For many of us, the word “diet” conjures up images in our heads of small portions, calorie counting, and worst of all, hunger.

While diets work in the short term to help you lose body weight, they won’t help you keep it off. You see, the moment you start restricting calories, your body’s metabolism slows down, meaning you actually require fewer calories than before. The moment you stop your diet and start eating normally, the weight comes back with a vengeance and, in most cases, more fat comes back than you lost.

It’s a vicious cycle for dieters. You go on a diet to lose weight, lose some weight, stop the diet, and then gain more weight than you lost, which requires another diet, and so on. Over the years, you just get bigger.

To lose weight permanently, drastic measures are required.

The simple math of calculating weight loss/gain is as follows.

Eat more than your body needs, you get fat.

Eat less than your body needs and you will lose weight.

As someone who must lose weight, I was faced with a dilemma. Do I go on a short-term weight loss diet, only to find myself bloated by the time I come off the diet, or do I look for a better approach?

The answer was simple. I want permanent results, so traditional diets don’t work for me.

What I wanted to do is eat more or less normally, and still lose weight. Looking at the simple math above, the answer is there for all to see. To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than your body needs.

With a traditional diet crossed off my list of possibilities, I decided I would have to change my lifestyle.

Here is a summary of the changes I made:

1. Eat when you are hungry. Even though I cut back on high-fat foods, I ate pretty much what I wanted. However, I made sure to increase my intake of fresh fruit.

2. Eat slowly.

3. Stop eating before you get full.

4. Increase level of exercise (had a totally sedentary lifestyle, worked from home).

5. Stop drinking alcohol and increase your water intake to a minimum of 3 liters per day.

The result is that in the first 30 days of my lifestyle change, I lost more than 6 kg (13.4 lbs).