Oprah isn't the first to lose momentum on her diet plan, and she certainly won't be the last. Maintaining great health is a lifelong quest that requires small, positive actions every day for a lifetime. Consequently, you must not feel deprived of any food, but instead learn how to consume it in balanced portions and with reasonable frequency. Also, faking falling off the wagon periodically, but in a balanced and a controlled manner, will help you avoid cravings and maintain favorable and balanced actions for a lifetime.

If you aim for unrealistic perfection you will most certainly fail. Strict dieting, food deprivation, and exaggerated bouts of prolonged exercise will only lead you to have food cravings, fall off the wagon, revert back to your old habits of mindless grazing, and lead to a couch-potato lifestyle in which you abandon all efforts toward weight loss and preservation of your internal organs effort altogether.

It is important to address the underlying reasons that cause you to eat junk food, become a couch potato, and/or smoke as a response to a stressful situation. Serious situations such as divorce, being in an abusive relationship, a serious legal entanglement, bad debt, losing someone precious, or work-related stress must be addressed first with respective professionals. Once you address those serious situations first, then you need to start learning how to form new favorable habits of making balanced food and activity choices and managing stress, which will last you a lifetime. Forming these new, beneficial habits helps to replace and unlearn bad habits, which will lead to having valuable, lifelong health benefits. Like learning to ride a bicycle, you can't unlearn how to ride one.

In order to develop a new habit such as making balanced food and activity choices, you must attempt to make those choices repetitively and daily. After about three weeks those actions become second nature to you and become your new habits. That's it. This is a learning process so don't expect to make the right choices from the first day or the next. If you don't make a favorable food or snack choice just do better next time but remain persistent and keep going. Before long you and with persistent balanced actions you will become more skilled at making better choices.

These five simple tips can help you lose 1 to 3 pounds per week, permanently:

? Consume 35 grams of fiber per day (lose ? pound per week)

? Switch from sugary soft drinks and juices to diet soft drinks, flavored water with no calories, or iced tea sweetened with artificial sweeteners (lose ? pound per week)

? Snack on nuts, fruits, and vegetables instead of chips, pretzels, and salty or sugary packaged snacks (lose ? pounds per week)

? Consume 3 meals and 2 snacks and reduce portion sizes (lose ? to ? pounds per week)

? Increase the amount of walking you do by 20 minutes a day (lose ? to ? pounds per week)

By implementing these simple lifestyle changes you can lose 1 to 3 pounds a week. You can start living better and feeling better right away!