• List your resources – they will determine your limitations.

• Set aside one hour in the morning for physical exercise. Spend half your time on heart-lung exercises and half on muscle tone. Don’t start with one whole hour – build up to it over a period of four weeks.

• Explain your intentions to your doctor, who can check you for allergies and give advice on levels of exercise that you should attempt.

• Purchase a magazine about a sport or physical activity you might pursue. Tennis, golf and martial arts are easy subjects to track down at the news agency, but you’ll need a magazine like ‘Insight’ to find out about Reiki, your local newspaper for school and church-based activities, and ‘Irish News’ for Celtic dancing.

• Visit three local fitness centres, find out the type of people who attend, when they attend and what’s on offer. Don’t subscribe yet. Pay on a user-pays basis until you’re sure this is the place for you, then take out a long-term subscription at the advantaged price,

Find out everything you can about interval training. Get into it as soon as possible – but slowly in your first week

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Squash can be played any time – being indoors, the weather and time of day are irrelevant, and this is a great advantage. Another advantage is that you don’t have to find a dozen or two likeminded people to make up a team, plus rival team. Like tennis – you only need two to four players.

Because of the stresses placed on the ankles and knees, squash is a sport that has a high rate of injuries. Squash also places a near maximum load on the cardio vascular (heart/lung) system. It may be a short duration game but it is very demanding both physically and aerobically.

You should be in very good physical condition before playing squash competitively on a regular basis or even socially.

Cellulite impact: Strongly recommended for you to be strong, fit and healthy before you play. Also keep well hydrated with water.

Squash exercises your: ,

• Leg muscles

• Arms, shoulders and lower back

• Heart and lungs

Netball

Ah netball, my old stomping ground.

Netball is a good sport for women. I have played netball for many many years. This sport is very popular with all age groups.

Netball is a high impact sport and places tremendous stress on ankles, knees and hips. It is important to prevent injury by exercising with weights and doing lots of stretching exercises -otherwise the constant jolts to your body, from bursting up and down a netball court, will inevitably cause you problems.

You get to meet lots of new people and you make lots of new friends!

Cellulite impact: Great sport, if you are fit enough to handle ‘bursts’ of energy.

Netball exercises your:

• Legs, backside, calves

• Arms, shoulders and chest

• Heart and lungs

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Meat eating certainly can put on the weight because there’s a lot of fat throughout the meat itself. Even in lean meat. Animals carry fat just like we do.

If you are serious about losing cellulite I think you should handle meat eating this way:

• Limit your red meat intake to once a week,

• Prefer chicken and fish for protein.

• Get protein from sources other than red meat.

Try to avoid eating too much beef, lamb and pork as these meats have high fat contents. Instead, eat fish, poultry and vegetable proteins such as nuts and grains.

In my opinion, red meat is not a preferred food, certainly not for weight loss. You’re better off sticking to things you can digest and burn up very easily. And red meat takes ages to pass through your system. Up to 48 hours is time enough for the meat to ferment in your gut, so if you have another piece the following day you’re adding to that problem. If you do eat red meat, give it time to totally eliminate before you eat more.

If you’re really looking to lose cellulite, you need to eat things that are not going to sit in your stomach for long. Fruit and vegies digest very easily. They’re in and out: you utilise the vitamins and the minerals and the roughage, and bang, out it goes.

If you eat red meat late at night, you’re going to be digesting it while you’re sleeping and often you’ll have restless sleep. If someone were to take your pulse rate, it would be sky-high, as you digest that piece of meat.

However, if you intend to persist with eating red meat, when you cook it – don’t saturate it in fat.

Chicken

Skinless chicken breast is pretty good. Chicken stays in your system longer than vegetables, but digests faster than red meat. The fat is in the chicken skin, which you should avoid.

But beware the antibiotics and hormones that the chickens are fed. Chicken meat comes to us loaded with these. And the poor commercially raised chook has led a horrible life before ending up on your table. Choose free range if you can. They have happier lives and fewer chemicals, f

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There is a terrific bond in the group, despite being complete strangers. And you can confidently maintain a safe social distance too – if that’s what you prefer, without feeling you are on a lone track.

The advantage of weight loss groups is that they have had years of experience designing food programs and creating diet products. If you can’t adapt to the taste of unprocessed foods, use their diet meals for a range of conventional tastes.

If you decide to join a weight loss group, bear in mind that they don’t usually structure their diets in combination with added exercise. So if you are doing vigorous exercise, you should be adjusting what they’ve given you accordingly. Another worthwhile contact is your local dietician who can personalise your eating program.

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Whatever goals you set, you are going to have to enjoy your own company along the way, because ultimately it’s you and yourself working together. You might find some friends you want to join you in some group activities, and company is great motivation. But you will need to rely on yourself, and your belief in yourself. Companions may come and go, but me, myself and I are with you for the duration.

And, like the Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress, you will find adversaries along your way. TJie first is the fact that a person with cellulite feels less comfortable stripping down to a pair of shorts than everyone else in an exercise room. Don’t worry about it. There are many who feel this way, and the people who run fitness centres understand. In fact there are women-only centres ‘(like the Fernwood Fitness franchise) and women-only hours at other centres. In this, and in other ways, good instructors boost your self-image and help you achieve your goal.

I believe that in matters to do with physical appearance, a woman is best advised by another woman, and a man by a man. Once she’s got her confidence up, a woman will come clean with another woman. Some women might have an array of problems to do with things they don’t like about their bodies – but they won’t tell a male.

Females like to attract males. That’s how we are designed. And to do that, you first have to attract yourself.

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