Losing weight isn’t rocket science, even if the plethora of misinformation circulating around it can sometimes make it appear so. Fuelled by fad diets that skip in and out of fashion every few months, poor food choices and sedentary lifestyles, shedding those extra kilos can seem harder than climbing the Mount Everest on one leg.

These slimming tips, however, cut through the mountain of myths and misinformation to help you lose weight, feel great, and improve your health:

Move

Perhaps one of the greatest weight loss tips you’ll encounter is also one of the simplest: ‘move’. In other words, try to get as much physical activity in your day as possible. Park the car at the end of the parking lot at the grocery store, take the stairs instead of the elevator, and go for a long walk after dinner. A lot of people assume that you need to be huffing and puffing in the gym to lose weight, but fact is, movement of any kind helps, especially for the extremely overweight. Even something as simple as cleaning the house or raking the yard can help you burn a couple of hundred calories.

Don’t Overcomplicate Things

Pouring over weight loss literature can be an overwhelming experience. You are bombarded with contradictory information on weight loss every single day. Some magazine prescribes weight loss tips that preach the benefits of eating fruit, while another wholeheartedly condemns the fructose in fruits to be the bane of the modern diet. Unless you are a competitive athlete with a PhD in nutrition sciences, it can all seem nerve-rackingly complex.

Don’t overcomplicate things. While slimming down is a function of many variables, in the end, it all boils down to this: if you burn more calories in a day than you consume, you will lose weight. In fact, the best thing you can do as a beginner is to forget about all the mumbo-jumbo about macronutrients and food frequency and thermogenic effect of protein and what not, and just focus on eating less and exercising more. Once you get the hang of things, you can start experimenting with diets and different exercise routines. You should, after all, learn to walk before you can run.

Practice Patience

The single greatest reason why most people fail to lose weight is a lack of motivation. We all start out with great gusto – buying new gym clothes, making elaborate meal plans, maintaining food diaries, etc. – but after a few weeks, the motivation starts to wear off and the slimming story ends in tragedy. We set up goals that can’t possibly be reached (‘lose 10lbs in one week’), and lose all motivation to lose weight and better our health when we fail to reach said goals.

Instead of rushing into things head first, slow down. Pick more reasonable goals (‘lose 5lbs in 5 weeks’) and don’t look for overnight transformations. Consider weight loss as a way of life and not as a quick fix solution. You want to work out and eat right for the long term health benefits, not merely to fit into those skinny jeans by Christmas or look great for that wedding (although there’s nothing wrong with that either!). Practice the virtues of patience, and you’ll never fail to achieve your goals!