Quickest Way To Lose Weight

An Interval Training Program for All Fitness Levels

Turbulence Training is a phrase coined by Craig Ballantyne, who invented the method.

As a strength trainer and regular contributor to Mens Health, Mens Fitness and Oxygen magazines, Craig is well regarded in the fitness industry.

The idea of this program like all high intensity training is to spend less time on and get optimal results from your workout.

If you are looking to spend only 3 days a week at your workout…

…and aren’t particularly fussed about attending a gym (that’s optional, you can work out in the gym or at home), this program is worth a look. It will take 45 minutes a session.

Unlike other programs involving cardio interval training, this program is suited to beginners with “Introductory Level Turbulence Training” as well as currently fit people.

You work out at the level you can handle and yet still achieve measurable results; of course the fitter you get, the faster the results come.

Body weight training is not intended for body builders…

…who want muscle mass. If that is what you seek, check out this review of Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle which gives specific and detailed diet and exercise information for every body type. If you follow the turbulence program you can expect to lose body fat and become lean and toned.

You do this with 5 minutes body weight training warm up, 15-20 minutes of strength training combining rather than isolating muscle groups and 15-20 minutes of cardio interval training.

The high intensity training workout changes every two to 4 weeks, depending on your level of fitness.

To get a free taste of Turbulence Training you should just …

…download a FREE copy of Craig’s 4 week program. You’ll notice that every exercise is explained with color photos (featuring Craig)

Several exercises are quite similar to what you may have seen in some yoga classes, increasing both functional and core strength.

As with other quality fitness programs, Craig offers a no questions asked 8 week money back guarantee. It’s no risk.

This program suits people with limited time who can commit to 45 minutes a day 3 days a week.

If you want to cut down time spent on cardio …

… and are not fixated on lifting weights Turbulence Training should suit you.

Working with body weight training gives you maximum flexibility for minimal equipment needed.

It might not be a glamorous equipment focused “look at me” workout method, but it works and YOU will certainly look glamorous once you get into it and lose your excess fat forever.

You can even listen to the audio files that explain the exercises, if that is your preferred learning style.

If you love weight machines or marathon cardio workouts as opposed to cardio interval training, this high intensity training workout is not for you.

If you want to get fit and gain lean muscle tone, however, this simple program will do it for you.

Go to Turbulence Training to get a good close look at Craig Ballantyne’s quality program

You can conquer food cravings if you are determined in your efforts to lose weight and keep it off.

What causes food cravings?

Well several things can be coming into play.

Your body could really need some sustenance to keep it well fuelled.

However, it is more likely that you do not feed your body the right food at the right time of day and therefore your stomach is craving food.

You may have made a habit of eating particular treats in certain circumstances.

Food cravings are a bit like the conditioning Pavlov applied to dogs in his stimulus/response experiments.

If you have created a habit of long, leisurely afternoon teas or night time treats, you start to crave food – sugary, fatty and/or salty treats every day at the “right” time and place.

Controlling food cravings means a re-alignment of your daily food intake .

If you are eating the bulk of your food towards the end of the day and starving your body by skipping a proper breakfast and lunch, you are setting yourself up for food cravings.

“I need a sugar hit” is an excuse for sliding a diet busting bar (or three) of saturated fat down your eager gullet. You will not “need” a sugar hit if you eat at regular intervals throughout the day.

Small meals consisting mainly of complex carbs, unsaturated fats and protein will inhibit food cravings.

Always eat a proper breakfast and lunch in order to conquer food cravings.

Prepare attractive to the eye, healthy snacks for mid morning and mid afternoon.

Have them on hand to stop you heading out in search of a nutritionless greasy spoon or a sly fat-filled vending machine.

Eat a small dinner and have a nutritious snack about an hour after your evening meal.

Recognise the “eating by association” habits you have grown into and devise tactics to avoid them.

