Calorie count

Who hasn't heard that phrase before? If you want to lose weight, calorie count.

Simple advice, but does it work and if it does, what techniques can you use to make it effective for you?

Achieving a reasonable weight loss often requires a number of lifestyle changes if you want to have a long term, lasting success. Simply reducing your daily food intake is all that should be required lose weight and slim down, right? Well the plain truth is that such a simple strategy may not produce the desired results.

When you only count calories weight loss is often more difficult to achieve. Actually, simply reducing your caloric intake can actually slow your metabolism and restrict overall weight loss. Have you ever been on a diet before and lost some weight? Did the weight come back on when you stopped dieting?

Precisely the point. Calorie restriction on its own doesn't work. There are millions of people - literally millions - who try just cutting calories, sometimes to extreme low levels, and they find that it's not sustainable.

If we accept the view that we must do more than just count calories for weight loss, then real long term and significant weight loss will be something that we can look forward to and, in fact, actually achieve.

One of the problems with just reducing calories is that your body is very clever. It actually becomes more efficient at processing those calories. That means you need fewer calories than you did before you started dieting. In other words, you have to reduce your calories even more to get the same effect. Taken to extremes calorie counting can cause your metabolism to go into 'starvation' mode - it hangs onto everything you eat. And as most of you have already experienced, as soon as you eat normally the weight comes back and usually brings some friends with it.

So what other aspects of our personal lifestyles should you address to lose those unnecessary pounds? You've probably heard this many, many times before, but an appropriate amount of exercise is also critical to lasting weight reduction.

Changes in diet alone typically won't be enough for you to achieve the weight loss results you're hoping for. Instead, safely and gently increase your levels of physical activity as well as cutting out unnecessary eating.

Activity is essential to your overall well being. If you rely solely on reducing calories weight loss is more than likely going to be much more difficult for you to achieve, because you need to raise your energy levels and boost your metabolism when you reduce the amount of food in your diets. That 'resets' your metabolism, making it a more efficient fuel burner. And the fuel it burns is the food you eat.

While it may be appropriate to cut back on your daily food intake because you're exceeding the amount of calories your body need to function properly, cutting back too harshly or too quickly will likely have very adverse affects on your ability to lose weight. It's actually counter-productive.

The bottom line is that you simply have to ensure that also you're getting the right amount of exercise as well as monitoring your calories.

Remember, these are just general weight loss principles and each person is different so the number of calories you need and the level and type of activity that's right for you is individual to you.