Twinstars- great advice. The whole idea is to eat SENSIBLY and get a balanced diet. Diets, though, come with two major caveats:
1) When you lose weight by diet alone, or dieting plus cardio-only exercise, about a third of what you lost will be MUSCLE. Your body doesn't know that you want to lose fat, it only knows that when you drastically cut calories, a famine must be coming, and it will start feeding off muscle and keep the fat around to keep you warm.
The way to prevent this is by lifting weights at least 3x a week. Weightlifting is incredibly good for you: it builds lean muscle, which for each pound must burn 30 calories a day just to stay alive, and weights build bone density so you're less likely to get osteoporosis later in life. It WILL NOT make you look like a man, only about 2 percent of women have the genes necessary to really bulk up from weightlifting. You will see more muscle definition and a sleeker look overall.
2) Once you lose the weight, the only way to really keep it off is to stay with that diet for the rest of your life.
I've found that while I've never been on a diet in my life, I crave junk food a lot less when I work out on a regular basis. Drink lots of water and avoid caffeine. Also AVOID ANY WEIGHT-LOSS PILLS like Hydroxycut, Xenadrine, etc. These products contain ephedra, which is banned in several states and is on its way to being banned in the rest of the US unless the companies that make the pills carry a $4 million (or is it billion?) insurance policy.
Know that the best indicator of whether a diet is working is not your scale, it's your pants. I do not own a scale and only ever get weighed when I go to the doctor. Body composition is more important than the number. I will freely admit that at 5'4" with a medium-size bone structure, I weigh 132 pounds (went to the dr yesterday). UF_Pike would probably call me a fat chick (sorry, chic, LOL), but he doesn't know that I'm mostly muscle and wear a size 4. Since I started seriously working out in January, I haven't lost a pound, but I've lost inches and a dress size and I look much better.
Allie is SO correct about not yo-yo dieting. That is the absolute best way to completely ruin your metabolism and guarantee that you will have more difficulty losing weight in the future.
This has gone on for a while, sorry, I just get passionate about people being healthy.
