Caloric balance of your food intake and exercise is important. The best way to achieve a negative balance (and lose weight) is by exercising (increases your burning of calories) and dieting (lowers your caloric intake).

Dieting means eating less than normal. Let's assume your weight is stable. If you reduce your intake by 10%, you'll lose weight. 100% guaranteed.

There are many, many ways to diet. Some are simple, some are complex, some are popular, and some are less-known. Some work, some don't.

A few easy, global changes can be applied to your eating habits, which will produce dramatic results. Your general habits should be your primary focus, because in the long term, they determine how you eat (and how you look).

Ever tried a diet? If you're lucky, it worked. Until you stopped dieting. And that's absolutely expected. Your body shape is not permanent: it fluctuates with your food intake. So as soon as you revert to your old eating habits, your body shape reverts to what it was before you dieted. That's why diets don't work in the long run: you must change your eating habits. There's no way around it.

That's worth repeating: to change your body, you must change your eating habits. There's no secret, no magic pill, no short-cut, and diets don't work long-term.

From this point on, "to diet" will refer to reducing your IN progressively by changing your eating habits, and not drastically restricting it until you can't hold yourself anymore.

ACTION STEP 11

Did you ever diet? Did it work? If it did, for how long? Once you stopped dieting, did you gain the weight back?

ACTION STEP 11 REVISITED

Ask at least 2 people around you if they've ever dieted. Ask them if it worked. Then take advice only from those who succeeded, and ask them if they ever got back to their old eating habits after they lost weight.