Diet can mean two very different things; one meaning is something we do in order to lose weight, a set of rules to follow to this end, a second meaning is a general eating habit, which will be different for each person.

There are two main reasons why people go on diets. 1) They have some medical condition that requires a better eating habit such as high blood pressure. 2) They would like to lose weight or slim down.

When you make the decision to lose weight you need to ask yourself a very important question, "Am I doing this so I can weigh less or so I can fit into a smaller pair of pants?" That may seem like a silly question but it's actually very important and will determine what you do on your diet. Too many people depend fully on what the scale tells them, not on how well their clothes fit. Multiple problems can stem from this; one of the main ones is the issue of losing muscle as well as fat. If what you're looking to do is slim down and fit into smaller clothes then basing your progress on your scale at home will only slow you down.

This is why I have such a big problem with so many of the fad diets that exist out there, they can help you lose weight but they can also be very unhealthy. When a diet calls for a great reduction in the amount of calories you eat every day, such as the cabbage soup diet, or require you to cut out a large chunk of your daily diet, such as Atkins does, you can run into health problems and a very poor quality weight loss, one that when the diet is over, you are very likely to just gain all the weight back that you worked so hard on losing.

Losing Weight

I will talk a little bit about how weight is lost, and when I say this I'm talking about weight from fat, not water weight or muscle weight. Essentially fat is energy that your body had too much of and is storing for use when food may be in short supply. So, if you deprive your body of energy by eating fewer calories than it requires for its daily functions, your body will turn to other sources for that energy. Those sources are typically fat and muscle. This is why exercise is so important when you want to lose weight, if you don't use your muscles your body won't think it really needs them and will use a lot of muscle for energy instead of fat.

So, keeping all the muscle that you currently have, or even adding some will greatly assist you in your weight loss endeavors. Unlike fat, your body needs to burn calories to keep muscle around, so, by adding some muscle through light resistance training, you will be upping the amount of calories your body needs to burn every day just to stay going. So, by not exercising, your body will think that it doesn't need all the muscle you have, thus burning it for energy, and when that happens you will use less energy just to stay alive, thus making it even harder to continue losing weight.

This brings me to my next topic: exercise. As much as most of us hate to do it, exercise is incredibly important in high quality weight loss (the loss of body fat as opposed to muscle or just water). However that doesn't mean you have to go join the local gym and pump iron for 2 hours a day or train to run a marathon, it just means you need to work that muscle a bit so your body keeps it around. There are many different exercises you can do at home that don't require any additional equipment nor do they demand too much of your time, but will still get the job done. But the best exercise will always be finding something that you enjoy doing, such as swimming, kickboxing, aerobic dancing etc… And remember, finding a partner will help with motivation and boosting the fun factor of it all. So, remember, what you eat is very important in losing weight, but exercise is just as critical. Find a partner, find a sport or other activity that you enjoy, do anything, just as long as it's active. I promise that you will succeed where others so often fail.