When you are starting out on a diet it is important to remember that you are not just trying to lose weight, above all else you want to lose body fat.

The amount of calories that you consume on a daily basis will determine whether you gain or lose weight and this is one of the most important aspects of any weight loss program that you decide to go on.

Studies have been taken where overweight people believed they were eating no more food than other people they associated with who were considerably slimmer than them. The overweight people were under the false impression that the reason why they were heavier and gaining weight was due to their body's metabolism.

When keeping a record of their food consumption over a specified period of time it was shown that they were actually consuming more calories and it had nothing to do with their metabolism but rather their choice of food and the quantities they were eating.

If you want to lose weight there is little doubt that you need to reduce your calorie intake by a set amount of calories per day. This is necessary in order to start burning body fat and to make a substantial effect on your weight in a relatively short period.

Now when you consider the fact that you only need to reduce calories by a set amount, you can see how you can stay nutritionally balanced throughout the whole weight loss process and not feel as though you are starving yourself. Some foods are very calorie dense but they don't satisfy you for long, others are lower calorie but they will fill you up and stop you reaching for the cookie jar. The key is to discover which ones are which and furthermore which ones are going to nutritionally meet your body's needs.

To lose body fat successfully it is important that you keep your metabolism running effectively and this in turn means that although you are cutting back, you must continue to eat enough and enough of the right foods. This might seem to run counter to the way that you would normally go about dieting, in that initially you might cut back very extremely in the hope of losing as much weight as quickly as possible.

However, all this serves to do is to slow down your metabolism and as it is not sustainable over the long-term you will quickly be back to square one. A much better method is to eat the right foods in the right calorie balance and in this way your body fat will drop and you will reach your target weight in a lean, healthy way.