Every successful weight loss story or transformation includes a mental aspect and two physical components. As you may have already guessed, the mental aspect is pure determination, which is the attitude that pushes you forward even when your whole mind and body are screaming at you to go back to your old lifestyle. The two physical components are exercise and diet.

I firmly believe that determination and a strong willpower are essential to change your body in any way, be it gaining muscle or losing fat. However, that is not the topic I am going to talk about in this post.

First I want to illustrate to you the importance of dieting and also why I feel that dieting is so much more important than exercising when it comes to deciding if a person will be successful in their weight loss transformation. Typically, a maximum of one hour is spent on each gym session, with five gym sessions per week. That equates to five hours of time in the gym. Of the entire week, less than five percent of your time is spent exercising! The rest of the time is spent outside of your exercise regimen, and therefore what you do outside of the gym or running track is that much more important! Many people tend to neglect the food they eat, thinking that they can get away with a poor diet as long as they exercise. That is not true.

So how should you approach this aspect of weight loss? There are many diets, some recommend a low-carb, high-protein diet. Some claim that you can continue to eat high carbs while still being able to lose fat.

In my opinion, there are only three main things you need to keep in mind when it comes to choosing foods to eat for weight loss. The first is to keep carbohydrates low, as they are not easily burned by most people and are easily converted to fat. An easy way to tell if you’ve eaten too many carbs at a particular meal or day is if your face is more puffy afterward.

Second, keep your sodium intake level as low as possible. The salt clings to the water and will increase the weight of the water. On top of that, it will also blur the definition of your muscles.

Finally, always maintain a caloric deficit. You must burn more calories than you take in, otherwise losing weight is an impossible task.