If you have tried those weight loss programs where you have to keep to a strict eating plan and follow a particular exercise regime you may have found it a bit of a struggle to keep going.

Chances are you gave up after a few weeks or even a few days. When we start out full of enthusiasm it's difficult to see the sheer effort that it will take to keep going when the novelty has worn off, it's a wet Tuesday in February and we're just plain tired of it all.

Some people do manage to makeover their lives overnight. It's fantastic if you have the willpower and determination to achieve this but most of us can't handle that much disruption to our lives all at once. We are already struggling to keep up with all we have to do each day.

So what do you do if you know your willpower is likely to give up on you when the going gets tough?

Try the Singular Success Method!

This involves changing your life one habit at a time. You decide which habits you want to adopt and you work on them one by one, integrating them into your life until they feel quite natural.

Once you're happy that you can take on something else, you add that into the mix and you keep adding new habits only at the rate you can handle them. In this way you can transform your life and your shape over the course of a few weeks or months without the hugely stressful sudden overhaul in your lifestyle.

You may find you're happy to tackle two habits at once - one where you concentrate on your intake of food or drink and another where you concentrate on moving a bit more and that will make the process faster. You just have to make sure you take on only what you can handle at any one time - given all you have going on in your life.

And the best thing of all about this method? You achieve success after success and that brings its own momentum - you're not constantly left feeling like a failure for not keeping up an impossibly ambitious change in your lifestyle.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small