7 Ways to Know You Don't Really Need to Lose Weight ...

One of the ways to know you don’t need to lose weight is to ask yourself why you want to lose weight. Is it because you want to look like famous women or models that you've seen in the glossy magazines? Those women generally don't eat enough to be healthy; you should only be very thin if that's how your natural body type is.

Is your partner hinting that you could do with losing a few pounds? If you feel at heart that you don't really need to, then you shouldn't let yourself be influenced by someone else's opinion. If you diet just to fulfill someone else's idea of what you should look like, that suggests that your relationship may not be a very healthy one and that you're being emotionally bullied.

Do you like the way you are? Are you fit and healthy? Then you don't need to lose weight. Not everyone is meant to be skinny; women come in many different body types. If you have to diet hard to shift weight, you may be going against your own body type. Be guided by how healthy you are. If you like yourself as you are, do you really need to lose weight?

Any career that insists you need an extremely slim body to be successful is probably not one you should waste your time (and health) on. Both modeling and some retail companies employ young, slim people as this body type is seen as best for showing the clothes off. But forcing your body to be a way that it's not intended is not a healthy way to live.

Girls are absorbing the message from an ever earlier age that they should aspire to be slim. Part of this comes from images they see, but it may also come from teasing. Is someone laughing at you and telling you that you're fat? What they are doing is bullying you, and they're wrong. They're being mean to you because they enjoy it or to stop others bullying them, not because what they're saying is the truth.

Pregnant and panicking about shifting the baby weight? Well, the time to lose the baby weight is not while you're still carrying the baby. Eat a healthy diet and get some gentle exercise while you're pregnant, but wait until after your baby's born and you've recovered before starting to lose the weight - and do it gradually. You still need energy to breast feed and look after your baby.

Finally, if you want to lose weight ask yourself honestly if your goals are reasonable. Do you want to please someone else, look like a celeb, or just tone up? You should lose weight for the right reason - your health.

Have you ever been tempted to diet when you didn't really need to?