My three-point plan

Many people lose weight in different ways, and some people find it more difficult than others.

As many people will have read in the newspapers recently I was 18 stone when I left school. It was awful – I was very unhealthy, and only ate fatty foods.

Last week, a resident wrote to me asking for advice and practical suggestions to loosing weight. In response, I wrote back with three key ideas. Let's call it my three-point plan:

1) Self discipline and will-power
2) Exercise
3) Eating sensibly

I’ll go through these one at a time –

1) Self disciple and will-power. I would encourage you to take a photo of yourself now, and stick is on the wall in your house. That way everyday you will look at it and feel encouraged to lose weight. You’ll need to mentally commit yourself to changing the way you look. This also involves changing the way you think. Often we put on weight easily because we are not very self-confident and have low self-esteem. If you start to think positively and always say to yourself ‘I can do this’ and ‘I will do this’ your attitude to life will start to change

2) Exercise. It’s always difficult to start exercising. Our bodies often get into a rut and like to do things ‘the same old way’. Start by choosing an exercise that you enjoy. For instance – if you like walking then commit yourself to walking 1 mile per day. Each day walk faster and speed up the amount of time it takes to walk the mile. Gradually, over time you will feel the walking getting easier and easier. From then try other forms of exercise.

3) Eating sensibly. Dieting does not have to be boring. Start dieting by choosing healthy foods that you like. I started with banana, yoghurt (the healthy varieties) and cereal. The good news is you can eat as much of these as you like. Eat these kinds of foods with one hot healthy meal per day. Try to completely avoid chocolate, crisps, cake, chips, burgers etc.

If you can commit to this you should see the weight drops off over a few weeks.

Ultimately, if you really want to lose weight it’s all about will power and self-discipline. I believe that we, as individuals, can do anything as long as we put our minds to it and believe in ourselves.

Remember change can happen – you just have to believe in it!

MP fails to help... again!

Last Friday I spent the afternoon visiting some of my residents in Peasedown St John – helping with various issues and listening to their concerns.

On my rounds I bumped into a young mum who is struggling to find somewhere to live. She is currently staying on her Mum’s sofa and desperately needs to find a place of her own.

She told me she had been in contact with the Council’s Housing Department to ask for her old reference number (the housing application system has recently changed) which she had lost. I was horrified to hear that they had told her ‘It’s in the basement and we’re not going down to look for it’ – If this is true I am going to go mad! A council is a public body, its councillors and staff are there to serve the people in the area it covers.

This young mum’s plight for somewhere to live re-iterates just how frantic the social housing situation has become. There are currently over 6,500 households in our area waiting for a ‘council house’. My party has been campaigning for months for many of the empty properties in the district to be brought into social housing use (similar to the case in Mendip District Council where landlords are given financial help to bring properties back into use).

At a meeting in January the Conservative in charge of housing confessed to me that he did not have any idea of the number of empty properties in the area and seemed uninterested in trying to tackle the 6,500 (and growing) waiting list.

Since becoming a Councillor in May 2007, helping with social housing problems has been a huge challenge for me. But, I got involved in politics to help people just like this young mum. It is they that need that extra bit of help, support and encouragement.

This same conversation also sparked up another issue – something else that has been bugging me for some time. The young mum started by telling me she had been to see our local Labour MP – Dan Norris. Her words to me were ‘he’s s#@t’. She had been to visit him some months ago but since has had no response and has been completely unhelpful.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this. Over the past two years this is something that I hear more and more often. People go to visit our MP and he is no help at all – in fact, does not even appear interested.
It is when I meet people like this young mum and hear her story that I realise how useless and ineffective our MP is. It’s upsetting to think that the Labour Party, which was founded over 100 years ago to fight for and defend working class people can no longer be bothered to even help those that need it the most.

I must thank Dan Norris for one thing though. It was through meeting him in 2000 (when he visited my school) that I felt inspired to go into politics… and join the Liberal Democrats.

Meeting him made me realise that we had little in common and if I wanted to join a political party that really did stand up for people then the Labour Party was no longer it. (Just like this young mum, I didn’t feel he was at all interested in what I had to say and he couldn’t even give a straight answer to a question I asked him.)

My conversation with the young mum left me feeling more than ever that we need a definite change at the next General Election. Our Labour MP and our Labour government are clearly not working!

I know this won’t come as a surprise to anyone but my support will whole-heartedly going to Gail Coleshill – someone that for the last ten years has stood up for hard working people and believes in the same kind of change as I do.

Change can happen – we just have to believe in it.

For information about Gail Coleshill visit www.gailcoleshill.co.uk or www.nes-libdems.org.uk