During my college and medical school days, I spent a large percentage of the little money I had on weight loss. I bought healthy smoothies, shakes, protein bars, supplements, fat burners, books and other crap I did not use. I even bought organic foods. I did not have to buy expensive exercise equipment because my school came with a great gym...which I never used. During that eight year period, I gained over 80 pounds. Why? I was not ready to lose weight.

Before you start trying to lose weight, you must make sure you are ready to lose weight. If you are not ready to lose weight all of your efforts will be in vain. To assess your readiness you should be able to answer yes to the six questions in the first article and the six questions in this article.

7. Are you ready to stop blaming others, your situation and yourself?

There are a million reasons for why you are overweight. You could spend the rest of your life blaming everyone and everything for you being overweight, but your time would be better spent trying to create and execute weight loss strategies.

8. Are you ready to take control of your life?

The only person keeping you from losing weight is you. Until you accept full control of you and your life, you will never achieve your goals. You have to grab the steering wheel of your life and drive the car where you want to go.

9. Are you ready to stop making excuses?

The road to failure is paved with great excuses. There is a solution to every excuse you have.

10. Have you addressed all the distractions in your life that could impede your progress?

It is hard to make lifestyle changes when you have large distractions in your life. If you are going through a messy custody battle, wait until it is over to change your diet. First remove the distraction or wait for it to pass, and then start your weight loss program.

11. Do you believe that the rewards that come from weight loss outweigh the time and energy you will have to invest?

If losing weight is not really important to you, then you probably will not lose it. You must have a good reason to get you through the difficult times.

12. Do you believe you can and will lose weight?

In order to lose weight, you must believe that you can lose weight. If you do not believe you will do it, then you will not be able to.

If you have answered "Yes!" to all twelve of those questions, then you are ready to lose weight. So get up and go do it.