If you are like just about everyone else, you deal with negative weight loss images in your mind. You didn’t add all of the fat you have at once. You didn’t gain all of the weight you now have all at once either. And you’re not going to lose it all at once. Relax.

You don’t need to keep painting negative weight loss pictures. It’s a choice. You can also choose to simply do the best you can. Those before and after weight loss photos in your dreams will come, You just have to pursue them one day at a time, one meal at a time, one healthy choice at a time.

There’s no doubt about it. Implications of obesity can be rather scary. The same is even truer for implications with breast cancer. Yet somehow when you put the two of them together, it feels like much more than doubling the impact of the negative weight loss images it brings up in your mind.

Here is the skinny on the situation, plain and simple. If you are considered obese and you are afraid of getting breast cancer, you have got to lose weight.

Take notice that I am not just acting like I am talking to women. Cancer in the breast is roughly 100 times more common in women. However, men do get breast cancer as well. What is interesting to note is that despite the difference in women being more likely to get breast cancer, the survival rates are about equal.

Having done some work in the fields of both oncology and obesity, I knew obesity was a factor in terms of those who get cancer. I know you may be among the many others who know about this, too. Still, having just read the news of a study on obesity and oncology, I felt absolutely compelled to write and make the point again. Here is why.

British researchers have announced they found that nearly one-third of all breast cancer cases can be avoided by having a healthy weight, a proper diet, and doing some form of exercise on a regular basis.

The chance of a woman contracting breast cancer is about one in eight in her lifetime. That is bad enough. The numbers are far worse if you are need of creating your own before and after weight loss photos. Obese women are up to 60 percent more likely to develop any cancer than normal-weight women. 60 percent!

Surely you’ve heard that early detection is a key to success with breast cancer. Now though in addition to promoting the importance of self-examinations and mammogram screenings, there is a real shift among healthcare practitioners to get obese patients focused on the increased risks between obesity and breast cancer.

Change your lifestyle with a proper diet and exercise. You can not only develop the weight loss pictures you want. You can greatly lessen your odds of getting breast cancer.

THE SKINNY ON THE U.S.: AMERICA’S SCALE TIPS FROM OVERWEIGHT TO OBESE

Overweight means weighing too much. Obesity means having too much fat. You know both terms paint some not so pretty weight loss pictures.

The obesity rate in the U.S. has more than doubled in the last thirty years. And now research by the U.S. Government shows the scale tipping toward obesity for the first time ever. Here is how it works.

A normal weight body mass index (BMI) is between 18.5 and 24.9. You are considered to have an overweight body mass index with a score between 25.0 and 29.9. If your body mass index is 30.0 or higher, then you are considered to be obese. Check with your doctor about doing a BMI test.

Aside from the physical, mental, and emotional discomfort that usually comes with obesity, there are greatly increased medical risks. Being obese means you also increase your risk of having heart disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, arthritis and even some cancers. Research shows that by losing just 5 to 10 percent of your weight, you can effectively delay or prevent some of these diseases.

According to some heavy numbers released by the National Center for Health Statistics, 2010 marked the first year ever that the population in the United States reflected weight loss images where the number of obese people was higher than the number of Americans who were considered overweight.

We need to get to work America. How about we really start to bring to life those before and after weight loss photos of our dreams? We need to change our unhealthy lifestyle. The statistics break it down this way:

34.0%   Americans who are obese

32.7%   Americans who are overweight

6.0%    Americans who are extremely obese

Going Lite on Beer to Lose Weight

Being an Irish-American, yesterday’s St. Patrick’s Day was as always a good day. I wore my green with pride. But proof that I’m getting older is that I had business meetings and worked all day. Then, enjoyed one ceremonial lite beer as I worked at the computer late last night.

This morning I heard from a web visitor named Smitty who’s done much better than that. Smitty came to www.weightlosspictures.org for information, and to see if others had a similar experience. He said he has lost 14 pounds already in 2010 by changing only one of his personal weight loss images, and only one thing in his diet. He gave up drinking beer.

He claims he is still eating “normally.” But stopped drinking his usual couple of beers after work. He slashed those hundreds of calories from the beer itself. And also slashed those hundreds or thousands more calories from all of the snacks and or foods you often consume with beer. They are gone from his daily routine.

