No matter how you cut the cake, in order to lose weight you are going to have to focus on a few different factors. People dream of losing weight without changing their lifestyles, but this is a flawed mentality. Losing weight for every person involves finding a way to eat fewer calories than their body uses every single day.

Most people don't realize that this is a necessity. They think that by simply running or walking, the weight will come off. They don't know that they can still gain weight while running, if the amount of calories they eat exceeds the amount they use. Let's say that you eat 3,500 calories per day and your body uses 2,000.

You could go run four miles and in doing so would probably burn about 750 calories, depending on your weight and metabolism. Even though you ran four miles, you would still have an excess of 750 calories in your body, which would result in a weight gain of about 1/5 of a pound. That means you're going to gain a pound about every week, even if you run four miles per day.

This is why the best weight loss method around is to make sure your diet stays under control. If your body uses 2,000 calories per day, you will have to eat less than that to lose weight. The other option is to eat about 2,000 and make up for it with exercises that can burn additional calories.

It's all about the calories folks, and you're not going to like the next step in this lesson. I would start counting how many calories you eat each day. If you do this for a few weeks, you will have a good idea of where you stand. You can then start to cut excess calories to start lowering your intake. I would recommend lowering your intake by about 500 calories, and then giving it about a month to see what happens to your weight.

If you have lost weight in that time period, you know that you are at a good caloric level. If your weight stays exactly the same, you will need to lower your intake even further or take on some cardiovascular exercise. To achieve best results, you need to know what calorie range you should get yourself into. This is achieved by testing different intake levels with results.

Eat less and move more. This is how it's going to be achieved.