John McGran, chief editor at Diet-to-Go, has been covering the fields of diet, fitness and health since 2000. He writes from the perspective of a dieter rather than a dietitian.

Over the past 30 years, I’ve lost hundreds of pounds by following a variety of diets. The problem: At the age of 50, I am still 40 pounds overweight because I never seem to fail at regaining the weight I work so hard to lose!

It’s called yo-yo dieting and it’s not only frustrating, but unhealthy as well. And I am not alone.

According to WebMD.com, “only about a third of dieters are successful at maintaining their loss. Seasoned dieters know that keeping it off takes vigilance, and for some folks, that’s more difficult than the actual weight loss.”

So join me today in making a vow to lose our extra weight… and  keep it off! Here are five tactics that can help you avoid re-packing on the pounds.

Act Fast!

Continue to weigh yourself weekly and when you see a five-pound increase, take action. Cut back on calories and increase your activity. Within two to three weeks you’ll be back to the weight you want to be.

Practice Safe Snacks!

While no food is off limits, you do have to watch portion sizes AND be wary of the snacks you choose to eat between meals. Your best  bet: Plan a few healthy snacks for each day – fruit, sugar-free Jell-O, and 100-calorie snack packs are satisfyingly sweet! The experts will tell you that those of us who snack between meals tend to fare better at sticking to a healthy diet.

Treat Yourself Well!

Yes, you can indulge in the occasional treat. Just be sure to spread out the treats and counter balance them with a serving of extra exercise.

Know the Enemy!

We all have certain foods that spark binges. They’re called trigger foods and you need to be aware of what foods are your weakness. While slip happens, you can avoid binges by keeping your trigger foods out of the house!

Get it Write!

If keeping a food journal or exercise log helped you lose the weight, don’t stop! There are plenty of tools than can keep you on the light track, but journaling is cheap, easy and extremely effective. So, write on dieter and keep track of everything you eat and all the activity you fit in daily.

Weight regain is not going to happen to you… not when you’re armed with tips and tricks to help you stay on the path to a healthy lifestyle for life!

Read more: 5 Ways to Keep the Weight Off

Pamela Ofstein is the Director of Nutrition Services at eDiets.com, a leading provider of weight loss services, information and products.

Losing weight isn’t easy for anyone, but with a positive and healthy approach, you will be right on your way to reaching your weight-loss goals. To have the best weight-loss outcome possible, you must provide your body an optimal environment.

What does an optimal environment mean? Well, making sure your body has what it needs and what it can do to make it better. There are four steps to keep in mind:

1. Make sure you are eating enough calories daily. You might be thinking “Oh, that’s easy. If I need 1,500 calories to lose weight, all I have to do is eat that much — just eat two or three big meals.” That’s essentially true, but if you spread out your calories in 5-6 sittings, your weight loss will be more effective.

If you eat your daily calories through multiple evenly spaced meals, you’ll give your body just enough for energy purposes and won’t store the excess. And with the regular meal frequency, you will keep your metabolism working all day long and find yourself less hungry.

2. Get into exercise. For weight-loss purposes, view exercise as a tool to elevate your metabolism. Studies have shown you will benefit more from increasing your exercise intensity rather than exercise duration. Also don’t exercise on an empty stomach. When you exercise on an empty stomach you use up muscle energy, you start to break down your muscles and fat for that energy.

The more muscle you have, the higher your resting metabolic rate will be and the faster you will get rid of the excess fat. So make sure you have a small meal or snack with some carbs, a bit of protein and little bit of fat about an hour before you exercise.

3. Drink lots and lots of water. A well-hydrated body will be an efficiently running body. You give your body what it needs to do its job.

4. Get rest. (I need to focus on this one!) You need to rest and recover. Without enough sleep, your body will be under a ton of stress. Stress leads to an increase level of cortisol; regular elevated levels of cortisol can contribute to the accumulation of fat and will only make it harder to lose the weight and fat.

Think of your body as a temple and treat it that way. By following these steps you’ll be right on track to reaching your overall weight-loss goal!

Read more: 4 Keys for Faster Fat Loss

Much research has been conducted to look at the type of diet an individual follows and their associated weight loss. Many people declare that following a low-carb Atkins type diet is the way to lose weight, while others swear it’s by following a low-fat diet. You can get lost sifting your way through these diets to determine which is better and which will result in more weight loss. However, the research suggests that it’s more about the total amount of calories you take in rather than following a low-fat or a low-carb diet that shows weight reductions.

Research shows that groups that follow a low-fat diet versus dieters on a low-carb diet ultimately end up losing the same amount of weight. One study showed a group following a low-carb diet had greater weight loss initially, but as the researchers followed-up, the total pounds lost was not maintained (weight regain had occurred). The same results were seen in studies examining a low-fat diet and weight loss. However, dieters who take a more healthy lifestyle approach (overhauling their diet and making healthier food choices) tend to lose weight at a healthy pace and have a much higher success rate of keeping off the weight.

I want to provide you with a simple solution, try incorporating the positives of the low-fat and low-carb diet. I personally believe in nutrition as part of a healthy lifestyle rather then following a diet to lose weight. Once you view your diet as a key component to being healthy your thinking shifts from total weight lost towards your health (reducing cholesterol, reducing your risk of cancer and disease, etc.) and consequently eating healthy results in shedding some unwanted pounds.

