Use less sauces and dressings in your foods. Sauces and dressings are often made with oil or contain lots of sugar. Drowning your green salad in dressing or smothering your baked potato in sour cream, adds a lot of fat and calories. You can try using substitutes, such as non-fat sour cream, but you should also experiment with more spices to flavor your food.

Those who are focused on achieving weight loss goals should take the time to plan meals and menus in advance whenever possible. This facilitates easier tracking of calories, and helps prevent impulse eating or unexpected splurges. Having an eating strategy in place for each day's meals provides the stability and routine that many dieters find to be the keys to success.

A sneaky form of weight-loss sabotage lurks in your cupboards and cabinets. If you want to simplify your efforts at losing weight, first, clean out your cabinets of all high-fat, high-sugar, low-fiber foods. It may seem wasteful, but if those foods aren't in the house, you won't be tempted to eat them in the first place.

Never, ever diet. The biggest predictor of future weight gain is being on a diet right now. Choose a healthier lifestyle to lose weight and maintain weight loss. Changing your lifestyle to eat healthier food and exercising regularly allows you to lose weight and keep the weight off long term.