These are the desirable weights calculated on statistics gathered in the United States by life assurance companies. Height is measured in bare feet; weight in minimum indoor clothing.

It is permissible to be 4 lbs (1.8kg) above or below this mean average without being considered either over or under-weight.

There is one rule only: eat nothing that is made with, of, or contains either flour or sugar. Ever.

This cuts out many more foods than would appear obvious on first consideration. Sauces usually contain flour, so do dishes like souffles and casseroles so it is not only items like bread, pasta and biscuits that have to be avoided. And sugar is one of the major ingredients of many convenience foods, from soups to stews.

Learn to check out ingredients of every dish and go easy on alcohol with this diet. Too much will weaken willpower as well as activate the taste buds so that they yearn for both sweet foods and carbohydrates.

On this diet most men lose three to four pounds in the first week. The rate of loss is more gradual after that but it is, nonetheless, an effective diet.

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Face up to it. You are no longer young — but you are not old either. You are somewhere in between. Have fun certainly but do it sensibly and at no risk to your health, family or future. Don’t be the fool at the party who pays the bills and takes the gang back to his place for a nightcap and some music. Be the man people want to invite to their parties, the one they look forward to seeing but the one who goes home at a reasonable hour, his image intact, with his friendships close and valuable rather than transient.

The same reservations apply to dressing-young. Let people like you for what you are not the fake image you are projecting. Life is not passing you by; you are just not the man you were many years ago.

A London therapist says: a man who projects a false image of himself, through clothes or the way he lives, fools himself. In the long run living-young and dressing-young, whether he does either consciously or subconsciously, only contribute to making life less easy in the future. If he is not careful he will find the fact that he is getting older over the next few years the most depressing years of his life. The gap between forty and middle-age is not much. The sooner he adjusts to the changes the better and, quite likely, the more successful he will be. The forties really can be the best years.

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Of course not all these diversions are symptoms exclusive to the male-menopause nor are they likely to affect all men equally as they pass through the crisis. Some behaviour patterns like flashing in the park are often symptoms of a mental disturbance that is totally unconnected with M-M and require psychiatric therapy.

In their search for experiment and experience many men turn to homosexual encounters ‘just this once’ and, having made an opportunity occur, will pretend their unusual actions are due entirely to over consumption of alcohol and claim not to remember a thing about the encounter the next morning. However, as a result to this just-once occurrence many find in themselves a latent homosexuality that they enjoy. With trepidation they then develop a habit of frequenting gay meeting places and a taste for serious homosexual friendships.

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‘When we met we were both forty. My marriage was over but his was a daily trial without a future. Now he has shed twelve pounds, looks great and his career is on the up. We have fun, we travel and the six children we have between us get on fabulously.’

Diana, survivor’s second wife, London.

It has been observed by some sociologists that the rate of divorce around the forty age group is inordinately high in percentage terms when compared with other age groups. Of course this is not due exclusively to the male-menopause but the male-menopause may well have a lot to do with it. Divorce is just one of the many reactions of M-M men as they seek change.

By this age both husband and wife will have developed strong, individual values and if they married when between twenty and twenty-five, now around fifteen years later, there is no reason why they should have matured along the same lines. Some will have naturally grown closer together but many will have developed different values and needs compared to those of their earlier years. Sexlife may have become routine, spasmodic and not very exciting.

Although there is no statistical proof, through observation it has been concluded that at this age menopausal men seek divorce in order to start again, specifically, to remarry. (The majority of non-menopausal men divorcing seem to prefer to enjoy their new found freedom rather than remarry at the earliest opportunity.)

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By publicly identifying the turbulence they attempt to get away with whatever self-indulgences they feel like, claiming that at this irrational time they are no longer responsible for their actions. A man will ignore his wife, girlfriend or family, spend extravagantly, buy a red sports car or jeep, chuck in his job and generally do what he wants to and blame it all on one thing, the male-menopause. For him it offers a built-in excuse: life is out of his control.

Unlike the woman’s menopause which is due entirely to physical change within the body, the male-menopause comes about purely through emotional upheaval with the problems of having an aging body as an additional physical irritation. When evaluating life everything can appear in order — home, work, money, family, pets and acquisitions — yet the menopausal man is disturbed, unsure of himself, dissatisfied. Life is not what it should be and to make matters worse he notices he is getting old: wrinkles, less hair, backache, flabby waistline, bottom slung lower, possibly a need for reading glasses or an operation for varicose veins; all these going towards proving there is a physical decline he is powerless to prevent. And to top all this he may also find he has a less playful penis, a desire to live it up fast with a young set, a dependence on drink or drugs or other equally debilitating emotional problems that are ready to undermine his already fragile state.

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