Sustainable weight loss in midlife rarely looks dramatic. It is usually quieter than that. It does not begin with throwing everything out of the kitchen, cutting entire food groups, exercising every day or promising yourself that this time you will be perfect. More often, it begins when you stop ...

You may be eating reasonably well, exercising when you can and genuinely trying to look after yourself, yet weight loss still feels much harder than it should. For many professional women in midlife, the missing piece is not another diet. It is what happens during the eight, nine or ten hours betwee...

You have cut back on the snacks, made your portions smaller and become much more careful about what you eat. Perhaps breakfast is lighter than it used to be, lunch is usually something sensible and you rarely order dessert. Yet when you step onto the scales, very little seems to happen. For a woman ...

There is a familiar pattern among professional women in midlife. The weight starts creeping on, particularly around the middle, so the immediate response is to eat less. Breakfast becomes smaller, lunch gets squeezed between meetings, carbohydrates are cut back and an extra workout is added whenever...

There is a particular frustration that many women begin to notice in midlife. You are eating reasonably well, perhaps exercising more than you did ten years ago, yet weight seems easier to gain and considerably harder to lose. Your waistline may be changing, your energy can dip after meals, and food...

You step onto the scales and the number is almost the same as it was a few years ago. Yet your favourite trousers feel tighter, the waistband of your work clothes sits differently and there seems to be more softness around your stomach than there used to be. It can be particularly confusing when you...

There is a particular kind of frustration that can arrive in your 40s and 50s. You are not eating dramatically differently, you may still be walking, exercising and making reasonably healthy choices, and your working day may look much the same as it did five years ago. Yet your clothes fit different...

There are days when something relatively small seems to hit much harder than it used to. An email arrives with the wrong tone, a meeting does not go as planned, or someone asks you for one more thing when you already have too much to do. You hold yourself together at work, but later find yourself un...

You may technically finish work at five or six o'clock, but when does your body actually finish? You close the laptop, yet your mind is still running through tomorrow's meetings. You prepare dinner while replying to a message, sit on the sofa but check your email because you suddenly remember someth...

You have been tired since lunchtime. By six o'clock, you are counting down the hours until bed and telling yourself that tonight you will finally have an early night. Yet when the house becomes quiet, something strange happens. Instead of drifting naturally towards sleep, you seem to wake up again. ...

You close your laptop, walk through the front door or finally finish the last call of the day, and almost automatically head towards the kitchen. Perhaps you pour a glass of wine while making dinner, eat a handful of crisps while deciding what to cook, break off a piece of cheese every time you open...

You have eaten dinner. You know you have eaten enough. Yet twenty minutes later you find yourself opening the cupboard looking for something else. Perhaps it is chocolate, toast, crisps, biscuits or cheese. You may even stand there thinking, Why am I doing this? I cannot possibly still be hungry. Fo...