You can go for a walk, ring a friend, bath the dog – anything that gets you out of the place and time where you would normallystart thinking about little treats and giving in to your food craving.

Craving food comes on and goes away again like a wave. If you can hold out against food craving for 20 minutes, the moment will have passed and the next food craving you get will be less intense and easier to ignore. Willpower can be learned, but only if you really want to learn it.

You must ensure, however that you are eating properly and fueling your body well or you will not manage to conquer food cravings.

In western cultures irritable bowel syndrome affects around 20% of the population.

An ibs diet can effectively relieve the symptoms of this syndrome.

Unlike ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, ibs does not cause inflammation or changes in bowel tissue or increase the risk of colorectal cancer.

It does however cause great discomfort and can be quite disabling. It may aggravate your hemorrhoids. It may interfere with your work, relationships and mood. It tends to be a chronic problem.

Ibs can be managed with a diet that includes plenty of high fiber foods, regular exercise and active stress control.

In mild cases, you just need to develop any one of a number of healthy diets and an active exercise program that suits you.

In moderate to severe cases, your doctor may recommend fiber supplements and anti-diarrheal medications, anti-depressants and counseling. Quite serious measures. For an irritable bowel syndrome diet, you cannot be indiscriminate with high fiber foods. You want more soluble fiber foods rather than insoluble fiber foods.

When you just cannot ingest enough high fiber foods, fiber supplements made from natural products may be the solution for you even in the medium and long term.

A mild but effective anti-diarrheal “medication” to complement your irritable bowel syndrome diet is the cheap and simple charcoal tablet. Buy them over the counter and take as many as you need.

High gas foods to avoid on an ibs diet include carbonated beverages, salads and raw fruits and vegetables – while most fruit and vegetables can be lightly cooked for your ibs diet, you should try to avoid cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower most of the time.

An irritable bowel syndrome diet that is effective for you, like all healthy diets, should take note of the following.

Eat at regular times.

Don’t skip meals, especially not breakfast. Eat small meals often. 5–6 meals are optimal for all healthy diets. Get into a routine of eating at set times of day.

Avoid problem food.

Not only the high gas foods that harm an ibs diet – keep saturated fats and simple carbs to a minimum of your daily food intake.

Be careful with dairy food.

If you are lactose intolerant, try yoghurt. It’s a great food for healthy diets. If you do not eat dairy, you must find another good source of protein, calcium and B vitamins.

Drink plenty of water.

2 liters a day is a good baseline amount. Drink more when you exercise and when it is especially hot weather.

Alcohol, tea and coffee can exacerbate diarrhea.

Carbonated drinks increase gas build up. You really don’t need that. You should not include these drinks in your irritable bowel syndrome diet.

Get some regular brisk exercise.

Exercise will cut down your stress and stimulate your intestines. Walking is ideal; low impact, easy, cost free and invigorating.

If you are serious about losing fat, then you need some aerobic exercise as part of your weekly workout routine.

Aerobics is not confined to a specific fitness class at the gymnasiums.

The most popular forms of aerobic or cardio exercises are walking, jogging, running, cycling and swimming.

Anything that elevates your heartrate to 80% maximum capacity and keeps it there for a minimum of 20-30 minutes is good aerobic exercise.

To calculate your maximum heart rate, subtract your age from 220. To get 80%, divide that number by 5 and multiply by 4.

You can check your elevated heart rate when exercising by finding the pulse in your neck, but it’s much more convenient and accurate to use a heart rate monitor for this.

The most common mistake people make when undertaking aerobic or cardio exercises is to go too slow.

Any exercise is good exercise, but if your objective is losing fat, you cannot just shuffle along or you will not achieve the gains that you are after.

Walking is the best of aerobic exercise for weight loss. It requires no training and little equipment. Invest in a good pair of shoes and clothing that whisks the sweat away from your body so that you do not chafe.

