Also known as the Hacker Diet, it’s a pretty simple concept – if you burn more calories than you consume, you will loose weight. A pound of fat represents about 3500 calories, so every time you burn 3500 more calories than you consume, you lose about a pound of fat.

That’s pretty much it. There are a number of other things to keep in mind, namely that your body weight fluctuates greatly over the course of the day depending on when and how much you consume of both food and water, so you need to pick a time of the day that you feel is representative and always compare weights at the same time. I’ve picked first thing in the morning, before I take a shower or eat anything.

The final trick of all of this it keeping track of what you do. What you eat, how much water you drink, and what physical exercises you do. To help you do this, there are a number of pretty good apps on the App Store. I’m using MyFitnessPal and the FitBit app at the moment, but when I get a FitBit, I’m going to dump MFP, as I won’t need both. (They both do calorie counting and have food value databases, but the FitBit device will track my walks without me having to do anything extra.)