Control your life

Lately, weight loss diets have been moving away from traditional methods - counting calories, cutting carbs etc and focusing more on eating what YOU want.

Just take a look at any of the new diets (like the Food Lovers Fat Loss System for example) and they'll all tell you that you can even eat pizza or chocolate cake and still lose weight.

Is this a gimmick to sell more diets just because they play on your emotional wants? It certainly sounds easier than just eating boring salads.

Keep in mind that you're not getting the big picture, just the part that YOU want to see. You still need to eat healthy foods - like the boring salad. It's just that you can even eat the foods you'll usually feel guilty about eating and still lose weight.

But will these types of unconventional weight loss diets ever work for you?

Many of these new diets are based on a fat burning method known as calorie shifting. With calorie shifting, you simply eat 4 - 5 small meals per day, consuming different amounts of calories each day.

This type of eating kicks your metabolism into overdrive forcing your body to burn fat instead of storing it. Calorie shifting diets work because they're backed up by science.

Take the Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet for instance. It has been available for at least 5 years and is one of the best selling online diets with many independent testimonials and reviews claiming the diet works where others have failed.

Since then, there have been a flurry of other diets that have been shown to work just as well because they've...well...they've incorporated the same calorie shifting technique into the diet. Same diet, different brand and of course different creators put their twist to it.