I just received an item on my e-mail entitled ("Weight Loss Tea" PartnerAd@partner.beliefnet.com) which is for a tea that someone has starting promoting. And yes, there are testimonials galore about how fast it worked, how easy it is, how many pounds were lost, etc., etc., etc. And I believe them - I truly do. As I mentioned before, almost any eating program you try will get rid of the excess weight - some better than others, but they all work if you stick with them - but, therein lies the problem - how many of us "stick with them"?

What I like about these ads is that they all have a free trial for 30 days, and if you are not satisfied, you will get all of your money back with no questions asked."money back guarantee" - I don't know about you, but it was more trouble that it was worth to send back the empty bottles and wait six to eight weeks to get my money back. I just chalked it up to what my daughters just absolutely hated for me to say to them "another learning experience". I've had more than my share of those, but I still bite once in a while, with the same results.

The ad that really invited close inspection by me was the one using Hoodia. Hoodia has been touted for several years as the "magic pill" and when I first started looking into it seriously, I learned that because it was a special herb and only grew in certain places, the quantity was not great enough to bring it to the market en-mass. What a wonderful pre-marketing tool. Now that I knew it was not available, I wanted it even more. It seems that enough can now be grown to feed the millions who really want to get rid of their excess weight, and the beauty of it is that I don't need or want it. But, if you look carefully at the directions, you will find that in order to get the best results you must eat light, healthy meals, with lots of vegetables, get a lot of exercise and drink water. Is there a diet plan on earth that doesn't require this? Yeah, there is, those dangerously unhealthy ones like the cabbage soup diet, the bird seed diet, the grapefruit diet, and those other diets that pare your choices down to only one or two items of food. But by and large they are all about the same as far as I am concerned.

I guess the gist of this is, whether you start today or any other day you will not find that "magic pill" that will allow you to eat whatever you want, when you want and as much as you want and still reduce your body weight - It just ain't there, my friend. You will still have to eat healthy, exercise and start realizing that you are the only one who can transform your body into that perfect body you want. That's what I am doing, and that's what I want to help you do.

I am lucky, I have worked on my plan for a long enough period that I don't have to look for the latest and greatest diet on the planet. I went to the Texans football game not too long ago (I live in the northwest part of the Greater Houston, Texas area) . My daughter Kathy and her husband Karl have season tickets, so we go to all of the home games. Normally I don't eat anything at the games because I really don't want most of what is available. I really don't want it, but yesterday I was hungry and ordered a foot-long all beef hot dog with all the trimmings. I ate most of it and was o.k. with that, but when I got home that night I felt absolutely horrible. I was bloated, I still had that stuffed feeling I always used to have when I ate too much, and I felt almost ill all night long. That's how far I've come. There was a time when I could have eaten all that, plus a fully loaded chocolate milkshake, french fries, a beer or two and still want dinner when I got home.

Since I have been following my program religiously, I have weaned myself off of large portions of food, most fried foods, most sugar laden foods and most breads. Notice I said "most"? I have my sweets, my breads and my fried foods whenever I want them, but they really don't taste as good as they used to. The one important thing I learned about a good maintenance program is that if you stay on it long enough, you lose your taste for what you once considered "must have" foods. Hamburgers are greasy and tasteless to me, milkshakes are too sweet, as are most desserts that have sugar, breads are too filling and nothing tastes like I remember it did when I was eating those foods all the time. But what is really great about my plan is that I have no desire to eat these foods. I committed to a perfect body weight when I started my last eating program, and really worked on my frame of mind while I was on the plan - I didn't want to get back up to 195 lbs or any other weight above what my current weight is, so I changed my way of thinking about food and about myself - and it worked - for me.

Anyone can reach this point if they really want to. I'm told that DESIRE, a true, unrelenting, compelling desire, is the first step to having what you really want. I have that desire and it has worked for me. Each day I give myself a big "HIP - HIP - HOORAY - I'M AT MY PERFECT BODY WEIGHT (THE WEIGHT I FEEL MOST COMFORTABLE WITH) and I plan to continue my successful program.

ThinkThinThoughts!

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