People are often looking for the fat loss diet secrets so that they can get back into the shape that they have always wanted. To be able to share these would be terrific; however there is no great secret to be shared, there are just facts.

The fact is that we are consuming way more that our bodies need or can handle, add to that the fact that it is often the wrong kinds of food and we have a real problem.

The second fact is that these wrong kinds of food are packed full of calories, refined sugar, saturated fat, all processed in to a food item that our taste buds love and we end up craving, but which is not at all good for our bodies.

The next fact is that even though we are over consuming we are not exercising anywhere near enough. Calories were used up by our ancestors gathering food just to stay alive. Food was hard to find and tended to be feast or famine and so our bodies adapted to this and stored excess food as fat for when it was needed.

Today many of us in the developed world are office bound, and sitting of a chair for hours, which doesn’t take much energy, or use many calories, and then we ride to and from work and spend the day eating the wrong kind of food.

So the first thing we need to concentrate on for our fat loss diet is to reduce the quantity of food we eat, we just don’t need it. We need to find other things that we enjoy to replace this overeating.

We then need to eat more of the right kinds of food, replacing those fatty foods with fresh fruit and vegetables along with modest portions of low fat protein sources such as lean meat.

The next thing we need to do is increase our exercise. If we can find some opportunities throughout the day do do some exercise even if it is small, our metabolism will increase. If we can increase our bodies muscle mass we will speed up the calorie burn. Muscles use calories to maintain themselves, unlike fat weight which is just storage. We look better as our muscles grow and provide increased support to our skeleton, which also helps to prevent injury.

To really make progress with our fat loss diet we need to engage the large muscle groups as much as possible. The large muscles also burn more calories than the hard to target small muscle groups.

The leg muscles are the single biggest muscles and the best ones to engage in a workout. Exercises that use multiple muscles will also burn more calories in the same time than concentrating on single muscle groups. If we can use the larger muscles we will get faster results losing fat.

Exercises such as squats and overhead presses with free weights engage nearly all the major muscle groups including the legs, back muscles, and the arms.

The final step in losing that weight is to increase the intensity level of any exercise done. Following a program with increasing intensity levels gives our bodies time to adapt. Exercises such as interval training are very good because they are performed at different intensity levels.

Using this type of program will burn more calories than a program involving long slow endurance type training and is therefore more suited to weight loss. As the body recovers significant calories will continue to be burnt for some time after exercise. Commitment to this type of program for say 3-4 times every week for even 20 minutes a time will see some real gains.