The body works on a simple system when you are talking about gaining or losing weight. Either you are consuming more energy(calories) than your body uses everyday, or you are consuming less energy than your body is using. As long as you eat less calories than your body burns, you will lose weight...period! Now, this can take place in two different ways. Either, you eat fewer calories than your body burns at rest, which would be a normal day without exercise, or you eat less calories than you burn during a day in which you do exercise.

At rest, a normal person burns around 1800 calories a day, give or take a few hundred calories depending on the person. A person who exercises at least 30 minutes can burn up to 2200 or more calories a day depending on the exercise. This is why most people begin to lose weight when they exercise. In essence, they are doing an activity that increases their normal daily calorie burn. Most people tend to find a balance in what they eat verses what their body uses. If you are eating too many calories, you slowly begin to gain weight. If you are eating a low calorie diet, then that same person will begin to lose wight.

The great thing about just watching the calories that you consume is that you can absolutely eat ANYTHING that you want, so long as you keep your calorie count below your normal level. Yes, you heard correctly...this is the easiest diet in the world. Eat what you want, and lose weight; the only catch is that you have to moderate how much you eat. You can eat alot of low calorie foods if you have a big stomach, or you can eat less higher calorie foods. Either way, you will lose weight if you consume less calories than you normally burn in a day.

There are plenty of books and guides available for you that will tell you what foods contain what calories. In many cases, foods are labeled anyway, and that label will let you know how many calories that particular food contains. After you learn the calories for the foods that you normally eat, you'll be better able to determine how much of those foods you can consume in a 24 hours period.

There is a difference between losing weight, and getting healthy. Yes, in many cases, weight-loss can be healthy in of itself, however, losing weight shouldn't be considered healthy if that is all that you are doing for your overall health. Proper exercise will improve your cardiovasular health, and give you more energy each day. So, now that you know how to lose the weight...the only true way to lose weight, you can use this to drop the pounds without spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on useless material. Combine this new knowledge with a steady workout plan each week, and you'll never have to live the fat life again.