How do your summer months look for you? Are you the kind of person who stays on task and keeps things running smoothly during June, July and August? OOORRRRR, are you like me and any kind of routine goes out the window as you deal with: kids being home, camps, summer leagues, vacation, social gatherings, and all things "summer."

In all of my years in this line of work, there has been one reoccurring problem that I have never found a painless, effective, reasonably priced solution for. With weight loss, a lot of times there is excess skin that remains that can be annoying, frustrating, and sometimes painful.

There are so many things in our lives that we try to balance, that there is always something that gets shortchanged. A lot of times, that "something" is YOU! Finding a good rhythm in your life can make your balance more achievable. Take all of the things that are priorities to you and rank them in order of importance. Block out times in your day to fit in things that you don't feel you have time for.

As we age, it becomes more important than ever to stay at a healthy weight. Doing so makes all of the other issues we face because of Mother Nature/Father Time not quite so horrible. Try your best to keep extra weight off. Try to keep healthy habits a part of your daily routine. Fight like mad to hold off these affects aging will have on all of us.

I am so against monitoring your progress by what the scale tells you, that I don't even own a scale. A person can be doing everything as perfectly as possible, but if that number on the scale doesn't show what they had hoped, none of your hard work matters. If you're a slave to the scale, I challenge you to have someone hide your scale for a week or even a month. Continue your healthy lifestyle choices, write down the positives you're experiencing from those choices, and then (if you have to) weigh yourself to see what that number is.

For as long as I can remember, I have heard people say they hate to exercise. Honestly, in saying this, you simply have not found something you enjoy doing. "Exercise" can be pretty much anything that gets you up and moving. Exercising does not have to be putting on certain clothes, going to a certain place, and making yourself drenched in sweat and miserable.

In over 20 years in the weight management industry, I have seen trends come and trends go. What I have always held onto is this----there is not one single program that is perfect for everyone. As I recently entered my 51st year of life, I now also hold onto this----our bodies and requirements for maintaining our health changes and evolves every few years. Here is what I have found works best for me now (and mostly for the last 4-5 years), I am most successful with weight loss/weight maintenance when I graze. This is a pattern of eating multiple, small, healthy meals throughout the day. Grazing keeps my hunger under control, my metabolism kicking, and energy levels where I need them to be.

Life is all about relationships. Family, friends, food. The first two are obvious, but that third one is tricky. When it comes to food, do you feel you control food or food controls you? Understanding this is monumental in establishing healthier lifestyle habits. Too often we use our emotions as an excuse to over-consume. We eat when we are happy, sad, angry, stressed, bored, mad. If you use one or more of these emotions as an excuse, you are not alone. BUT, we need to recognize this and find a non-food-related way to deal with these emotions.

When you "blow it" with the healthy lifestyle choices you're trying to make, do you immediately get back on task? Or do you think, "Well, that didn't work. I will try again tomorrow (next week, next month, etc.)" In every journey we go on in our lives, we will fail at some point. We are human. There is no reason to beat ourselves up over setbacks. It is through our failures that we learn what to do/not do the next time.

How is everyone doing on stepping up to the 4-week water challenge? It is the #1 most important lifestyle change that we can make to improve our overall health.