Small Frequent Meals: Don’t skip meals or go more than four hours without eating, it sets you up for later temptation. When meals are more than six hours apart, plan strategic snacks.

Eat Moderate Portions: Eat a little less of everything!
Beware of Concentrated Sugars: Excess sugar eaten alone causes more insulin secretion. Insulin promotes fat storage and can result in a rebound drop in blood sugar levels. Low blood sugar, in return, stimulates the appetite, especially cravings for more sugar.

Eat Foods High in Fiber: Fiber fills you up and helps to stabilize blood sugar levels. There are two types of fiber, soluble and insoluble. We need both of them in our diet!

Lower Your Fat Intake: Limit foods that are high in fat. Especially foods containing saturated fat and cholesterol that are known to contribute to cardiovascular disease and some cancers. No need to be overly zealous, just aware and cautious. A little fat in each meal helps to keep you satisfied between meals. Avoid fat in dairy, meats, poultry, tropical oils, liver and organ meats. Focus instead on fats found in canola, olive, soy and avocado oils and fish.

Limit Your Alcohol Intake: Limit alcohol intake frequency and amount. Alcohol ingestion promotes fat storage, and provides calories of its own. Drinking alcohol while trying to lose weight is like having a monkey on your back, progress will be very slow or stalled.

Incredible as it may seem, water is quite possibly the single most important catalyst in losing weight and keeping it off. Although most of us take it for granted, water may be the only true “magic potion” for permanent weight loss.

Water suppresses the appetite naturally and helps the body metabolize stored fat. Studies have shown that a decrease in water intake will cause fat deposits to increase, while an increase in water intake actually can reduce fat deposits.

Here’s why. The kidneys can’t function properly without enough water. When they do not work to capacity, some of their load is dumped onto the liver.

One of the liver’s primary functions is to metabolize stored fat into usable energy for the body. But if the liver has to do some of the kidney’s work, it can’t operate at full throttle. As a result, it metabolizes less fat, more fat remains stored int he body, and weight loss stops.

Drinking enough water is the best treatment for fluid retention. When the body gets less water, it perceives this as a threat to survival and begins to hold on to every drop. Water is stored in extracellular spaces (outside the cells). This shows up as swollen feet, legs and hands.

Diuretics offer a temporary solution at best. They force stored water along with some essential nutrients. Again, the body perceives a threat and will replace the lost water at the first opportunity. Thus, the condition quickly returns.

The best way to overcome the problem of water retention is to give your body what it needs --plenty of water. Only then will stored water be released.

If you have a constant problem with water retention, excess salt may be to blame. Your body will tolerate sodium only in a certain concentration. The more salt you eat, the more water your system retains to dilute it, but getting rid of unneeded salt is easy, just drink more water. As water is forced through the kidneys, it takes away excess sodium.

The overweight person needs more water than the thin one. Larger people have larger metabolic loads. Since we know that water is the key to fat metabolism, it follows that the overweight person needs more water.

Water helps maintain proper muscle tone by giving muscles their natural ability to contact and by preventing dehydration. It also helps to prevent the sagging skin that usually follows weight loss, shrinking cells are buoyed by water, which plumps the skin and leaves it clear, healthy and resilient.

Remember the recommended amount 8 glasses a day changes from one person to another depending on all the above factors. You may need to drink more than 8 glasses a day, but you should not drink less.