Eliminating most of the sugar from your diet is the single most powerful thing you can do to lose weight. Not only does sugar pack loads of calories into small portions of food, it increases appetite, slows down metabolism, creates inflammation, and biochemically compels your body to store fat. It’s almost impossible to lose weight while continuing to eat sugary foods.

2. Exercise in Intervals

Any form of exercise will help you lose weight, as long as you don’t overdo it. But intervals are far and away the most effective form of exercise for burning fat. Sign up for your free ReEvolution Health and Fitness Action Plan to get an individualized interval cardio program.

3. Lift Weights Even If You Don’t Want to Put on Muscle

Lifting weights creates powerful hormonal changes in your body that help you to burn fat. In addition, the process of repairing muscle after a lift burns up loads of calories. Weight lifting actually tears up muscle tissue. While this might sound bad, this is the way that muscle grows – by being torn up, then growing back denser and stronger. Not only will building denser muscles burn calories directly, it will also raise your metabolic rate, meaning you will burn more calories just going about your day. Take a look at Burning Fat and Getting Toned for more on how to lift to lose weight.

4. Eat Regularly and Eat Slowly

Eating regular meals keeps your metabolism up. When you skip meals, your metabolism crashes. What this means is that you burn less fat even if you eat fewer calories over the course of the day. Three to four meals per day is right for most people. Eating slowly allows you to thoroughly chew and digest your food. Good digestion is also key to a healthy metabolism and avoiding storing fat. In addition, eating slowly and chewing thoroughly helps you get full. When food spends more time in your mouth, you taste it more and enjoy it more, which helps satisfy the mental components of hunger. In addition, since your brain takes between 10 and 20 minutes to process how full your stomach is, eating slowly ensures that you don’t end up stuffing yourself near to bursting before your brain gets the message that you’re full.

5. ID Some Healthy Comfort Foods

Many of us use eating as a way to cope with stress. Food provides a way of not really dealing with what is bothering us, when what we really need to do is face the source of our emotional unrest head on. Using food as a substitute for dealing with emotions is a pattern we should generally try to avoid. That said, there will be days when life puts us to the test, and we want nothing more then to curl up with some comfort food and take a break from dealing with the world. At times like this, instead of turning to common choices like ice cream, cookies, pizza, and other sugar and starch laden foods, pick out some healthy foods that you really enjoy. Sugary, starchy foods have drug like effects on the brain which make us feel better for a little while, but worse soon after. Plus they make us gain weight and our bad for every aspect of our health. Foods like berries, full fat organic yogurts, cheeses, and buttery foods that are lighter on the sugar can take the place of less healthy choices.