Just recently I was thinking about this problem that you can attack from both ends - eat less calories or exercise more (or both!) - and had something of a realisation that may well help you in your own fat burning efforts.

Let's assume for the sake of arguement that you burn 2000 calories a day. If you also consume 2000 calories a day, your weight should stay the same. This is what I refer to as the "calorie tipping point" - it's the fulcrum or the balancing point of your diet.

Once you find your tipping point, suddenly losing weight can become far easier. If I know what I can eat each day and not put on any weight, I know even a slight increase in the exercise I do (a gentle walk in the countryside for example) or slightly less calories consumed (replacing pasta with vegetables for example) will enable me to lose weight. Maybe not rapid weight loss, but over time I'll lose weight.

What's more, a gentle walk and a few more vegetables isn't exactly a strain is it?

And that's the problem with many weight loss programs - you have to get "uncomfortable". You have to cut out all the foods you love, you have to get sweaty at the gym, you have to squeeze yourself into unflattering and over-tight clothes. You have to get up for a run on a Saturday morning and not go out for dinner on your friend's birthday. It can be horrible. I know that.

However, by applying the tipping point method losing weight becomes far easier and far more enjoyable. Less effort required and a greater guarantee of success.

So if you've tried and failed to lose weight, try making gentle changes to your diet over the next few weeks. Swap your toast and jelly in the morning for oatmeal. Or buy brown bread instead of white. Eat chicken instead of pork. All those things you know you should do. Try them out, making one change at a time and sticking with it.

At some point, you're suddenly going to realise that you actually lost a little bit of weight. It might only be half a pound in a week, but you suddenly realise you've just dropped below that tipping point. And it wasn't so hard.

Now if you fancy a chocolate bar, and you know where your tipping point is, if you really have to eat it, you know roughly how much exercise you need to get afterwards. Or you know a different subtle change you can make to your diet to accommodate that change.

I find that by applying this principle I can still keep a few of the "treat" foods I enjoy in my diet in moderation and with a little exercise 3 or 4 days a week (which I enjoy) I can still lose around a kilo in each seven day period, while still having quite a nice quality of life.

You don't have to give up your social life or the things you love, you just have to "tweak" your lifestyle here and there to find the balancing point, at which time you can successfully lose weight with little or no effort on your part.

And that's the sort of diet that you can continue on indefinitely without effort. And what's better - to lose a pound a week but go on for months enjoying yourself, or lose 4 pounds in a week but hate every minute of it?!