Each of these weight loss strategies takes advantage of the different ways the body used these nutrients to help you lose weight.

Strategy #1, eating a low-fat diet, ensures that you add less fat to the fat stores. The less fat you add, the less you will have to remove later. Strategies #2 and #3 are aimed at removing the fat that already pads your frame.

Strategy #1: Eat a low-fat diet

Fat is the villain. Fat makes you fat. Unlike carbohydrates and protein, fat is not burned off when you eat it. Almost all (97%) of the fat you eat slides right into the fat stores that pad your body. It is as if you took the hamburger you just ate and wadded it onto your belly except that it is happening from the inside.

The capacity for storing fat knows no bounds. The normal lean person stores about 140,000 calories of fat. Contrast this to the body’s limited capacity to store carbohydrate (about 1200-1500 calories). And with fat storage, there is no upper limit. A person who weighs 300 pounds is storing about 200 pounds of fat.

Whereas it is extremely difficult to overeat carbohydrates if you are eating nutrient dense, fiber rich food, there are no mechanisms to protect you from overeating fat. You can overeat fat one day, and the next, and the next, and the fat stores grow larger and larger.

In short, you are overweight because you have put too much fat in cold storage.

Creating a deficit
Each day fat from the foods you eat is added to your body’s fat stores. Some is removed to furnish energy not supplied by the carbohydrates you eat. Your weight is determined largely by how much fat you add to the fat depots versus how much you remove.

If you eat just the amount of fat that is removed from the fat stores to furnish the energy not supplied by the carbohydrates, your weight will remain the same. If you eat more fat, the excess will go into the fat stores and you will gain weight. If you eat less fat than is required to satisfy your energy needs, then the body will have to make up the deficit by removing fat from the fat stores and you lose weight.

Strategy #2: Eat plenty of nutrient-dense, fiber-rich carbohydrates

Carbohydrates include both sugars (simple carbohydrates) and starches (complex carbohydrates) such as potatoes, other vegetables, rice, pasta, and bread. Fiber, a nondigestable form of carbohydrate, is found in vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. Fiber is filling and helps prevent over-eating.

Carbohydrate: #1 Energy Source
The body burns a mixture of the carbohydrate, fat, and protein stored in the foods you eat to produce the energy it needs. But the primary and preferred fuel is carbohydrate. Carbohydrate provides most of the energy to fuel the muscles and other bodily functions and, in the form of the simple sugar glucose, is the only fuel your brain can use.

Eating a lot of carbohydrates keeps your BMR chugging along at a maximum rate.

The fate of the carbohydrates you eat
Each day you consume about 50-60% of your total calories as carbohydrates. Most of it is burned within a few hours of consumption to fuel your physical activity and internal functions and is not stored or converted to fat.

A small amount of carbohydrate from each meal tops up the carbohydrate stores that have been partially used up between meals. The carbohydrate is stored as glycogen – long chains of the simple sugar glucose – in the muscles and in the liver.

Glycogen in the muscle is used for short bursts of intense activity, like playing tennis, and for “fight or flight” responses, such as jumping out of the path of a speeding car. Glycogen in the liver provides a constant supply of glucose to the brain, especially between meals, when glucose levels might otherwise drop. If glucose supply to the brain falls too low, you lose consciousness – a major inconvenience.

Finding the perfect carbohydrate balance
You need to eat lots of carbohydrates to keep your BMR at a maximum level, fuel your activity, keep up your energy level, and fuel your brain. But you don’t want to eat so much that carbohydrate alone satisfies your energy needs. How do you limit the amount of carbohydrate you eat so you eat enough to reap their many benefits without eating so much you spare the stored fat from being mobilized and burned?

Bulk provides brakes: The built-in safety mechanism against overeating carbohydrates is provided by eating a healthy, nutrient-dense, fiber-rich diet. The bulk provided by fruits, vegetables, and whole grains ensures that you won’t eat more carbohydrates than your body can handle. Imagine eating 5 baked potatoes at one sitting. Your body would cry, “NO MORE!” before you even finished 2.

Strategy #3: Daily Aerobic Exercise

Daily aerobic exercise helps you to reduce fat from the fat stores in two ways.

Exercising increases demand for energy
First, and most important, by exercising you increase your total energy needs. To supply the additional energy, the body draws fat from the fat stores and you lose weight. That is, of course, if you are eating a low-fat, high-fiber diet and not adding more fat to the fat stores than you are removing.

Muscle burns fat and raises BMR
Second, aerobic exercise builds and preserves muscle. Muscle is the tissue in the body that burns fat. The more muscle you have, the more fat-burning capacity you have. The more muscle you have, the higher your BMR and the faster you burn fat.

If you don’t exercise, the muscle is broken down and not rebuilt. Over the years the loss of muscle can become significant. Sedentary adults may lose as much as 40% of their muscle mass – and their fat-burning capacity – between the ages of 20 and 70. It is no wonder that sedentary people who eat a high-fat diet gain weight as they age.

This doesn’t have to be you. By exercising you protect your muscle from being broken down.

An aside: If you have been sedentary, you are fighting the battle of the bulge with one arm tied behind your back. But it is not too late. You can reverse the negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle at any time and at any age by starting to exercise and build fat-burning muscle.

Putting it all together for success

To lose weight you need to remove more fat from the fat stores than you add. The three weight loss strategies work together to make it happen. First, eating a low-fat diet adds less fat to the fat stores. Second, eating a high-fiber diet limits the amount of carbohydrates you eat so carbohydrates alone do not satisfy your energy needs and the body has to raid the fat stores for the balance. And third, exercising increases your energy needs, thus increasing the amount of fat you need to withdraw from your fat bank.