Instead of following a low-carb diet, focus on consuming more complex, whole-grain, whole-wheat carbohydrates. These complex, whole-wheat sources provide you with fiber and bran, both of which help promote satiety (being and feeling comfortably full) versus simple carbohydrates (white bread, white pasta, etc.). Whole-grains, whole-wheat products have been shown to do great things for your health from lower your risk of colon cancer to helping better control your blood sugar.

Following a low-fat diet not only provides tremendous benefits for your heart and overall health, but also helps slim down your waist line. No matter the source of fat, fat provides you with 9 calories per gram versus only 4 calories per gram for protein and carbohydrates. Simply put, if you eat less fat you’ll consume fewer calories without having to eat less food. Fewer Calories = Weight Loss.

Another important thing to remember is calories in and calories out: reduce the total amount of calories you take in and increase the amount of calories you burn during your exercise routine.

Although my approach may not be as fancy as following an exact diet or a rigidly structured meal plan, following a low-fat, whole-wheat diet, while incorporating exercise is essential to having a healthy lifestyle and help you drop a few pounds along the way.
Read more: Fat, Carbs, or Total calories: What’s the key loosing weight?

“You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness.  You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.” ~Erma Bombeck

Overeat on Independence Day? Don't let it get you down! Onward, my friend, keep the faith!

If you – like me – overeat on July 4, do not despair!

Here are three links that you might find useful:

Cut Those Condiments and Cut Your Calories – A good read in advance of your BBQ or picnic!

Learning from your Mistake - an article regarding Indpendence Day Overeating and binging. Although aimed at raw foodies, it has general points for all.

What To do if You Blow Your Diet

Have a great, safe and fun day, from our families to yours!

Melanie and Sian

~Annabel Adams

Let’s face it – unless you’ve lived under a rock your entire your life, you pretty much know that getting to a healthy weight is a balance between eating right (sufficient amount of good foods) and exercise (more than just getting up to change the channel).  It’s not rocket science, so why do so many of us have problems with it?  Because for a lot of us, doing what’s right isn’t what’s easiest and isn’t what’s popular.  Here are my top 10 tips, learned from experience, for lighting a fire under the junk in your trunk:

1.    Get Angry.  Don’t you know that anger can be channeled to fuel a positive goal?  Get angry if you have taken your health for granted.  Get angry if too much time has passed being at a plateau or being unhappy about your weight. Channel that naysayer voice that says you can’t do something and then do everything you can to prove it wrong!

2.    Think of Accomplished Goals. What has been a common theme that has propelled you to achieve goals in other aspects of your life?  Find this common denominator and apply it to weight loss!

3.    Make a List.  List out your goals in increments.  Have 50 pounds to lose?  Start with a goal of losing 5 pounds in a month and a half. You will keep yourself accountable this way and won’t get overwhelmed.

4.    Get a Giant Calendar.  It’s hard to ignore that you didn’t exercise two days in a row when it’s written in permanent black ink on a giant calendar.  Ate a gazillion calories yesterday?  Knowing that every time you look at today’s date will remind you to make up for it today.  Don’t try to escape your screw-ups.  Embrace them as motivation to move forward with more gusto then before.

5.    Break out the Bullhorn.  Sometimes we get a little embarrassed telling other people about our weight loss goals.  Why?  Because we don’t want them to know if we fail.  It’s odd, but we’re sometimes more accountable to others than ourselves.  Do what you have to do.  Everyone and their momma knows I’m trying to lose my last 10 pounds and that helps keep me motivated.

6.    Be a Fit Bird. Birds of a feather flock together? Then pick a flock that’s headin’ where you want to go.  Some people think one’s health goals are an isolated venture and in one aspect they are — only you can truly decide to put down that burger and get on the treadmill unless you literally have some drill sergeant on you 24/7 – but in the grand scheme of things, unless you’re a hermit, your life includes outside influences and other people.  It helps if your friends want to work-out and eat healthy instead of laying on the couch eating carne asada French fries from a drive-thru.

7.    Make it Fun.  Life is too short to hate exercise or hate healthy food and, if this is going to be a life-long lifestyle thing for you, you need to find a way to enjoy it!  Experiment with foods and exercise.  Find ways to love it!

8.    Live and Breathe it.  You can find motivation to keep going from anywhere!  I call these sources of “second-hand motivation.”  I find them in watching shows like The Biggest Loser, in reading healthy-living blogs, in seeing my fit friends work out every day, etc.  You can find motivation from anything and anyone if you’re looking for it and open to it.

9.    Have Positive Thoughts.  I can’t believe how much time is wasted on negative thoughts and people.  Stay positive and you can bounce back if you fall off the wagon.  Positive energy is contagious and it carries through in all aspects of our lives.  Go through life with a smile and you’ll find you want to achieve your goals and they’ll even feel more accessible.

10.   Remember the Why.  Don’t lose sight of why getting to a healthy weight is important to you.  We all have our reasons and I’ve known them to be as simple as “I want to wear a bathing suit this summer and feel good” to “I want to be around for my grandchildren.”  There is no lesser “why” when it comes to your health.  Don’t keep your why in the back of your mind; keep it at the forefront all the time.  Write it on a post-it and tape it to your forehead if you have to.  Your why is your reason, your go-to when you want to give up.  You won’t want to give up if your why compels you to move forward.

Annabel Adams is certified by experience, and by her opinionated nature, to give advice on all matters health-related.  Over the past six years she has lost and maintained a loss of 150 pounds. Visit Annabel’s site at www.FeedMeImCranky.com.