I’m not implying that we roll out a massive “No Beer Diet.” You have to do more than that to see the before and after weight loss photos of your dreams. Instead, I’m just sharing a post St. Patty’s Day Weight Loss Success Story that might be of interest to you.

I wish Smitty and all of you the Luck of the Irish in pursuit of your personal weight loss goals.

Thomas

Fat people carry a heavy burden. We already know that. They are discriminated against daily in the workplace, in society, and in the minds of others whether consciously or subconsciously. But new weight loss pictures are currently being developed. Does some of this discrimination come from others who themselves are overweight or obese?

 When it comes to women and marketing/advertising campaigns, new research from Arizona State University says yes. Here is a sneak peek from the April edition of the Journal of Consumer Research. It found a link in advertising between the size of the models and the self-esteem of the consumers who looked at the ads. That is according to a joint study featuring hundreds of women done by researchers at ASU, Erasmus University in the Netherlands, and the University of Cologne in Germany.

Accomplished researcher on the subject, Naomi Mandel claims that advertisements showcasing plus-sized models can create more problems than fix them for targeted audiences who are overweight. Mandel, a distinguished scholar and an associate marketing professor at ASU’s prestigious W.P. Carey School of Business since 2000 is an expert on the subject. “We believe it is unlikely that many brands will gain market share by using heavy models in their ads,” Mandel reported. “We found that overweight consumers demonstrated lower self-esteem — and therefore probably less enthusiasm about buying products.”

Mandel said, “We found what is important is not just the size of the models in the ads, but also the distance between the consumer’s size and the model’s size. This is what really affects self-esteem.” This is why most fashion shows generally avoid showing any plus-sized models on their product showcasing runways. Mandel said her research shows most women may feel badly about themselves when they look at a heavy female model and that they relate themselves to her. There were other surprising results.

If the product being advertised can solve some issue the consumer has with her own body image, the advertising may improve purchase intent. This would be good news for someone like Kirstie Alley, who has just launched her own weight loss company, Organic Liaison.

Another Arizona marketing expert believes these findings carry weight. “Radar” Roy Reyer is an internet marketing expert and search engine optimization instructor http://www.seotrainingsw.com. Having been successful selling millions of dollars worth of radar detectors and other products online, he believes in a concept he calls “The Fantasy Result.” Reyer said, “Advertising and marketing campaigns are most successful when they speak directly to their perfect customer and the fantasy result they have about a product.”

One of the strengths of before and after weight loss photos is it provides a roadmap for where overweight people want to go and appeals to their internal weight loss images.

Rex Ryan changing hockey jersey

New York Jets Head Coach Rex Ryan is a go for it kind of guy. He is not afraid to seize the moment on the football field or with his weight.

Rex is now recovering from having a lap-band procedure done at the NYU Medical Center. In this surgery, a plastic band was inserted around his stomach to effectively shrink the size of it and curbing his appetite.

Really though, by having lap-band surgery, Rex Ryan was recovering from all of the hype over his weight. More and more it looked like he had a football stuffed in his shirt. During the Jets successful season, he was constantly in the news, often making jokes with his own weight loss images about his size.

The turning point may have been when TV cameras recently got shots of the 350-plus pounder’s  belly as he playfully changed jerseys at an NHL game. They were screaming weight loss pictures.

I first met Rex nearly 25 years ago after he landed his first football coaching job as an assistant at Western Kentucky. He has had a personal battle with his weight all along. So did his famous football coaching father, Buddy Ryan, who I worked with for years.

Coaching in the NFL may seem glamorous on Sundays and also when the team is winning. But it is a grind like you wouldn’t believe. Endless hours, endless stress, endless dealing with being second guessed by seemingly everyone who can spell football.

I hope the surgery works well for Rex Ryan, not only because I like him. But because he seized his moment when he knew he had to do something about his obesity. Despite unsuccessful efforts in the past, he had to try something new to lose weight. I hope his competitive spirit inspires and motivates others to do the same with their weight loss images.

Rex is already a big winner. Now I hope all of his future weight loss photos show he becomes and remains a big loser.