Walking can be done anywhere at any time and if the weather is too bad, there is always the treadmill at the gymnasium. Here you can even read a good health magazine while you step it out.

Running and jogging lift your heart rate easily to an aerobic level, but you need to be devoted to them and not prone to ankle, leg or back injury, as both these activities are high impact on your legs.

If you run at the gym the treadmill provides a safe and level surface. You can also jog or run using an elliptical trainer, which is a very popular piece of exercise equipment at all good gyms.

Swimming, like walking, is low impact and it suits some people very well. Keep in mind that you are limited by time and location and weather to some extent, especially if you happen to be a keen ocean swimmer.

Cycling is another low impact activity and an excellent method for losing fat through cardio exercise.

Like walking, running and jogging, you have the all weather, controlled gym environment if you favour a stationary exercise bike.

Of course, you can always invest in a treadmill, elliptical trainer or stationary bike for use in your home at a convenient time and place.

It can be very confusing.

You will be told that low carbs diets are excellent for you to lose fat.

You will be told that a low carbohydrate diet cannot work. What do you believe when both arguments seem quite sound?

Low calorie diets mean that we have to cut back plenty of the things that have grown used to eating and we do tend to eat a lot of carbohydrates to pacify our food cravings.

Not just simple carbs that are nutritionally poor like white bread and cakes but also complex carbs that provide us with slow burn energy like rice, potatoes and pasta that we are used to eating as part of our night time meal.

Cutting down on carbs, especially night time complex carbs can be difficult.

For many people, a dinner plate is incomplete without a helping of potatoes, be they fried, mashed or steamed.

So the main reason why you will be advised not to set yourself up for failure with a low carbs diet is that it simply goes against the eating patterns we have established since childhood.

You need determination and discipline to break this long ingrained habit and not surprisingly many people just don’t manage to.

The truth of the matter is that this type of diet does strip the fat off you very quickly in comparison to other methods of weight loss.

Carbohydrates turn fairly readily to fat deposits when we do not burn them up; more readily than excess protein. That is why high protein, low carb diets can work, so long as your protein is lean.

Forget the fad bacon and egg diets, it’s just wishful thinking. High protein diets mean lean fillets of chicken, beef, pork or fish, not fatty cuts of meat.

The bulk of the carbohydrates you will eat are best consumed for breakfast in the form of muesli, fruit, wholegrain bread and milk.

Most of the rest of your carbs should be taken in at lunchtime so that you can avoid the afternoon hunger cravings that have doomed many a diet.

Dinner time should be mainly protein plus some vegetables or salads (but not potatoes) followed by fruit or berries and low fat yoghurt for desert.

Yes, vegetables and fruits do contain a measure of carbohydrates, but their high fibre factor means that they are digested more slowly and therefore not likely to affect your efforts to lose fat.

To get a beautiful female body for life you’ve got to act like a man

Act like a man?

That’s right, get in touch with your masculine side.

When it comes to looking after themselves in respect to their bodies and all other aspects of their lives, men know a couple of vital secrets that women don’t know (even fat and unfit men know these secrets!).

These 2 vital secrets for a womens fitness program are simple, smart and they will give you immediate results.

You will move comfortably in your skinny jeans, you will lose the jelly belly that makes you sad and angry and frustrated.

You will be very pleased with yourself and feel great every day

Yes, these 2 vital secrets for womens fitness are simple, but you may not find them easy.

That’s because from the dawn of time, women have taken on the role of nurturing and pleasing those around them.

Weight loss for women has taken a back seat to looking after the needs of everybody else.

Women routinely gain self worth and satisfaction from pleasing others.

But you want to get fit, be healthy and look and feel incredibly attractive, don’t you? Weight loss for women cannot remain an unattainable dream. You have to start of the body for life that you desire right now.

So, in order to get the fit and healthy slim and sexy body of your dreams, you’ve got to drop the habits of the female gender and act like a man for womens fitness.

