TOP 5 weight-loss weapons

Feeling dazed and confused by all the conflicting advice on how best to trim down? We cut through the diet hypes to target your five key pillars to weight-loss success.

When you're trying to lose weight, there's no shortage of ready advice – whether it's the latest diet book, your friends, fitness instructor or the supermarket checkout person, everyone has a different opinion on what you should do. Information overload? No question. The science of nutrition and weight loss is a fastmoving field, providing a constant flow of new findings on how best to shed those stubborn kilos. The real challenge is navigating your way through the fad diets, oddball theories and phoney tummy-trimmers to find credible and trustworthy ways to achieve your weight-loss goals.

1. Harness your hunger

Listening to your body signals and learning to recognise them in relation to appetite is now seen to be a top priority by dietitians and weight-loss experts. Getting in touch with your hunger and eating satisfaction (satiety, or feelings of fullness) is key to successful weight management, says leading nutrition researcher Dr Brian Wansink, author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think (Random House Australia). He says that environmental influences drive us to make around 200 daily food decisions - most of them subconscious. The question to ask yourself is whether you eat because you're truly hungry, out of habit, because the clock says it's dinnertime or for comfort.

To break unhealthy habits, you need to stop and assess your appetite when thinking about eating, and question whether you're feeling genuine hunger pangs. Then you can use tools to help you stop overdoing it. For instance, try slowing down when you eat a meal and pausing halfway through for five minutes to assess how full you feel. There's even a mindful-eating application for the iPhone developed by Australian dietitians – Nutrition Guru's Eating Trainer.

THE FULLNESS FACTOR