The math is pretty simple. One pound of fat equals 3500 calories. Want to lose a pound a week? Then you need to consume 3500 calories less per week than you use. That’s about 500 calories a day. You can lose one pound per week if you cut 500 calories from your normal daily diet and keep your activity level the same.

All right - that doesn’t sound like much, especially if you’re more than 25 pounds overweight. Study after study has shown, though, that those people who lose weight gradually - at a rate of 1-2 pounds per week -are far more likely to keep the weight off and maintain a normal weight for a lifetime.

So how much is 500 calories exactly? If you are going to reduce your intake of calories but 500 a day, you need to know what to cut out? Here is how you lose 500 calories a day

* Use milk instead of cream in your coffee. Savings? 50 calories in each cup.

* Skip the butter on your baked potato. Savings? 100 calories

* Drink fruit-flavored water instead of a 16 ounce soda. Savings? 200 calories

* Have a salad instead of that tempting Big Mac. The Big Mac equals 460 calories. A fresh salad with a light dressing? Less than 100! Savings? 360 calories

*You can walk right by that bag of potato chips. An average snack size bag of chips has over 300 calories. Savings? 300 calories

*Eat corn on the ear. There is 165 calories for every 1 cup serving of canned corn. An ear of corn has 85. Savings? 80 calories.

* Switch to low-fat cream cheese on your bagel. Savings? 90 calories per ounce.

* Love those fries and can’t give them up? Swap the skinny fries out for thick steak-cut ones. The thinner frech fries absorb a whole lot more oil than the thicker ones. Savings? 50 calories per 4 ounce serving

You cna also lose one pound a week if you up your activity level by 500 calories, if you want to look at it from a exercise perspective. How easy can that be? Have a look:

* Take a half-hour walk around the park. You need to aim for a pace that is little fater than a stroll, but not too fast, you don’t want to get breathless. Burn:160 calories.

*Go for a bicycle ride. Tackle a few moderate hills and aim for about five miles total. Burn: 250 calories

* Go dancing - and really DANCE. The longer you’re out on the floor instead of at the table drinking up high-calorie drinks, the more you’ll get out of it. The kind of dancing that makes you breathless and that warms up your body will give you a nice calorie savings. Burn: 400 calories for one hour

* Swimming is great for you, and a lot of fun, too. The resistance in the water means that you will be bale to burn more calories dancing or walking in it and you will avoid the stress impact on joints from aerobics. A few laps as a slow crawl is wonderufl-if you can get up to an hour you’ll be doing even better! Burn: 510 calories

* You should get out and do some gardening. An hour of working in your garden (i.e. bending over, and stretching) can burn up to as many calories as a brisk walk. Burn: 250 calories.

*Play a game of tennis. Hook up with a friend for a weekly tennis game and you’ll be amazed at the difference. An hour of vigorous tennis is one of the most effective calorie burners that are around. Burn: 800 calories

It’s important to keep in mind that all exercise/calorie numbers are based on a woman weighing 130 pounds. If you weigh more then you will definately burn more fat. Want an added bonus to burning calories through exercise? You turn fat into muscle whenever you exercise. Three guesses which kind of body tissue burns more calories - even when you’re not exercising. You got it - your body uses more energy to maintain and feed muscle than it does fat.

For best results, mix and match food savings with exercises that burn calories. Do keep in mind that eating less than 1000 calories a day for more than a few days will convince your body that it’s starving and slow your metabolism. Keep calorie ranges reasonable, and consult a doctor if you want a quicker, more drastic weight loss.

If you want to achieve weight loss , then these 5 steps will make losing weiht a reality and not just a hopeful wish. Nobody will ever get results just from wishing, unless there is a magic lamp involved.

Get Your Mind Right

So many people forget the most important element about weight loss, their minds. You will fail to lose weight unless your mind is focused on doing so. Every morning spend 5 minutes thinking about why you want to lose weight? What's in it for you? How you will be different in a few months down the line? Picture these images in your head. Avoid focusing on the difficulty of achieving it. We don't feel a sense of achievement after reaching easy goals. The harder the goal, the greater the sense of achievement.

