You can imagine the scene from an old black and white movie. It’s Main Street in some town in the mid-west. There’s a smartly dressed man wearing top hat standing on the back of an open topped wagon selling his cure all elixir. An eager crowd listen intently as he describes how their lives are about to be transformed. Eager hands proffer their dollars. His pretty daughter hands out the bottles. Before too long and as soon as people have dispersed, the horses are harnessed and they get out of town before the honest citizens discover they’ve been hadIt has been forever thus that some people take advantage of those who need help most. Unfortunately, it’s a long established human trait. What is also an established human trait is gullibility. Too often we take people’s word, we believe the advertisement and we fail to question.

Questions are essential because they reveal information, and information is what we need in order to take informed decisions. It may come as little surprise to learn that we take most of our decisions based on as little as 5% of the available information. Little wonder why we make so many mistakes, why there are so many misunderstandings and people are duped by the modern day equivalent of the snake oil salesman.

When we want to lose weight do we really take enough time to think about what we want the outcome of our diet to be? Do we just want to lose a few pounds to keep trim or do we need to lose some serious weight?

When we purchase a diet, do we believe that all our accumulated weight is going to fall off and never reappear? If we are overweight, do we honestly believe that all those extra pounds are going to fall off in an instant and never trouble us again, despite the fact that they have taken years to build up?

There is no denying that diets are very good at delivering short-term weight loss, but is that what we really want? Surely we want the weight to and not come back? If that’s the case we need to ask more questions because the only way weight is not going to reappear is if we change our habits. Our bad habits have got us to where we are. Now we’ve got to learn new habits – slim habits, if we are to lose weight permanently.