Want to reshape your body and lose some excess body fat? Well forget the millions of diet books that focus on less food, less energy and ultimately less you. If you have ever been on a diet you will know that dieting is like banging your head against a brick wall.

Dieting is a period of deprivation intended to control the amount and type of food you consume with the idea that your excess body fat is going to magically disappear if you can endure it. Dieting sucks, with its big list of don't dos imposing on your freedom, your strength, and your life.

A diet is defined as any eating plan that has you eating anything less than 1200 - 1500 calories per day and usually produces the exact opposite of what you are trying to achieve. Diets are dangerous and debilitating, slowing the metabolism (the body's engine) reducing energy levels and punishing the soul.

So, toss out every diet book you have and be prepared to be free from this negative activity and say hello to a body you will want to live in and be happy with for the rest of your days. To make a shift that lasts you need to reprogram your mindset that there is a far better way to tackle the problem of excess body fat.

Start thinking more rather than less, more activity, more food, more energy, more strength and a whole lot more out of life. Part of this mind reprogramming is that you need to see yourself participating in a proper exercise program and that you can see your increased strength and improved fitness level and the resulting loss of excess weight as central to creating a more enjoyable life for yourself.

The key factor in reducing excess body fat is keeping your metabolism revved at maximum level throughout your adult life. This gets a bit harder as you get older as your body becomes less effective at burning fuel (calories). This is mostly because of a gradual decrease in your activity levels and the resulting loss of lean muscle tissue. Your metabolism can drop as much as 25 -30 per cent over your adult life if you let it.

As a result, your body tends to store excess calories in the form of - you guessed it - body fat, and that extra weight only slows you down more rendering you more and more inactive. The solution is so simple; strength training exercise can give you back that lost muscle tissue boosting your metabolic rate by as much as 10% in just twelve short weeks.

You can increase it even further with an eating plan that eliminates all processed food and focuses on whole foods and small meals every 2-3 hours throughout the day. You once again have to change your mindset, think "I have to eat for fat loss" rather than "I have to eat less for fat loss".

Your strength training program will shift your body into high gear, burning 200 - 300 more calories per day and that doesn't take into account the energy expending during your workouts. This will stimulate positive hormonal changes that will rev up your cellular engines to burn more fuel. This is what will take care of the excess body fat without the soul destroying act of depriving yourself of energy producing food.

Allow yourself to get excited about the fact this is all so simple. Just get started on your exercise program with the help of a fitness professional to ensure your program is going to produce the intended results. Make sure that your results are monitored.

If you just wing it thinking that you know all you need to know about proper exercise you may be wasting valuable time and effort when you could be much further down the path to a new, stronger, fitter, slimmer you with the correct information.