You have to do these 2 simple things

#1 Be Selfish

That’s right. Do something for you and you alone every day.

Of course you can learn to do this. Just watch the men.

Think of no one but yourself in achieving your fat lose dreams.

Decide on the workout routines you are going to go for and when you are going to make time for them. Plan and complete all of your workout routines.

Do not waver with the pressure from other commitments.

Make exercise the top priority in your day. Practice saying “No” to anything and anyone that keep you from your womens fitness exercise.

The positive effect of caring for yourself for an hour a day is that when you focus on your regular womens fitness workout routines, you become less stressed, more resistant to illness and more able to give quality rather than quantity to your other responsibilities.

Your family, friends and colleagues will grow to respect that your time is valuable and not simply theirs for the taking.

Everyone wins because of your unswerving commitment to looking after yourself.

#2 Stop Multitasking

Men concentrate on one thing at a time, women multitask – and we’re insanely and inexplicably proud of this ability to take on too much at once.

Look, multitasking can be stressful and totally unproductive if it is your usual daily mode of operation and it will totally defeat your capacity to get fit.

Effective weight loss for women and men requires the sort of single minded focus that multitasking simply destroys.

Focus on your workout routines and block out all distractions. Your brain and body need time out from juggling all those cats and chainsaws at once.

You need time to let go of the complex and embrace the simple and straightforward.

Your fitness exercise time must be a “multitasking free zone”.

What More Can You Learn from Men about Womens Fitness?

Some important “do and don’t” rules for womens fitness to get your ideal body for life

Don’t Eat Like a Man

Men burn more calories, even at rest.

This means that you should never eat as much as a man – even one of similar height and build to you. If there are men in your household, their food portions should be larger than yours.

If you have a man who cooks, you need to gently stop him from giving you man sized portions – he needs to understand that he is not starving you by giving you less than he wants to eat.

Do Train Like a Man for Womens Fitness

Many women favour cardio/aerobic workout routines and certainly walking, jogging, running, treadmill exercise, stepper and stationary bike work will make you lean and toned if you do enough of it at the right intensity.

Most men prefer weights with a little cardio mixed in.

Weight loss for women should include weight training workout routines because weight training will give you well defined lean muscles and a shapely sexy body for life that cardio tends to fall short of especially if you are an ectomorph (hard gainer) in body shape.

If you are an endomorph or female mesomorph, cardio becomes more important to you for effective fat loss.

Traditionally male multijoint exercises such as the deadlift, leg press and lunge are excellent for overall muscle tone and should not be avoided just because “you’re a girl”. These whole body exercises are excellent for womens fitness routines.

Don’t Lift Like a Man

For well defined sleek muscles on a slim and beautiful female body for life, don’t lift weights like a man. Core fitness for women is different from that for men. You do not seek explosive power or bulging biceps.

For most women a full body workout 3 times a week plus some cardio on other days is enough to get you the attractive body you crave.

Go for light weights, 2-3 sets and lots of reps (15-30 per set) to develop lean rather than mass muscles.

Most women don’t want the muscles of a man and generally speaking you are not in danger of getting them unless you work out awfully hard with very heavy weights.

But if you have naturally big calf muscles, don’t target them. If your shoulders are wide and strong, you don’t need to build more muscle on them.

Look at your individual body shape critically and dispassionately (yes, like a man) to decide exactly what you need.

Recommended Reading for Womens Fitness Programs

Ladies fitness training programs do not have to involve lots of fitness equipment at an expensive gym.

* An excellent exercise fitness program comes from personal trainer Craig Ballintyne. It has no bells and whistles. But it works.

If you need to have all the latest gimmicks, Craig’s program is not for you. Turbulence Training is great for womens fitness if you are the kind of woman who wants to work out in your own time in your own space without spending big dollars on home fitness equipment.

Read my review of Turbulence Training here.

