“Diet" is a word that invokes a variety of emotions from a variety of people. Some people see the word as a set of rules to be followed when you need to lose weight, yet others see it as a general eating habit. Here we will look at “diet" as a little of both.

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.

There are an awful lot of people out there who seem to think that losing weight is just that, subtracting pounds. But, that is a double edged blade, paying attention to your weight more than how your pants fit can hurt your future progress. This is due to the fact that poor quality weight loss also means that you are just as likely to lose weight in the form of muscle as you are in the form of fat.

This brings me to a big issue I have with many diets: the fact that weight loss and good health can often be at odds with each other. All too often diets will heavily restrict certain types of foods or call for a huge reduction in calories. Neither of these are types of diets are healthy and should be avoided.

Losing Weight

Weight loss is simply the product of burning more energy, calories, in your daily lives than the amount that you eat. When you eat more calories than you burn you gain weight in the form of stored fat. However, burning fat when you lose weight isn't as easy as putting it on. This is due to the fact that muscle is just as easily turned into energy as fat is, if not easier, this means that if you just sit around all day eating your cabbage soup you will lose a lot of weight, but much of it will be in the form of muscle loss. This is very poor quality weight loss and will make it harder and harder to continue losing weight.

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.