Face it, if it really worked, everyone would choose fast weight loss. Why suffer through months of rigorous exercise and restricted diet when you could drop your excess weight off like a snake shedding its, (admittedly loose and lumpy) skin?

Kieren Perkins, Australian Olympic swimmer and motivational speaker is fond of saying:"If I could have won over 100 meters, I would never have become a long distance swimmer - no one would. I just kept swimming till everyone else stopped". You have to do as much as as it takes for as long as it takes to achieve the result you need.

But fast fat loss can work - if you have only a few kilos to lose and normally are not overweight.

Some people can win the fat loss race over the short, fast distance. These dieters are generally those who have put on a few kilos over the holidays or for some reason have broken from their normally balanced diet for a few weeks and have therefore gained, say 3-5 unwanted kilos.

If this is your scenario, you can take up with a reputable fast weight loss diet purveyor, drink some powdered shakes and packet soups in place of eating small, balanced meals, munch on some highly nutritious protein bars, get rapidly to your goal weight, then eat as you normally are used to and keep the weight off. Fast weight loss will work for you.

Fast diets are also useful for folk who have a truckload of weight to lose. Sometimes you just don't know where to begin and need a bit of a kick start. To undertake such a diet under these circumstances means that you can actually see a significant amount of weight come off at the beginning of your diet and this can give you the encouragement you need to embark on a sensible and slow weight control program for the long haul.

The diet you need to undertake for fast weight loss, be it a meal replacement type diet or a low carb diet, will not be easy to stick to. This type of diet requires iron hard discipline to maintain.

The reason many people do not recommend a low carb diet, for example, is that it goes against the eating patterns most of us have had for a lifetime. Imagine dinner without a choice of potatoes, bread, rice or pasta. Actually you don't have to imagine; you can live it for real if you choose a low carb diet.

Slow losing weight is easier to keep to, but only after you have retrained your brain in eating habits and portion control. Also consider that your tastebuds need time to be weaned off the heady flavours of fat, salt and sugar.

Cravings for saturated fat and sugar hits will diminish and all but disappear over time if you give your slow weight loss diet a chance to work.

The trouble is, we all want fast results, generally for minimum effort. I would humbly suggest that if you crave fast results, begin with some sort of fast weight loss diet, stick to it for 3-4 weeks, then switch to a slow weight loss diet, wherein you practice preparing and portioning your own food, so that you know exactly how slow weight loss can work for you.

If you reach a plateau in your diet, consider swapping briefly back to a fast weight loss option to push yourself along again.

Whether you choose the fast or slow weight loss option or a combination of both, the trick is not in your ability to lose weight, which is hard enough, but in keeping weight off, which will be utterly impossible unless you develop an excellent diet and exercise program for life.

It is simple. It is not easy - you have to really want it in order to succeed. But you do really want it, don't you?