* If you yearn for a sexy flat stomach, then you can’t go past The Truth About Six Pack Abs. Mike Geary has produced a program especially for women and at his site.

It’s worth a visit as he gives away a lot of useful information and tips on health fitness and how to get a hot body.

* Information is power and the most detailed and correct information I’ve seen on weight loss motivation, diet and exercise.

Tom Venuto tells you exactly the diet and exercises you need to suit your particular body type (ectomorph, endomorph and mesomorph) in his extensive Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle.

Read my review of Tom’s program here.

You’ll probably want to lose belly fat if your 6 pack has turned into a keg.

Or if your bikini belly has adapted for traditional bly dancing.

How to lose belly fat is the concern of the vast majority of overweight people. Perversely, to lose this fat is probably the most difficult of weight loss tasks.

Abdominal muscles are big and like leg and back muscles, they take more time to train into lean muscle than say biceps, that respond quickly because of their smaller comparative size.

Whether you want lean muscle on your midriff or a stand out 6 pack, you are going to have to work for it and be patient.

There are 3 things you need to do to make the most of your abs. You have to get onto a low fat diet , because any fat around your middle will hide your abdominal muscles, no matter how toned they are. You will need to take up a serious, energetic cardio habit to complement the diet and get lean.

You will need to do specific exercises that target your abdominal area as well as whole body exercises like the squat, deadlift and leg press.

So you see, to get a 6 pack or to be totally lean through your midsection, you have to really want it and work for it.

As far as your diet goes, as well as eating the right foods in the right proportions, you can benefit from reputable diet products, especially fat loss supplements and meal replacements. If you simply want to be toned, get walking and expect your belly fat to start shrinking quite noticeably after 8-12 weeks of brisk walking for 45 minutes to 1 hour 6 days a week.

At around the 6 month mark, the tightening of your abdomen will be very noticeable, no matter what weight you started off with. Keep on walking and you will continue to lose your belly fat slowly but surely.

If you are after a rock hard abdomen or a lean muscle mass to replace your lost belly fat, then you can use specific ab workouts that target this area.

But you cannot bypass the cardio exercise, because if you have any significant amount of fat around your midsection, you can develop the best abs on earth through resistance training, but no one is going to see them because they are hidden behind your belly fat.

There are several excellent programs on the market that you might like to consider. Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto does not just target abs, but is the most detailed and comprehensive text on the subject of diet and fitness that you can download. I have written a detailed review of the Burn the Fat program for you.

Sample Tom’s direct no nonsense style by downloading this FREE report he has written specifically for developing your abs.

Mike Geary also has a very good ab program on the market, where he focuses on sculpting 6 pack abs. He has written several free reports available at his website. Two of his most interesting articles on the subject are The best 3 ab exercises that aren’t called ab exercises and Get Visible Abs.

You’ll notice that Mike is not a fan of long cardio workouts, though he does admit that cardio done correctly does play a part in losing belly fat.

If you are a hardgaining ectomorph, it is worth having a look at no nonsense muscle building a program created by a man once known as “skinny Vinnie” who is now a champion fitness model in Canada.

A high protein diet plan will give you energy and cut down your food cravings.

On a high protein diet you will lose fat and gain either lean or mass muscle according to how you train in conjunction with your high protein, low carb diet.

A protein diet plan is a good idea for anyone wishing to lean out or bulk up.

Protein has received some very bad press over the last few years, but with a sensible high protein diet plan, you will do no harm to your body.

The word “protein” is derived from a “Protas” a Greek word meaning “of primary importance” and the ancient Greeks had it right.

Protein is an essential element of any balanced diet . It is responsible for muscl maintenance and building and tissue repair.

It contains hormones and enzymes essential for our bodies to function properly.

Protein breaks down into amino acids, some essential, some non-essential.

Without enough protein, (how much protein is enough?) we leave ourselves open to a much greater risk of disease and infection and if we take in too little protein long term, our body functions will begin to shut down.

