One thing I’ve learned from Eat Stop Eat and author Brad Pilon’s writings is that it’s far too easy to make things difficult, and simplifying things can often be a task. However, it’s time to become enlightened to the fact that, generally, food is food – and losing weight simply means eating less of it (and exercising too, of course).

The main factor in any fatloss attempt is nutrition. My motto is: if it taste good, eat it, just don’t gorge on it!

But how to track what you eat? Don’t you need to make sure you’re specific calorie targets are met? How the hell else are you supposed to know you’re doing it right??

Well, calm down, and have a look at this:

This is a sample graph from what’s known as the Steve Ward Diet. It’s explained like this:

“All that you need for my diet is graph paper, a ruler, and a pencil,” Steve would explain. “The horizontal axis is time, one line per day. The vertical axis is weight in lbs. You plot your current weight on the left side of the paper. You plot your desired weight on a desired date towards the right side, making sure that you’ve left the correct number of lines in between (one per day). You draw a line from the current weight/date to the desired weight/date. Every morning you weigh yourself and plot the result. If the point is below the line, you eat whatever you want all day. If the point is above the line, you eat nothing but broccoli or some other low-calorie food.”

It’s as simple as that. If your weight is on target, eat as you wish (but try and keep it healthy; no 3,000-calorie burgers!). If you’re weight’s not on target, then eat lightly – or, follow Eat Stop Eat and start an 18-24 hour fast. Weigh yourself everyday, and track it every day, and eat accordingly.

Don’t want to use graph paper? Well, there are some new options:

The Line Diet is a new site where you can follow your own custom Steve Ward Diet plan, but online. Each day you enter your weight, and it plots it for you on a graph.

Else, if you’re an iPhone user, there’s the Bang Bang Diet application, which does much the same thing but also tells you whether to ‘eat normally’ or ‘eat lightly’.

Now there’s no reason to complicate things. Life’s complicated enough without obsessing over calories. Just eat healthy food most of the time, and exercise every other day, and track your daily fluctuations. Give it a go for 30 days and see what happens!

(I’m doing her post something of a disservice here by condensing it so inelegantly – do yourself a favour and read it completely, she puts it much more intelligently than I am able to.)

Like Skwigg, I have following the 5-6 meals a day plan before, often for months at a time, and while it does work – there are plenty of people who will attest to that (just take a look at Adam Waters or Tom Venuto’s success stories for examples) – but it became increasingly obvious to me that while I have managed to lose 15-20lbs using this method, it doesn’t suit my personality.

And at the end of the day, your personality – and the resilience of it and your mental state – will play a huge part in how long you can cope with a strict dietary plan.

Here is what doesn’t work for me:

• eat six meals a day
• of specific nutrients and number of calories
• at specific timeframes
• and with specific nutritional goals depending on the day of the week (be it a workout day, cardio day, or rest day)

Here is what I’ve found does work for me:

• eating what I know is a healthy amount, when I am hungry
• eating a healthy balance of food (veg, fruit, wholegrains, proteins)
• not worrying that I am hitting specific calorie targets (“low” days and “maintenance” days)
• not keeping an obsessive log of what I ate, and when
• fasting intermittently (typically twice a week for 18-24 hours at a time) to provide a calorie deficit to aid in fatloss. See Eat Stop Eat (www.eatstopeat.com) for more information.

Before this becomes overly negative of the 6-meal-a-day plans that are out there, I should stress they are generally partnered with solid workout plans, or a focus on building muscle and shredding fat.

However, personally I have found they can become stressfull to adhere to, do not provide me with a healthy relationship with nutrition (although books such as Burn The Fat are, in my mind, essential reading to understand the impact certain foods have on certain people). The danger I find is that these plans make no suggestion that other methods may work better for certain people.

It’s up to you, naturally, to decide what’s good for you.

Personally I find the 3 squares a day (occasionally with two snacks, if I feel hungry for them), with two 18-24 hour fasts a week, the ideal nutritional method for me.

Some of us (me, for example) didn’t even have a great body in our twenties, but now that time is no longer on our side as far as being in our ‘prime’, it’s becoming harder and harder to shift that extra weight and get (back) into shape.

This site will never profess to have all the answers, however the plan here is to:

• highlight information helpful to the 30-plus audience in burning weight even when you’re older
• workout plans and exercises that work
• nutrition plans and ideas to help shift the weight without resorting to laborious calorie counting (although calorie counting in general is something the site supports!)
• mindset methods and confidence-building exercises to help one stick with their workouts and nutrition

In short, our aim is to help provide you with the information and tools you need to build a better physique, and to overcome your weight loss plateau or start your weight loss journey.