5. Take "refinement" out of your diet. Try eliminating all refined sugar and refined grains from your diet. This includes white bread, pastries, pasta, white rice, white flour crackers, sugar-coated breakfast cereals, cookies and cake. This simple step can encourage a huge weight-loss breakthrough and leave you feeling more healthy and energized in process.

6. Don't go hungry. Cutting back on how often you eat can have a negative impact on your diet plateau. Many studies show that small, frequent meals are more satisfying and produce better weight-loss results than same number of calories consumed in three large meals. Take advantage of healthy snacking and crunch on fresh slices of raw vegetables like celery, peppers, cucumber and jicama when you're hungry.

7. Drink to burn up. It's vitally important to replenish your fluids by drinking plenty of water on your weight loss program. An inadequate supply of water in itself can slow down your weight-loss. Carry water with you wherever you go throughout day. For additional weight-management benefits, add a high quality aloe concentrate to your water to help keep your digestion in top shape. Also, a probiotic supplement can help us maintain a healthy intestinal flora. Keeping well hydrated not only helps you burn fat efficiently, it also helps control hunger.

8. Keep your incentive strong. Remember determination you felt when you first began your weight-loss program? Remember excitement of watching pounds drop one by one? Go back to whatever your initial motivation was and see whether it still works for you. It may have been desire to lose weight for a particular event or to regain your figure after pregnancy. You may have been motivated by poor health or by shock of just how much weight you had gained. See whether same motivation still has juice for you. If not, choose a new one. Keep a picture of yourself looking great (or bad!) on your refrigerator as a daily reminder of where you are heading.

6.If you must have a taste of chips and other 'dry' snack foods, alternate with fresh vegetable crudités. It is quite difficult to mix tastes, so you are likely to eat more slowly and eventually give up. When that happens stick to fresh food choices.

7.Choose between an alcoholic beverage, a dessert or a 'sinful' main course, rather than indulging in all three. Rotate your choice when you have several events to attend.

8.Choose almonds, pecans and walnuts, eating individually and slowly. This way you can avoid handfuls of salted peanuts or cashews.

9.Alternate alcoholic drinks with a glass of sparkling mineral water with a dash of lime, or a vegetable juice dashed with a chili sauce.

(c) Kim Beardsmore