Weight loss shouldn’t be stressful. I think all those diet books cloud our own instincts. They prevent us from understanding what our body needs. Weight loss is a simple mathematical idea. Your calories in should be a little less than what your body needs. That way, it will burn excess body fat as fuel. Simple, right?

Well popular diet books try to make it seem more complicated. Case in point - my mother and father have been going through their own weight loss journeys. I asked my mom today how they were doing it and she said, “We just cut back here and there.”

She’s down six pounds, my dad has lost ten. Her description is about as unscientific as you can get.

So how have they done it? By eating less. That’s really all that it’s about. So my approach is this:

• Eat on schedule. Eat breakfasts, lunch, dinner, one afterworkout meal, and one after dinner meal.
• During those meals, cut back.
• Exercise.

And that’s it. That’s about as simple as I can make it yet - the temptation is always to buy another diet book or weight loss magazine. Seriously. I had to stop myself last night from placing an online order for a popular diet book.

Calories in need to be less than calories out.

That’s it. It’s so simple - unfortunately one sentence does not make anyone any money. But it does get results. Pretty soon, I will be one of those success stories.