It is a fact that people search on the internet three times more often for diets and diet pills than for fitness and exercise. It should really be the other way around but people usually try and find a short cut to losing their excess body fat. Although $30 billion is spent on weight loss each year the main thing people are losing is their money not their weight.

There are no short cuts unfortunately to getting into better shape. If the pills and diets worked surely we would not have a global health problem with two thirds of the population overweight or obese.

It is a sad fact that 95% of diets fail due to a combination of hormonal changes and muscle tissue loss that is brought about when calories are reduced below a certain set point. If this set point is reached the body and metabolism slows and goes into a protective mode against starvation.

If body fat is going to be lost successfully then the only way to do this is to work on becoming as healthy as possible. A healthy metabolism (the body's engine) is the fat burning machinery that will burn off unwanted flab using it for fuel.

If you have not been eating regularly, avoiding doing a proper strength building and maintaining exercise program your metabolism has probably dwindled down like a fire that has had no wood thrown on it for a while. To make matters worse you may also sit a lot, at your job, in the car or at home on the couch watching television.

Without the right physical activity and the right food to support the exercise program you will just keep on gaining fat. If you do nothing to halt this and turn it around you are going to have a major health issue on your hands down the track somewhere.

Diets and diet pills are not the answer as they are only looking at the very short term. You may lose a little weight. That is until your body kicks the counter balance that is hard wired into our genes into gear. But what about after that, what will you do when the weight piles back on? And very likely more fat than you had to start with as your body prepares itself for the next assault you are going to throw at it.

If you are serious about losing weight you have to do what it takes to get healthy. You need to start a proper exercise program that contains mainly strength training exercise. This is the only activity that is intense enough to speed up your metabolic engine so it burns more fuel. Forget the long, slow, mind numbingly boring activities such as walking, jogging or cycling that were popular back in the 1980's.

If you enjoy these things, keep doing them as part of your active lifestyle but do not confuse them with a proper exercise program if you wish to lose body fat. It is important that your program is done correctly, with the right technique, the right intensity, the right duration and frequency. Only a fitness professional will be able to teach you these things so you get the very best results from the input of your time, money and effort.

Don't be one of the 95% who get it wrong. Invest in some help and have someone who knows what they are doing monitor your progress and teach you what you need to know so you can manage your weight forever yourself. The more tools you can acquire the easier it will be and the better the results will be.