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Why is weight management important?

In addition to helping you feel and look better, reaching a healthier body weight is good for your overall health and well being. If you are overweight or obese, you have a greater risk of developing many diseases including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some types of cancer.

The key to successful, healthy weight loss

Successfully managing your weight comes down to a simple equation: If you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight. And if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight. Sounds easy, right? Then why is losing weight so hard?

Well for one, weight loss isn't a linear event over time. When you cut calories, you may drop a pound or so each week for the first few weeks, for example, and then something changes. You eat the same number of calories but you lose less weight. And then the next week you don't lose anything at all. That's because when you lose weight you're losing water and lean tissue as well as fat, your metabolism slows, and your body changes in other ways. So, in order to continue dropping weight each week, you'll need to continue cutting calories.

Secondly, while in essence a calorie is a calorie, your body reacts differently to different types of food. So eating 100 calories of high fructose corn syrup, for example, will have a different effect on your body than eating 100 calories of broccoli. The trick for sustained weight loss is to ditch the foods that are packed with calories but don't make you feel full (like candy) and replace them with foods that fill you up without being loaded with calories (like vegetables).

Thirdly, losing weight in a healthy, sustainable way often takes time. It requires patience and commitment. Extreme diets may promise rapid results but they're more likely to leave you feeling cranky and starving and losing more cash than weight. Finally, there are emotional aspects of eating that can trip you up. Many of us don't always eat simply to satisfy hunger. We also turn to food for comfort or to relieve stress - which can derail any weight loss efforts before they begin.

The good news is that by making smarter choices every day, adopting healthy lifestyle changes, and developing new eating habits, you'll not only lose weight and be able to keep it off, you'll also improve your outlook and mood and have more energy.

Low-carbohydrate: Quick weight loss but long-term safety questions

Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution launched the low-carbohydrate diet craze, focusing largely on high-protein meats and full-fat dairy products, while banishing carbohydrates such as bread, rice, and pasta. One popular permutation of the low-carb diet is the South Beach diet, which also restricts carbohydrates but favors healthier, unsaturated fats found in nuts and fish, and allows more whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.

The low-carb eating strategy is based on the theory that people who eat carbohydrates take in more calories and gain weight, while people on a high-fat diet eat less and lose weight. However, low-carbohydrate diets tend to cause dehydration by shedding pounds as urine. The result is rapid weight loss, but after a few months, weight loss tends to slow and reverse, just as happens with other diets.