Six Rules for Weight Loss

1. Losing Weight for good is a life commitment, not a temporary change. To put it plainly, you got fat because of your current eating habits, so if you go back to them, you'll get fat again. The only way to take weight off and keep it off is to make permanent changes to your diet.

2. Losing Weight starts in the kitchen. Take control of your food and you take control of your weight. Take-out food, restaurant food and convenience foods will make you fat. That is a fact. Portions are too large, and the food contains too much fat, sodium and calories. If you want to lose weight for good, you have to learn your way around a kitchen, and you have to learn to prepare food for yourself.

3. Don't believe advertisements or health or weight control claims on packaging. The goal of advertisements and claims on product packaging is to sell stuff, not make you healthier or thinner. Chances are that if the box says it will help you get thinner, it's more likely that the product will actually make you fatter.

4. Eat better eat less. Eat higher quality foods, such as organic, and eat less of it. Scale down your portion sizes and focus on higher quality foods made from fresh fruits and vegetables. If you eat meat, fish and dairy, go organic. Yes you'll pay more, but you should be eating less anyway. If you go to a restaurant, your goal should not be to get the most food for your money, but the best food for your money.

5. You can't do it alone. If you have a family, you have to bring the whole family along to better eating. You can't sit at the dinner table for the rest of your life eating a salad while the rest of your family gorges on cheeseburgers. The whole family needs to be cutting back on junk foods, meat, dairy and overly processed foods. It's not easy, but if you take it slow and introduce healthy foods slowly while at the same time eliminating unhealthy food, it can be done. Better yet, don't introduce unhealthy foods to begin with, and make things like soda a special treat.

6. You have to move more. Getting to the gym is great, but you have to learn how to incorporate more movement into your daily life. When we were an agricultural society, it wasn't unusual for people to burn through 7,000 calories a day--so they could eat all the bacon and dairy they could get our hands on (which was still less then what we eat today). In today's world, many of us only burn through 2,000 or fewer calories a day. Learning to incorporate more movement into our everyday lives is probably one of the best things you can do for weight control. For example, take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator, take the extra trip up the stairs instead of letting things pile up on the bottom for one big trip up, walk to your mailbox instead of waiting to drive by it, learn to walk around and pace while you're on the phone instead of sitting.