Many people try to trick their body into losing weight; the problem is that this rarely works. Your body knows what it needs, and when it starts craving something you much better off giving in to it in controlled ways, than try to totally deprive it. In the next couple paragraphs I want to help debunk these diet tricks, and explain the costs associated with them. Hopefully you can use this to help maximize your weight loss by focusing on the old standby, good nutrition and proper exercise.

1. Many people try to skip meals, especially breakfast, in their quest to avoid calories. This is just the wrong attitude to have. Breakfast especially helps dictate metabolism, and a higher metabolism will burn more calories throughout the day. More than this, your body needs to eat in a regular fashion. When you skip lunch, you will be extra hungry at dinner and your body will crave more food than you would normally have. This overeating will quickly sabotage weight loss. Also, skipping meals usually leads to having more snacks – again, defeating the original idea of eating less. In general, skipping meals is just the wrong decision.

2. Another mistake people make is to forbid sweet treats and only allowing themselves "healthy" food and snacks. This sort of prohibition will typically fail because you will burn out on your healthy snack and binge on something unhealthy and sweet. Giving yourself a controlled amount of the sweet treats will help control your cravings for things like sugar and keep you successful in cutting the calories. A balanced diet means that you can have SOME deserts, not that you can’t have ANY deserts

The bottom line is that you need proper nutrition in order to succeed in losing weight. You can’t deprive yourself of too much or you simply won’t have the nutrients and vitamins your body needs to be healthy and lose the weight. Taking a multivitamin can be a great way to maintain a, balanced, nutritional intake while allowing you some flexibility in eating some treats now and then. Multivitamins act as a safety net for your health – and successful weight loss almost includes the balanced nutrition they provide.

3. A final mistake that many people make is to spend too much time in the gym. Yup, I wrote, too much time in the gym. There is such a thing! Your body needs exercise, but it needs the right amount, not too much. The first reason that spending too much time in the gym will fail is that you set yourself up with unrealistic goals. Starting a weight-loss program with the goal of spending 2 hours on the treadmill is just too much; begin with smaller times and work your way into it. Another reason that spending too much time in the gym is bad is that you can easily over workout your muscles and injure yourself. Your body tells you through sore muscles and painful joints the right amount of stress to put on it; don’t overdo it or an injury will simply set your weight loss back even farther.

A good way to lose weight is to exercise the proper amount. Set small goals and build up strength and endurance over long periods of time. This will let you work out smarter and lose weight better.