The US Department of Agriculture report “Food Consumption Profile in the United States” states that “although multiple factors can explain weight gain, the underlying cause is an excess of energy intake over energy expenditure.” . Translation, we gain weight when we eat more calories than we burn.

Part of the weight loss challenge is that too many dieters and diet experts spend too much time playing around the edges of the problem by selling ideas that have little effect on actual weight loss. They promote diets, intense exercise, pills, supplements and injections. It was all in vain.

There is a simple fact that cannot be avoided. To lose weight, you must eat fewer calories than you expend. Nothing else will work.

If you really want to lose weight, there are some things to know and truths to face if you want to be successful.

o Burning more calories than you eat is the ONLY WAY to lose weight. You must burn 3,500 more calories than you eat to lose 1 pound of body weight.

o It is almost physiologically impossible for the average person to lose more than 4 pounds of body fat in a week. Even with a basal metabolic rate of 2,500 calories and eating only 500 calories per day, it would only be possible to lose 14,000 calories per week—that’s 4 pounds. Exercising on top of that or following such a diet for a long time would be virtually impossible for most people.

o Any diet that promises 20 pounds of weight loss in 30 days is primarily about losing water weight. To lose 20 pounds of body weight in 30 days, a 180-pound, 30-year-old woman would have to burn 2,333 calories per day, about 233 more than her BMR. That means she would have to spend about an hour on a treadmill every day without eating anything for a whole month. On a 500 calorie per day diet with no exercise, she could only lose about 12.86 pounds in a month, or about 3 pounds per week.

o There is no pill, product or diet on the market that can significantly increase the number of calories you burn without reducing the amount you eat.

Weight loss can only be achieved by retaining fewer calories than you eat and there are only two ways to do it. You can reduce how much you eat, or you can burn some of those calories through exercise. There is nothing else that produces weight loss.

So if you’re a typical young woman and you think you can lose 20 pounds of fat in a month, here’s what to do. Just exercise for an hour every day and eat nothing for the whole month. That’s right, don’t eat anything. Go ahead and try it.

Natural weight loss is a pretty simple proposition, if you face it head on and do it in a simple way. Fulfilling one’s weight loss fantasies with pills or the latest “fat burning secret” will only lead to failure, disappointment, and loss of self-esteem.