Would you love to lose weight but hate to go on diets? Would you love to be fit but hate exercise? Then you're in good company.

The majority of us would love to find a magic wand which would take all the effort out of losing weight and getting in shape. Yet it's unlikely that there will ever be a pill, potion or patch in our lifetime that is healthy, safe and delivers on hyped-up promises of effortless weight loss.

It seems that there's a simple choice here - learn to love your shape as it is now (and continue loving it as you get bigger) or learn to love a new healthy lifestyle.

But that's not the whole story.

Most weight loss programs expect you to embrace huge lifestyle changes almost overnight. But it's pretty hard to learn to love a complete lifestyle overhaul so quickly. It's just like deciding to get married on a first date.

You'd have to be lucky to be a good match. It's more likely that eventually the cracks will show, you'll regret your decision and you'll agree to part ways.

And so it is with a new weight loss program. You join a gym, try a new tough regime and abandon it with a sense of failure in a couple of weeks. You start a new meal plan, can't cope with the hunger, miss your normal foods and give up on that too.

The problem is that we want instant success (ironically so that we can go back to the lifestyle that made us fat in the first place!)

But let me make a plea for permanent weight loss rather than speed. Get to know the new lifestyle, diet or exercise program you're considering before you decide if it's for you. Try out the diet, sample the activities and decide which parts you can live with and which you can't. Try out different approaches, different foods, different ways of fitting exercise into your life and gradually adopt the ones which feel good.

The more gradually you build new healthy habits into your life and the more you choose the ones which suit your preferences, the more they will feel comfortable and have a chance of becoming a permanent part of your lifestyle. Build up those new habits one by one, add more and more healthy delicious meals into your repertoire and add a little more activity week by week to your schedule until you have gradually transformed your way of life into a healthier version.

As you adopt the new healthier habits you will be delighted with the changes in how you look and how you feel and this will motivate you like nothing else to make further improvements. That is the easy way to fall in love with losing weight.

Copyright 2005, Janice Elizabeth Small