People who are wary of protein are often not thinking of the types of excellent protein sources you would see in a list of high protein foods.

They are usually thinking of a mixed grill type diet of fried eggs, bacon, sausages and lamb chops that are not only sources of protein but swimming in saturated fat. It’s the fat, not the protein that is the problem here. Meats are a great source of protein, but you still have to be very selective to get the right cuts without the fatty bits.

Here is a list of high protein foods for a high protein diet plan to help you not only with your choice of meats but of all of the basic ingredients for your protein power diet.

List of high protein foods

• Chicken breast (a better choice than legs or thighs for maximum protein)

• Lean red meat without much visible fat (fillets are ideal)

• Pork fillet or cutlets

• Fish (don’t avoid oily fish, the omega 3 is a bonus)

• Eggs (the whites are the best bit for protein)

• Cheese (also high in fat, so limit how much you eat)

• Cottage Cheese (amazingly high in protein and low in fat. A great evening snack with a little fruit or a few nuts)

• Milk (skim is best for low fat)

• Yoghurt (go for the low fat types)

• Legumes (peas, beans, peanuts…all decent sources of fibre as well)

• Grains (rice, wheat, corn and rye are great; they are also a decent carb source)

• Nuts (walnuts, almonds and cashews are the best and lower in fat than other options)

• Seeds (especially pumpkin, sesame, sunflower and flaxseed – all good in a breakfast muesli mix)

• Lentils (high fibre, low fat)

• Soybeans (soy flour is a good substitute for wheat flour in recipes. Soy is a major ingredient in many commercial protein drinks)

Protein from natural food sources is important for your daily diet, but for a high protein diet plan that really addresses the needs of your developing muscles, you should look to protein supplements to feed your muscles before and after workouts.

Protein supplements in the form of shakes made on water or skim milk or protein bars are also great mid morning and afternoon snacks. They inhibit food cravings , help burn fat and provide slow release energy to your system.

how to shift your stubborn belly fat for good

Ab workouts are essential for building six pack abs, but they are not the “be all and end all”.

Download this free report by ab flab guru Mike Geary to learn the 2 vital secrets for losing your belly fat.

You should receive a confirmation email once you subscribe, but if not, do check your junkmail.

Now back to those Ab defining workouts.

Ab workouts can be done as extremely long sets (up to 100 repetitions) with low resistance or as much shorter sets for strength training (of around 10-12 repeats) with some extra resistance added in.

If you want lean muscle, go for longer sets; for stand out abs, do the shorter sets with more resistance or weights involved.

You have to realise at the outset that no matter how many ab workouts you do a week (and you can work abs every day if you want to) you are never going to see the results of your efforts if you do not follow a low fat diet and do plenty of energetic cardio.

You can have excellent ab configuration, but your waist will actually look bigger if you don’t get rid of the fat in front of your abs.

For some specific and accurate advice on ab workouts for 6 pack abs, download this FREE report “Mission Abs” from Tom Venuto. Tom is the author of the best selling diet and fitness E-Book on the internet, Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle.

There are different movements that target different sections of your abdomen. The most popular and generally successful workouts include:

Crunches and sit ups: Sit ups will work your entire abdominal wall while the bench crunch (with your legs raised over a bench) will work on middle and upper abdominals. Lower and middle abs can be worked with the Roman

Chair sit up, which you can adapt to a fitness ball exercise, hooking your feet securely under a cupboard or bench, then slowly and carefully raising and lowering your upper body.

The instability of the fitness ball encourages the development of extra core strength. To add that little bit extra to these types of exercises, you can twist through the movements either with or without weights.

Leg Raise: A hanging leg raise will work on your lower abdominals and it will work best if you can develop the strength to raise your legs straight out in front of you rather than bending the knees for each repetition. The slower you take it, with a pause at the top, the better your ab workout will be.

Seated bent knee raises, where you bring your knees in to your chest will work the frontal abs.