Stay With Your Calories

Before starting your weight loss plan, you should have evaluated how many calories you were eating a day on average. You would have cut this number by 10%. Try not to reduce too many, too fast. Sure, if you have been sticking to the same amount for a few weeks, and the results are slowing down, then drop them by another 5%. Keep in mind that your body prefers to change itself over certain periods of time. Try to implement too many changes in one go, and your body will fight you. Try to stay above 1500 a day, going below this number is not a healthy option and will result in starvation mode.

Always Eat Breakfast

Never ever miss breakfast. It isn't called breakfast for no reason. During your sleeping hours you have been on a fast. So you are breaking this fast when you have your first morning meal. Get it, break--fast? So your body is desperate for food first thing in the morning as it has been strved of nutrients for a good number of hours. If your body stops getting those calories, it will start to think that there is something wrong. So it will slow down your metabolism and bang goes your weight loss. Even if you don't feel hungry, get into the habit of eating something. Some bananas or a bowl of cereal will do to begin with.

Drink Lots of Water

We are always being told about drinking enough water. 6 glasses, 12 glasses, 18 glasses? I'm not going to get into numbers here, but I will tell you that 70% of your body is actually water. Your body would resemble a dried prune if all the water was taken from your body. Only a reduction of water of around 3% can have a negative effect on you. It's hard to lose weight when you feel like that. Plenty of water is required to allow your body to work properly. Increae your water intake by half again, and see what effects it has after a few days.

Stick Your Plan Daily

Before you started your diet or weight loss regime, you would have written a plan. You did write a plan didn't you? Vitually everything works on a plan, this how the world works. If there was no plan to follow, you wouldn't be able to reach your goal. Plans give us steps to follow, like maps. Losing weight is a goal, so it requires a plan, right? You would have written a daily plan every week. You would keep a record of your food consumption and amounts of exercise that you are performing. Ithink you understand this. When you write stuff down, it becomes a real blueprint to follow.

Remember that what other people are telling you comes from their beliefs about themselves, and has nothing to do with you. If other people don't have any belief in themselves, will not mean that others should have the same beliefs. Create your own thoughts and beliefs, you are not anybody else, you are you. You have the option as to what you let into your head. Each day spend time telling yourself that this is your time, you will reach your goals, and you will do this by sticking to your plan no matter what. Don't concern yourself about negative thoughts, accept that they will come. Allow these liitle thoughts to dift about in your mind, if you refuse to pay any attention to them, they will start to drift away. If other people have found it difficult to lose weight, well, that's their problem. You can be like them and sit around talking about why you can't lose weight. Or you can be you, an individual with your own goals, thoughts, and beliefs, who takes action on a daily basis in order to lose weight.

Have you heard about the story that if you lose a large amount of weight that you must have excess loose skin left? While there is some truth to this as many people do have loose skin after losing weight, it is not true that this has to be the case for you. You can avoid loose skin if you lose weight in the correct way.

An obvious example of this are the contestants on popular TV program The Biggest Loser. Many of these people lose a massive amount of weight and yet they still look stunning at the end. It’s not because they are losing weight slower. No, indeed they are losing weight much faster than most people do. What is their secret? Exercise.

People who lose weight by starving themselves without adding any exercise to their life are the people who end up with a lot of unsightly excess skin which they usually deal with using plastic surgery (which is not a very good solution.)

You don’t need to go on The Biggest Loser to lose weight the right way, you just need to start a program which helps you to lose weight the right way. If you read this free report on avoiding loose skin you will learn exactly what you should do to lose weight while avoiding loose skin.

There are great articles on the internet which will give you the information that you must know about how to avoid loose skin. Two good articles on loose skin: (1) avoiding loose skin from pregnancy (2) loose skin and weight loss.

Now what you really need to do is stop making excuses and start taking action. Some people use the fear of loose skin to keep them from doing what they have to do. They think “well I won’t look good anyway, even if I lost weight, so what’s the point?” Well first of all you should lose weight for reasons other than vanity. Being overweight is a big health risk. Secondly, you will look far better without the extra fat and as I’ve already mentioned, you can avoid loose skin.