With all these fancy ideas I’ve picked up here and there on how to lose weight, I seem to have forgotten that nothing really beats counting calories.

Gone are my Jenny Craig and Weight Watcher days when I had to maintain a very strict diet to the point that I had to weigh my foods …. still, I should have paid more attention to the calorie counting portion of both programs.

I think I got duped into the modern way of thinking that cutting out carbs, going vegetarian or even taking diet supplements can give me the edge in losing weight.

Most people who are on diets are on them because they have problems with portion control and/or proper food selection. So if you have a problem with this, then how successful will you be on a strict diet? In reality, not at all. There are thousands–hundreds of thousands of people who are consistently on diets: the Atkins, South Beach, the Zone diet, the Grapefruit diet, etc. These chronic dieters jump from diet to diet and if they achieved any REAL fat loss then they shouldn’t even mathematically exist!

I’m going to outline a few step-by-step approaches to get the most out of your fat-loss plan, while making the minimum adjustments.