Side Bend and Side Twist: To work your abdominal obliques, try side bends with or without weights. It’s best to try without weights until you get the movement right.

Side twists will mobilize the waist area (intercostals) as well as giving greater flexibility to your obliques.

Make sure you fully engage your targeted muscles during the exercises you do by squeezing and holding that contraction. No matter what abdominal exercises you choose, you need to ensure that you do them properly and slowly, using correct form.

Otherwise, your considerable efforts will be minimized and you could well end up with a literal pain in the neck from overstraining the wrong parts of your body.

You can get a sexy flat stomach or stand out six pack with correct exercise and diet.

Mike Geary, who wrote the very popular E-Book, The Truth About Six Pack Abs has a lot to say about full body workouts that not only work on your abs, but tone the rest of your body at the same time.

He is not a great fan of cardio, except for high intensity interval training. He has written some very interesting and informative articles on the subject of six pack abs, including The 3 Best Ab Exercises that aren’t called Ab ExercisesThis article, complete with color photos details one of the best “ab workouts” that doesn’t include any direct “ab exercises” at all.

A simple diet plan is the way to start your weight loss journey.

Over time you can add variety to your simple diet, even amending it to be a simple low carb diet , but to start off with, the simpler the better.

You may choose to start your change of lifestyle with a detox diet. Simple, for sure, but it can be a big shock to your currently spoiled and overfed body.

The key word to “a simple diet plan” is “plan”. You have to plan your meals well in advance.

When the time comes to eat each day, you know what you will be eating, how much you will be eating the nutritional and calorie value of everything you put in your mouth.

Detailed, accurate planning is essential for your success.

A simple diet plan that you read in a health magazine will probably give you instructions for 7 different breakfasts, lunches and dinners and 14 snacks per week.

Unless you are fixated on your kitchen and cooking is your all consuming passion, such a diet plan is setting you up for failure.

And your beloved family pet is going to get massively fat on the leftovers. Of course if the magazine recommends a detox diet, simple!

You eat or drink very little of not much until the toxins are expelled from your rather shocked body. Detox diets work, but they are a short turn fix only, allowing your body to rapidly rid itself of toxins. You have to keep a careful eye on yourself if you go for detox. Make sure you don’t stay on a detox diet for very long. Don’t allow yourself to get faint or exhausted.

By all means, go for a detox if you want to, but your body will balance itself out all by itself if you give it enough time. So try this instead.

Plan to eat the same breakfast 5 days a week, with a variation to routine at least one day of the weekend.

Your breakfast of choice should revolve around unsaturated fats, complex carbs and protein. Eggs, wholegrain breads, fruit, yoghurt and high quality breakfast cereals are all good breakfast choices.

You should choose something you like or something you can learn to like, because forcing yourself to eat something just because it is good for you is not going to make you happy or successful with your diet.

Healthy simple snacks are the thing for mid morning and mid afternoon. Plan to eat them every day and prepare them in advance.

These should be fruit, raw nuts, low fat yoghurt and protein bars or shakes made on skim milk or water.

Lunch should be salads with lean meat or fish and wholegrain bread. Lunch is when you can go for your potatoes, rice or pasta as well. You can use up the energy through the afternoon. So rather than hitting the 3pm slump, you will continue to function well your whole day long.

You can alternate a range of lean meats and fish with steamed vegetables for dinner. Limit pototoes, rice, breads and pasta at night for a simple moderate/low carb diet option.

Desert is an extinct animal, but a bowl of low fat yoghurt with fruit about an hour after your dinner will stave off food cravings at night when they tend to do the most harm.

A protein bar or shake is a reasonable alternative to the fruit desert if you’ve not done the shopping or you feel like a change.

The incredibly popular Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet program makes the claim that you can lose 9 pounds in 11 days. Read my candid review of this “idiot proof diet” to learn what the truth of the matter really is.