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Have you been wearing pants with elastic waistbands during the holidays? Avoiding the bathroom scale? Shunning dressing rooms in the department stores? Well, it's time to face the music. Before you know it, swimsuit season will be upon us. The first step to making personal changes is admitting you have a problem. So, fortify yourself and take a reality check. Get on that scale and dig up a measuring tape to assess the damages from everything from pumpkin pie and turkey dressing to sugar cookies and eggnog.

Before you pass out from shock, know this. Although it didn't take much to pack on a few extra pounds, you can also take them off by making a few simple changes to your diet and exercise regimen.

In order to take off just one pound, you must burn 3200 more calories than you take in. It's simple math, really. However, although it helps to count calories, a watched pot never boils. So, have patience, and don't obsess. Just take it day by day and stick to a proven plan. You'll get there.

Any weight loss plan involves a three-pronged strategy. You'll be attacking the fat on three fronts: diet, exercise, and emotional retraining.

Diet:

The diet battle plan involves retraining your taste buds to appreciate low calorie foods and to develop the habit of meal planning and saying no. Some of us have no patience for meal planning and preparation. For those of you in that category, there are some excellent diet programs that prepare the foods for you and even deliver them to you doorway.

Eventually, however, you will have to take off the training wheels, so to speak, and make your own choices. So, if you want to skip the preliminaries and learn how to manage food instead of letting it manage you, there is help out there for that, too. Many Web sites offer free assistance in diet menu planning and more. Check out www.sparkpeople.com, a site named Best Health Website for 2006, 2007, and 2008 by Business Week. On this site, you can get all the information and support you need, connect with other dieters, share recipes, calculate the calorie content of recipes, develop an exercise plan, and more. It's like a university education for those needing to shed just a few pounds or many.

Weight Watchers is another organization which has helped many through the years. Theirs is a sensible approach to dieting that helps you form new lifelong eating habits. The support system given through Weight Watchers is also key to the success of their participants. Making changes is a lot easier if

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