Many of us are deceived by the “health halo” effect. Words like “yogurt” and “fruit” positively glow with such halos, since we consider these foods healthy in their natural state. Don’t be fooled. Many foods have been heavily promoted as being healthy. But not all of them are. Do a reality check and read labels first. Here are some foods which are far less “good for you” than most people believe.

Energy bars

You had meetings all morning, a full schedule in the afternoon and 15 minutes for a quick lunch break. Should you drink a smoothie or glass of milk to tide you over, or grab a sandwich?

All the exercise won't help you lose weight if you won't change your eating habits.

More vegetables and fruit, less fat, five small meals during the day, lots of water... there's a lot of things that should be changed, but it's not that easy if you have a full schedule during the day and the lunch and dinner are cooked for the whole family.

There's one thing you can do, and it's quite easy!

Cooking with herbs and spices is ideal because you can add tremendous flavor, aroma and visual appeal to your meats, fruits and vegetables without adding unwanted calories, fats, salt and sugars.

You can easily see the benefits of cooking with herbs and spices is great. More importantly you can be creative in your cooking, because there are many varieties of herbs and spices to choose from.

Generally it's not much known that the benefits of using herbs and spices can speed up weight loss efforts, by quite a considerable amount actually.

We'd all love to lose a few inches - if only it weren't so much work. Here are some easy, no-effort and no-sweat solutions that, over time, can add up to a big loss.

Here are some really simple strategies to cut calories and burn more fat that take 60 seconds or less. Combined with your cardio workout, you'll find plenty of opportunities to slip these tricks into your routine and watch the scale go down. If you've already begun losing weight, these can maximize your efforts and speed results.

Chew Gum

If you want to lose one pound of body fat, you have to burn 3.500 calories.

You should focus on creating a deficit of 500 calories a day, which over the course of one week will result in one pound of weight loss (500 calories X 7 days = 3,500 calories). This can either be accomplished through burning the calories through exercise, creating a caloric deficit through your diet or a combination of both, which is the best choice.

Work on making a small changes in your diet to create a 250 calorie deficit and then add about 30 minutes of cardio training a day to burn the other 250 calories.

If you want to maximize your progress, you have to avoid traps and mistakes in your diet program.

1. impatient diet changing

A lot of bodybuilders jumps from one nutrition diet to another, without giving primary program enough time, to see the results. It takes at least three weeks before body adjust to changes in diet. Mostly you can expect visible results/effects after approximately 21 days, so do not expect immediate results on your body.

2. inexact calorie counting

The #1 secret to keeping off weight

You have tried everything from very common to very strange and sometimes downright crazy. Restricted foods, unbalanced diets, drugs, supplements, surgery, strenuous exercise are just a few to mention. But no matter what you do, your excess weight keeps coming back.

Everyone knows what to do but nobody really knows! Everyone has heard how to keep weight off. "Eat sensibly and exercise". But, few people manage to do it.

Does it Work? Yes - but you need to do a LOT of it to see any real results.

A research team from Canada tracked 52 obese men for three months. They split the men in two groups: Diet-only and Exercise-only group.

Both the diet-only and exercise-only groups created a caloric deficit of 700 calories daily. In other words, each day, the diet-only group ate 700 calories less than normal. The exercise-only group, on the other hand, burned an extra 700 calories daily by walking on the treadmill.

If you are trying to lose some weight, but you still can't resist sweets, than it's better to make them at home. When you make your own baked goods, you know what's in them. And you can also substitute ingredients high in fat and calories, with more healthy ingredients.

Instead of jam, use fresh or dried fruit, dark chocolate is better than milk chocolate and brown sugar is healthier than white. Whole grain flour has good carbohydrates and is lower in calories. Plus, you probably won't add all the extra supplements for longer duration as they are in manufactured goods.