I am sat writing this in a hospital ward waiting room. Veronicas dad had a stroke earlier this week.

It happened suddenly, completely out of the blue and unexpected. No one saw it as a remote possibility. His lifestyle NOW is not one that lends itself to promotion of the risk factors and had his wife not been with him at the exact moment it happened he would most likely not have survived.

Why am I telling you this. Well it’s one of those moments that puts life into perspective for you. Hospitals, and tragic events have a habit of doing that.

No one can see what is coming, and none of us know if the decisions we made in earlier life (diet, lifestyle etc) are ever going to come back and haunt us but what we do know is it is never too late to do something about it.

It’s easy to put the health element of being overweight on the back burner when all you actually see is your reflection in the mirror, you can’t see what is going on inside so we tend to ignore it

But the truth is, stuff IS going on inside and while you may NOW be thinking that how you look is the most important reason to lose weight, actually, your health is equally so.

Being overweight is the second biggest cause of 4 out of 5 of the biggest disease killers in this country.

Think about that for a second. Being overweight, and the more overweight the greater the risk, is making you LOADS more likely to get cancer, heart disease, diabetes and so on.

That may not be a concern now while worrying about your man boobs and bingo wings but believe me you would think different if you were sat where I am NOW.

So listen, yes we want to look better, yes we want to wear nice clothes and feel comfortable when we go out, but we ALSO want to live our lives to the full and live long ones.

No one is ever going to remember you as the healthy looking slim dude, they are going to remember your character, personality, engagement etc, and if you are sick, or worse, none of that can happen.

So the point of this post is this. If you are struggling, if sometimes you look in the mirror and think “you know what, it’s too hard work and I can’t be bothered with this any more”, CHANGE the reason…

Instead of focussing solely on your appearance think about your health instead. Think about NOT depriving your kids and grandkids from the pleasure of your company prematurely and think about living a full, fun and active life.

Your ability to do that IS going to be affected by your actions and decisions now AND just like smoking, if you do something about it NOW every single day that passes goes a bit further to undo any damage that has been done in the past and improves you from this day forward.

Changes you make now WILL impact you in years to come and hopefully let you lead an enjoyable and fun filled older age, right up to the end, but this will only happen if what is going INSIDE is in the best shape it can be. And today is as good a day as any to start not only undoing any damage that may have been done, but improving it for the future.

And it starts with losing excess weight!

A very wise person said to me once…

“It’s all very well living a long life, but do you really WANT to if someone else has to wipe your bum for you”

And while some of you may not appreciate me sharing that with you, it pretty much sums it all up.