There are 100's hundreds of diet books on the shelves. The reason they sell is the promise of miraculous weight loss.

The Basics

It takes about 3,500 calories above those utilised by your body to gain one pound of fat in a week. To lose one pound a week, you need to eat 3,500 calories less than your body needs to maintain its weight.

Put simply, if you want to loose weight you need to consume fewer calories in the day then your body needs to carry out daily functions. This will force your body to use its stored fat supplies instead, so you will lose weight. This can be done by reducing what you eat, creating a calorie deficit with exercise, or ideally a combination of the two.

The aim of a healthy lifestyle is feeling and looking good.

Getting leaner is about having more muscle and less fat. Because muscle weighs more than fat, absolute weight loss should not be the only measure of success.

This is where resistance training can really have an effect as the proportion of muscle tissue rises and your metabolic rate increases. This boosts your body's demand for fuel, reducing fat stores. What's more, after a resistance session your body will continue to burn calories up to 24 hours after the workout, unlike cardiovascular exercise which stops burning calories when you stop exercising.