The American Dietetic Association (ADA)

A diet can be successful or disastrous, depending on your dieting approach. Start by finding your healthy weight range to establish a goal for your diet. Study some facts about calories and fat, and follow a few simple tips to make your eating habits healthier and your diet will become a lifestyle — which will lead to weight loss.

Body Mass Index (BMI) is the standard used to measure a child’s weight-related health risk. However, you must use charts specifically designed for children. Children’s BMI charts, unlike those for adults, are based on age and gender. Ask the staff at the pediatrician’s office to show you your child’s charts. Or you can use the formulas and charts that follow to do the calculations yourself.

You can’t use your waist size to get an absolute percentage of body fat, but measuring your waistline does provide information about the location of your body fat. And knowing where your fat is located, along with your BMI, enables you to determine whether you’re overweight and at risk for health problems. Fat that accumulates around your stomach area makes you more susceptible to a variety of health problems.

Before you start dieting, it helps to determine how much you do eat. Unfortunately, a magic formula for figuring out how many calories you eat is unavailable as yet — you simply have to track it. If you’re keeping a food journal, dig it out now. If you didn’t, or can’t find it, you can catch up: Keep track of what you eat.

For every excuse not to exercise, a better reason exists to make the effort to get in shape and grow stronger, healthier, and happier with your body. Here are some common excuses to avoid exercise — and some ways to work around your hesitation. I don’t have time. This is the No. 1 reason most people give for not exercising.

The Food Guide Pyramid contains the building blocks for a healthy diet. If you follow the recommended servings listed for each food group in the pyramid each day and eat lowfat, low-sugar, and low-sodium choices within each group, you’re sure to get enough protein, vitamins, minerals, and dietary fiber without getting excessive amounts of calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, added sugars, or alcohol.

Dieting may mean changing your cooking habits. Standard cooking methods need some reworking to make them lowfat and low calorie, and some foods can be used as substitutes, making them great, nutritious and healthy stand-ins for others. Sauté onion and garlic in water: When a recipe calls onion and garlic cooked in oil, use a nonstick pan and 2 tablespoons of water.

Fruits and vegetables provide vitamins, minerals, and fiber necessary for proper nutrition. They’re also naturally low in fat with few exceptions. Breakfast is a good place to begin adding fruit servings to your diet. You may already start your day with a glass of juice. Add a midmorning snack of fruit and have some for dessert at lunch or dinner, and you’ve made your goal of three to four servings a day.

Eating too much and not exercising enough are the fundamental reasons people gain weight. But genetics, metabolism, and environmental factors explain how large your appetite is and how efficiently your body uses the food you eat. It’s true that some of the reasons that you gain weight are beyond your control, but that doesn’t mean that you can resign yourself to life in the fat lane — slurping up soda pop and inhaling the chips while channel-surfing for your fave TV reruns.