My wife has never in her previous 40 years of life ever struggled with her weight. That was until 5 years ago when she slowly but steadily started to accumulate an extra 35 to 40 pounds. She emphatically declared that she refused to buy any larger sized clothing and her wardrobe steadily began to shrink as fewer and fewer items were wearable. Her normally cheerful demeanor began to steadily disappear. Cutting back on the quantity of food we were eating, reading food labels and exercising were no longer sufficient. It was time for serious action. She got in touch with an old friend of hers that has been in the wellness products industry for 12 years and explained her predicament. Her friend said that she knew of absolutely the best weight loss program on the market. If my wife would commit to follow the program the pounds would simply fall away.

As mentioned before I was totally committed to supporting my wife and in so doing I discovered that I also needed to lose 20 pounds. The question then became "what weight loss program should we use to achieve our goals?" We sat down together and made up a list of parameters that were important to us that we could use as a template to compare the many weight loss solutions on the market. With no disrespect to my wife's friend we wanted to come to our own conclusions. Here is a list of the requirements we came up with:

• The program had to be none prescription.
• It had to be non-invasive. Injections or laxative type products were off limits.
• The program had to help us lose weight in as natural a way as possible and it could not be a "crash diet".
• It needed to be minimally disruptive to our normal diet.
• It needed to be sustainable. Yo-yo weight loss was not an option.
• The diet had to be at least slightly flexible (different flavors to avoid monotony, and different ways of consuming the product).
• It also had to be reasonably priced.
• It had to have nutritional value in addition to weight loss functionality. It had to contain a minimal amount of, or no, "fillers".
• The company had to have been in existence for 10 years or more so that we could feel comfortable that the product had survived rigorous scrutiny.
• The product design team had to be respected nutritionists and scientists backed by a major research institution.
• We had to purchase the product from people that could provide local follow-up and support and not just off the shelf of some "big box" store. We wanted to deal with people that were interested in our individual weight loss success.
• There had to be a large database of weight loss success stories relating to the product.
• We did not want to have to calorie count, or assign points to everything we ate.
• We did not want to have to attend weekly meetings.

This list reveals that we had high expectations. Anyone tackling the serious challenge of weight loss should be similarly demanding. What we put in our bodies is hugely important. The consequences of rash decisions can be disastrous as some of the widely publicized weight loss product horror stories in recent history can attest.

The happy ending to this tail is that my wife and I found a product that aligns perfectly with the parameters we established. I lost my extra 20 pounds in 5 weeks and my wife has lost 25 pounds to date. Hopefully the list we assembled will be a helpful template for you to use as you evaluate your weight loss solutions and the pursuit of optimal health.