It doesn't matter if summer is around the corner or it's getting towards the end of the year, if you're like a great many other people, you are starting to think about losing weight. And shedding pounds fast. There is something you can do to shed a few pounds in a short period of time and do it safely.



None of those ridiculous soup or celery or lemon juice diet programs. Those do work, but what a cost you need to pay for releasing a couple of pounds. And the hardest part is that when you go back to regular eating after lemon juice for 10 days, the weight seems to amazingly reappear all by itself.



But if you want to do some small modifications to the way you eat; changes that you can deal with and keep going with after your original weight loss results, then pay attention because here a few good tips for you.



Tip #1 - Pay Attention



There's a reason why many popular dieting programs have you keep a food log of everything you eat. When you take notice and note down every single thing you eat, whether it's a snack or a breakfast bar or even a stalk of celery, you tend to eat less.



Could be because the thought of having to keep track of each bite makes folks want to eat less because it's a pain to write it all down. But much more likely it's because your mind begins to think to itself "Hmm, am I actually hungry enough to eat this and then write in my food diary"? Often times, the answer to that is a "No" and you wind up eating a lot less food.



This writing idea works in a lot of self-improvement areas, not only dieting, but when it comes to food, it really can help you focus on what you are doing. And being mindful about precisely how you are treating your body and your well being is a very good step in the direction of feeling much better and losing weight.



Another excellent tip has to do with the idea that less is more.



Cut it down.



One of the largest amounts of calories comes from the consumption of fats. Certainly, this is not the case 100 percent of the time for 100 % of the people. But if you live in a place that has a diet similar to the Standard American Diet, which is quite high in animal fats and saturated and hydrogenated fats, you are eating a lot of calories from fats.



The fats on their own contain a high amount of calories per unit measurement. Basically if you took a teaspoon of a carbohydrate and a teaspoon of fat, the fat would have more than two times as many calories in it.



Fats contribute to the taste and the mouth feel of food and this is a large reason why they are very popular. Problem is along with two times as many calories, they don't metabolize as cleanly as many carbs and you are left with the results hanging around your waist.



If you like butter on your toast in the morning, put only half the amount on that you normally do. Use only half the amount of oil when you're cooking on the stove. Try something like one of those cooking sprays. Your food will still cook nicely and will slide out from the pan, but the amount of oil you'll have added in is almost non-existent.



Bake your potatoes in place of frying them. Boil your eggs instead of scambling them with a tablespoon of butter. Do just a couple stuff like this and you will surprisingly find that you are ingesting nowhere near the quantity of calories that you did previously.



The simple truth is, it doesn't take a lot of doing to alter some dietary habits. And when you make those changes in your lifestyle you will be on the right path to losing some weight quickly in a safe, easy to sustain way.