10 Fat Busting Tips to Help Women

1. Drink at least 8-10 cups of water daily. Water not only fills the empty space in the stomach, it helps the entire system flush out the toxins and by-products of weight loss. Adequate water is necessary for all bodily functions to perform properly. Keeping well hydrated will enhance overall health and fitness. The calorie count can't be beat--zero!

2. Eat MORE often not less. Instead of three larger meals and long times between that leave you starved and unable to resist a snack, schedule five smaller meals throughout the day. Always have a breakfast or you will start the day feeling physically frantic for food and end up over-eating. Balanced meals that contain proteins, carbohydrates and fats in the proper proportion from the healthful food groups will help the will power by preventing the between-meal cravings.

3. Beware of absentminded snacking. When cooking, do not indulge in constant tasting. Don't consume a little bit of every meal you prepare for anyone else, or eat just a "sliver" of something in passing. Every calorie counts whether it was part of your planned meals or not.

4. Eat fruit, not fruit juices. Many are mostly sugar-water, supplying little nourishment and high caloric content--most of it pound-packing sugar.

5. Don't torment yourself. An occasional treat of your favorite dessert or dish is fine, if done in moderation and incorporated into the calorie limit for the day. Learning to enjoy foods you love in moderation and still enjoy weight loss is one of the best ways to encourage you to continue your weight loss program. Feeling deprived is depressing and can make you give up easier.

6. Burn Calories with Exercise. No weight loss program will be successful unless it includes a regular exercise program. A daily workout of 30-60 minutes is the general recommendation by most authoritative sources in order to maintain good muscle and heart health. Resistance training—weight training--at least twice weekly also burns off calories and build ups muscles which burn more calories than fat tissue.

7. No Starvation Diet. Crash dieting has been shown over and over to fail. Dieters inevitably gain the weight back and often more, leading to utter frustration. Most such diets cannot possibly provide adequate basic nutrition, impairing health and ability to function. When the person finally stops they have not learned the skills of eating moderately and promptly put all the weight back on.

8. Start journaling your dieting experience. Writing down everything you eat is an eye-opener. You may not realize how often you grabbed a snack, or how much you were actually eating and what foods you tended to eat. A professional dietitian can analyze your diet and guide you on improvements needed that will enhance your health and your weight loss efforts.

9. Get your zzz's. Adequate sleep is a necessity for overall health including healthy weight loss. Developing better sleep habits has been shown by researchers to be an integral part of any successful weight loss regimen.

10. Cut Yourself Some Slack. Dieting should not be an exercise in misery. You should enjoy what you eat, just eat less and add more of nourishing, low calorie items. Take a dieting mini-vacation once a week so you can learn how to incorporate fun foods into your diet for the rest of your life. Successful dieting is not a one-time event--it is a change in your eating lifestyle that should stay with you the rest of your life.