Some people wrongly believe that food is the culprit behind their weight gain. To be honest, this is just another misconception. Just as a tool can be used both in right and wrong ways, the same can be said about food. Assuming that food is a 'tool', if you use it wrongly you would gain weight for sure, but it is possible to use that same 'tool' for the purpose of losing weight, provided that you learn to use it right. In this article I will tell you how to use food in order to shed unwanted pounds from your belly.

1. Snacking ain't bad, but check your snacks closely: If you thought that snacking in between meals is not favorable for weight loss, you couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, experts actually recommend snacking in-between meals as it is a good way to keep yourself full at all times. If you are hungry, you are more likely to gorge on junk and fatty foods than otherwise.

However, you need to make sure that the snacks you are eating are not unhealthy. It is easy to see the difference between a carrot or an apple and a packet of chips; the former is healthy and the latter is not. While chips would add more unwanted pounds to your body, apple would help you burn those fat deposits. Now you know which snacks to go for and which ones to avoid, right?

2. Choose the right fats: Fat is not all bad, as some think. Cutting down drastically on your fat intake may affect your health negatively, while on the other hand consuming fat in the form of junk and fatty foods would make you overweight.

As a matter of fact, there are two types of fats out there: the saturated or 'bad' fat and the unsaturated or 'good' fat. Saturated fats are available in plenty in junk foods, and they do nothing except expanding your body in inches and pounds. On the other hand, unsaturated fats found in canola and olive oils keep your body healthy.

Needless to say, you should prefer unsaturated fats over the saturated ones; unsaturated fats can also be found in fishes such as salmon and tuna.

3. Choose protein over sugar: Do you eat sugary foods simply to become more energetic? Here is the real truth about sugar: while it provides you a sudden outburst of energy, that energy lasts only for a temporary period, after which you feel fatigued and hungry all over again. What follows next is gorging on more sugar-rich foods like a hungry wolf.

And the fun part is that the more sugary foods you eat, the hungrier you feel. And do you know what does sugar do once it gets inside your body? It immediately converts itself first into glucose and then fat.

Here is a better and healthier way to gain the same amount of energy: eat protein-rich foods. Protein would help you burn fat by building muscles, and the more fat you burn, the more energetic you become. Foods such as lean chicken meat and eggs are rich in protein; I usually have eggs for breakfast and chicken for dinner.