One of the most common misconceptions about dieting is that if you want to lose weight all you have to do is eat fewer calories then your body burns. Now don't get me wrong, eating fewer calories will reduce your bodyweight in the short-term, but if that is all you do then you are looking at limiting your success. The human body is a very adaptable machine and will make adjustments to maintain a state of balance. Simply put, only reducing the amount of calories you eat a day will cause your body to eventually slow down the metabolism to a point where it only burn's the amount of calories that you consume. So what do you need to do to insure long-term success in your weight loss program? First of all you will need to make sure that you add both diet and exercise to your program. Excluding either one of these will limit your success and keep you from achieving your full potential.

The next step is to change up the diet so that the body is unable to adapt. The best way to confuse the body is to add a cheat meal at the end of the week. The cheat meal allows you to reward yourself by eating anything that you want. The great side effects of the cheat meal are that you emotionally set yourself up in a position to stick to your diet and you also confuse the body so that the metabolism becomes a fat burning machine.

Other key tips and tricks you will want to use to boost your metabolism are:

1. Eat at least six meals a day - If you eat only once or twice a day you body is going to slow down the metabolism to accommodate the infrequent feedings. When you eat six small meals a day your body gets the nutrients it needs while avoiding the "starvation period".

2. Eat complex carbohydrates such as potatoes, yams and brown rice earlier in the day.

3. Switch to fibrous carbohydrates such as broccoli, salad, green beans for the later meals.

4. Eat fruit earlier in the day.

5. Avoid processed foods and sugars

6. Drink lots of water - Water passes nutrients and waste to and from the cells. You will want to try and drink at least a gallon of water a day.

Tying it all together

Dieting is not complicated but it does require discipline. There are a lot of programs and supplements out there promising amazing results with very little effort. From my experience the only program that really works is the good ol' diet and exercise routine. The key rule to keep in mind is that if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is.

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