Frustration with weight loss or fat loss is one of the major players when, after all your best efforts, you just put it back on again. Unfortunately, another downfall is that you usually put on more than you have lost in the first place. It's no wonder people fail, given the many choices in diets on the market today.

Most people have the opinion that a diet that works has to be as complicated, and that could not be further from the truth.

When you study the different fat loss diets, there are many programs and combinations of programs that you can choose from. The three main nutrients, proteins, fats and carbohydrates can be broken down into different ratios to give you total daily calorie intake.

For example, you can have high, medium, low and zero calorie amounts within those nutrient groups. The calorie ratios of each nutrient set against each of the other nutrient groups are numerous. This is why many diet gurus can create their own program and, by the addition of slick advertising methods, can claim their program as the best. This just further confuses Joe or Jane Public, and gives him or her yet another choice.

It doesn't have to be this way if we look at the real key to fat loss and dispense with all the advertising claims so prevalent within the media.

There are some general guidelines to follow that will allow you to decide if a particular weight loss program is right for you. These guidelines can be found in virtually any diet manual.

This article is not intended as an explanation of what diet you should actually follow, but to give you a logical approach as to how to succeed with whatever program you decide to follow. Apply some common sense to a nutritional plan and you will make your weight loss permanent and lasting a lifetime.

If we can understand why diets fail in the long term, then we can try to prevent failure. One of the secrets you need to know is that weight loss goals invariably become unattainable due to the lack of long-term commitment.

Most people already know that they need to expend more calories than they are taking in. No earth shattering revelations here. Unfortunately most are not willing to do what it takes to achieve this calories deficiency for longer than a few weeks or maybe months.

Generally all diets will work, but in the short term. It can be high fat, low fat, high carbohydrates and the many combinations of fad diets we see so often. In the short term, by burning more calories than you consume there will be some weight loss, but we need to find the real key to permanent weight loss.

Studies have shown that when the popular commercial diets were compared to each other over a 6-month to one-year period, they generally had very similar weight loss results. One major study cited that sticking to the diet itself was one of the primary predictors of whether the weight loss program would be successful.

The bottom line here is that even though some diets are healthier than others, virtually all diets will work similarly in the short term. What is clear is that sticking to the diet becomes the most important thing when looking at weight loss for the long term.

Lifestyle alteration is the real basis for permanent weight control, and any thoughts of having permanent weight loss need to be accepted as being a life long management goal in order to succeed.

Although, as with many things in the modern world, people are looking for the quick fix. Most people are looking for the magic bullet to end their weight loss woes, but there hasn't been any real advancement in trying to lose weight without drugs or surgery.

People for hundreds of years have known about the balance between cutting calories and increasing exercise as the method for getting leaner. So the overall goal of permanent weight or fat loss is to increase your exercise, reduce your calories, and accept that your new regime must be in place for the long term. That is the real secret.