Think of your bank account. A positive balance means that you put in more than you take out, and an overdraft results if you spend more than you put in.

Your body is exactly like your bank account, and your weight quite simply will increase if you put in more calories than you spend, and it will decrease if you spend or burn more calories than you put in.

However, there is one major difference. An increasing positive bank balance is healthy. But an increasing and positive calorie balance is unhealthy, because your body keeps storing these excess calories as fat, with a resulting increase in weight.

One way to lose weight is to get an account book and keep a detailed daily record of the estimated calories for everything that you eat on the credit side, and an estimate of all the calories that you burn each day on the debit side.

Estimates of calorie values for food, drink and various forms of exercise are available on many websites and in many diet books.

This is a simple system, I have used it, and it works, but it does require a lot of discipline to record everything in detail.

For a much easier and more enjoyable way to control and lose weight   click on this link   and read what Fat Loss 4 Idiots suggest.

Their system is based on stimulating your body to burn extra calories because of the combination of foods that you are eating. It is a very flexible system and easy to follow , because you select the foods that you like.

They have three different dieting programs which you can choose from.

The one I like allows me to select what I want to eat from a list, and they generate a menu for each of 4 meals daily for eleven days.  Then I get three days off eating anything I want.

I can repeat this cycle as often as I wish, and although I have never been able to follow any diet, I am enjoying this one and it is working.