality - Biggest Shortcomings Dealing with People -- Strongest Points Dealing with People -- Biggest Shortcomings

Next to each personal quality, write down one to three adjectives you feel best describe you on that facet of yourself.

Now give list to several friends, your spouse, relatives, coworkers. Tell them you're involved in a project or survey and make sure they can submit it anonymously. Having it completed by someone you think doesn't like you can be most revealing of all!

How closely do all lists overlap?

Typically, there will be substantial repetition in a number of areas. There will likely be divergence between people who know you very well and those who only see a certain side of you, at work, at school, in business.

Now combine lists, deleting repetitions, so that you have anywhere from a few words to dozens of words to describe your public persona. Since we are primarily interested here in weight management, concentrate on descriptors that relate to your physical attributes. Do others see you as you see yourself or are there a few shockers showing up?

Focus on those and try to ferret out source of contradictions. Are you misleading yourself about way you look or are you unconsciously facing world in a manner designed to create a certain image? Do you focus on your "good points" - a small waist you cinch tight with a belt - and forget about other areas - your hips look enormous in comparison? Do you fake something imperfectly such as a hairpiece, a shoe lift, padded underwear? Have you convinced yourself that long, flowing clothes, or oversized suits, make you look slim? Do you always study your face in glow of bathroom warming lights to convince yourself that wrinkles don't really show?

What can be very gratifying and self-affirming about this exercise is that much of what is written about you is far more tolerant and non-judgmental than how you describe yourself. You are your own biggest critic because you know yourself so well - that old internal criteria stuff. You want to be good, you want to be perfect, but you are acutely aware of your weaknesses and dark secrets.

This is where balance can be so nurturing: knowing how others see you can help you make any changes you want to pursue. You can start to emphasize certain aspects of yourself while discarding tricks that everyone saw through. If you want to modify your appearance, lose weight, build strength, it will be valuable only if it is built on reality of where internal and external converge. You are considerably more likely to attain your goals if they arise out of where you are and lead naturally to where you want to be.

One more side effect of this little exercise: you find out that no one in whole world is as interested, or as focused, on you as you are! Even close friends and family may have difficulty in finding descriptors for you: "I just never really thought about it." Of course they didn't because they were too busy concentrating on themselves. Once you really grasp this concept, it can be incredibly freeing. You can start to lose that self-consciousness that tells you others are studying and judging you. That standing-out-from-the-crowd vulnerability can start to fade. That "I can't go looking like this" panic can start to wane.

And as you start to realize that your weight and appearance are primary focus of only yourself, you can start to understand that whatever your physical shape reflects, it is your appreciation which is vital, not other people's. Manage your weight, and manage your life, for yourself - not for those others "out there" who don't even notice.

Sure, some vegis and fruits are high in sugar, but it's natural sugar. I seriously doubt our planet grows any killer foods - it is more likely food industry which has processed those foods to become nothing more than a dried powder, then add back more sugars, and chemicals so it will resemble original product, is more harmful than a simple apple or banana?

If you are diabetic or must watch sugars, have a small bit of protein along with higher glycemic food, such as an ounce of cheese with your apple. Notice I said an ounce of cheese, not a slab big enough to feed a small country.

Metabolic Slow-Down Feeding yourself too few calories sets you up for metabolic slow-down. Studies have shown time and again that a heavier person can find it difficult to lose weight, even though eating very low calories, simply because their body's metabolism is burning at such a slow rate. As you probably already know exercise helps to speed up your metabolism but so does eating. That's why they say breakfast is so important, not only to fuel yourself but because it starts metabolic furnace burning, and it continues to burn all day. If you don't eat anything until noon, you don't stoke your furnace to start burning until then either.

Has ultra low calorie approach worked for you so far? If not, why not try something more reasonable? Tag along with a friend who doesn't have a weight problem and you'll see how sometimes they eat more, sometimes less, but on average they eat enough to fuel their body and maintain their weight.

Adding more food gives you additional eye appeal. If you split up 1000 calories over course of an entire day you're looking at pretty skimpy portions on your plate each time you eat. I like to feel like I'm getting enough to eat and I do this by rounding out my plate with extra vegetables.

If I'm having a frozen entree for instance, I'll cook up a cup or more of frozen vegetables to add to my plate. The extra vegis really fill me up, providing satisfaction I need, and I often have a bit extra vegetables to throw away. Is that wasting food? No, it's smart. Far better for me mentally to have extra food to toss away than to be licking plate because I'm still hungry. I'm also not likely to start wanting something else to eat right after dinner if I'm feeling content with amount I've eaten.

Make an effort to learn to like your food as is. Plain mixed vegetables with nothing on them are delicious. It took me awhile to stop putting butter on them, and then even quitting Molly McButter (just chemicals and sodium). I eat them plain and yes, they are great. Nature made our fruits and vegetables naturally sweet and all those "extras" we are used to using like butter on vegetables or potatoes certainly make things taste all yummy but they also make us larger than we need to be. Those "extra" calories add up.

Start to Slowly Make Ajustments to What You Eat or How Much You Eat

For instance wean yourself off adding sugar to your cold cereal. Read label; all processed cereals contain a ridiculous amount of added sugar already. There's no need to add more. My only exception is brown sugar on oatmeal. I don't sugar my cereal at all anymore but it took me awhile to make change. Start by adding a bit less, then next week cut back a bit more until you break habit entirely. Tiny changes make up for big results over time.

If you feed yourself well, and focus on increasing your activity, even if only a little, then you will continue to lose fat, build muscle and get more shapely, all while increasing your metabolism so you can eat more food!

Kathryn Martyn, Master NLP Practitioner, author of Changing Beliefs, Your First Step to Permanent Weight Loss http://www.OneMoreBite-Weightloss.com