Suppose that at a distance you see a short, stooped figure walking with short, slow steps. Most likely, you will conclude that the person is old. The hunched posture gives you the clue.

Why does aging contort so many bodies in this way? The reason is that many people, throughout their lives, never extend the neck to its full range, and so the muscles shorten. Long hours of reading, sewing, typing, or standing at a workbench take their toll. Eventually deposits of calcium salts in the joints complete the process of immobilization. Once this calcification takes place, nothing can be done to reverse it.

It is a widely publicised fact that over 90% of dieters fail to lose weight in the long term, this is because diets are far too restrictive for people to accept as a permanent feature of their lives. All changes to your diet should be permanent, so that your weight loss is permanent too.

So what changes can be made? You should be looking for multiple small changes to your eating habits, changes that are easy to make and and easy to keep to. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself if you will be able to keep to the change for the rest of your life. If you answer yourself “no” then it’s probably better not to make the change in the first place, since any gains will be offset once you come away from the change.