1. Eat out half as much. The average person eats out 4 times a week (now, that's too many) - with fast food outlets the most likely destination. Every meal away from home represents an estimated 1500KJ above what you would normally have at your own table - that's a potential 18 pounds weight gain in a year. So stay home and cook, and pack your own lunch for work. Replace just 2 meals each week and you can lose 9 pounds annually. Hence the key here is to get organized and plan your meals in advance. Not only can you lose weight, you'll save plenty of money!

2. Keeping your weight down is all about damage control, not deprivation - who wants to go through life without a restorative glass of wine or beer, a few pieces of chocolate or some ripe, mouth watering cheese? But slimming without sacrifice means making sensible choices - that is, knowing where to draw the line with what you eat and bumping up your incidental exercise to offset your indulgence. Losing weight is about a mission to balance your food intake and maintaining your weight control - so taking a long term approach in these areas is the best way to guarantee lasting results.

3. Don't feel guilty - on the days where you eat too much or skip the gym, chalk it up to being human and steer yourself back on track the next day. Look at it this way- we're not perfect and there's no such thing as the perfect plan. Fat loss is about a journey where you'll have your highs and lows - but more importantly staying focused towards your end journey - shrink belly fat and improve your overall health.

4. Consuming 5-6 small meals daily instead of 3 square meals can keep you fit and trim (400 calories every 3 hours or so through out the day). Eating this way helps prevent your blood sugar from crashing and keeps you satisfied. Since you won't be starving, you will be able to make smarter food choices and stick to your diet! Lastly, if you're not too sure of the calorie count - why not stick to portion control - 1 small plate serve only per meal.

**5. Get into high intensity interval training. This requires aggressive effort. Each exercise is performed to the point of failure. You reach the minimum number of sets, sometimes only 1 set of each exercise but as many as 3 sets. In addition,a short recovery period between exercises is essential. This short recovery period enables you to maintain a fairly high heart rate for the duration of the workout. This method improves your metabolic fitness because it places a substantial workload upon ever major muscle in your body and at the same time stresses your circulatory and respiratory path ways.

The 5 tips above are just some of the easy ways to shrink your belly fat. It is about taking small steps to make positive changes, eating sensibly and getting more active. Fat loss is never meant to be easy, but if you take action now and make some sacrifices, you will find that this journey to shrink your belly fat will get easier and easier over time. Stay patient and stay focused!