Well, millions of Americans do, to the tune of billions of dollars a year.

With over 60% of us overweight,  it’s time to grow up and give up that fairy tale once and for all.

Everyone wants to be fit, fabulous, and fancy-able, with little or no exercise, while still being able to eat whatever they want.

Sorry, that is a fairy tale. And a dangerous one.

There is no such thing as eating whatever you like without consequences. Even thin people would start to pile on the pounds if they did not engage in any physical activity.

Also, our metabolisms change as we get older. Just look at athletes who blow up like balloons as soon as they retire.

There’s NO magic pill or potion for weight loss.

A diet bar is not going to take the place of a good solid, satisying meal, and you will probably only rebound after a couple of days and devour everything in sight.

Shakes are full of carbs more often than not, and along with the diet bars, probably contain a lot of not so healthy ingredients and a lot of fat, because fat helps you feel full.

All these fast fixes will never work. We all know what does: successful weight loss still comes down to a simple formula. You have to burn more calories than you take in.

Calories are a measure of the amount of energy provided by the food you eat. The more calories you eat, the more energy you are giving your body. If you give your body more energy than it can use the body will store it as fat. If you start to diet, it will break into those fat stores, and you will start to lose weight.

But that is a big if. You have to get the whole process kickstarted, and that isn’t easy because it takes about 2000 calories to put a pound on, but about 3000 to 3500 to take it OFF.

And then there is the dieter’s plateau, where the person gets to a point where the scale just won’t budge. Why? Because your body is hanging onto that fat in case of famine. So you have to convince it to keep on letting it go, which often means even fewer calories and even more exercise.

Sounds terrible, right? No wonder so many diets fail!

So let’s call it an eating lifestyle rather than a diet, and let’s look at it from a budgeting point of view.  If you know you only have $20 to spend per day because you are saving up for, say, a great cruise, you try to stay within that $20.

So now let’s look at your calorie budget. Just write down everything you eat in one day. If it comes out of a package with calories labeled on it, great.

If it is a piece of fruit, say, or a potato, go to a calorie calculator online and type it in, then write down the number there.

You can keep track of your daily calorie intake easily if you have a free google gmail account by going to
www.google.com/ig/
and logging in and adding the little widget to your personalized desktop.

There are many good calorie counters on the web, this one is fun and gives nutritional information on the foods as well, and also helps you to be able to read a food label
http://thecaloriecounter.com

The average man is supposed to take in 2500 calories a day, for a woman, 2000.  If you want to lose a pound a week, you would need to shed 3500 calories from your diet, as an example.