Easy To Gain, Hard To Lose. It's easy to gain pounds, but it can take ten times as much time to lose them. For example, on a long Christmas weekend, you decide you'll eat whatever you want with the promise that you'll diet in earnest when the New Year begins. Let's do the math:

• Long weekend: 4 days times 5,000 calories per day promising "I'll diet after the holidays" = 20,000 calories

• Daily energy expenditure = 80 average calories per hour times 24 hours = 1,920 calories per day. 1,920 calories per day times 4 days = 7,680 calories burned.

• 20,000 – 7680 = 12,320 calories over what you've burned, divided by 3,500 calories per pound = 3.52 pounds gained in 4 days.

To burn off the extra 12,320 calories you must eat at least 500 calories per day less than you burn. Burning 500 calories per day more than you eat should be the minimum goal, otherwise losing the weight can take a very long time. Of course you'll lose weight faster if you can burn say 1,000 calories per day more than you eat, but for this discussion we'll set the rate at 500.

At this rate it will take 24.64 days of dieting just to get back to your "before the 4 day eating holiday" event! And this is assuming you only "ate whatever you want" for just four days. Many people eat whatever they want over about a ten day period around Christmas-time. The math on that amount of extra calorie intake can result in months of needed dieting.

This framework is important to understand because in order to become and remain thin you will need to learn how to navigate all the days when you must eat at least 500 calories less than you burn. Now that you know the reality of gaining weight, what can you do to get on a plan where you are burning 500 calories more than you eat?

There are many strategies to do this; those discussed in my book called Diet Motivation Secrets but also in dozens (hundreds) of books from popular online booksellers. One strategy is to prepare all your food ahead using 95% or more whole, single ingredient foods, and have all of your cooked food with you all the time. This strategy can largely eliminate the need for will power.

There are only two ways to have your food with you all the time:

• cook all of your food yourself the day before, – or –

• join a diet program where your food is suggested and/or prepared for you.

You will find amazing amounts of motivation to stay on your diet when you prepare all of the food you will need to eat for the entire next day the night before. This one technique alone can make your diet successful! If you can find a way to prepare proper foods ahead of time and keep them with you always, you will lose all the weight you want and you'll keep it off.