Switch one soda, diet or regular, for water. If you replace all added sugar beverages with plain water, you could lose an average of 5 pounds more than if you don’t. Cutting down on diet drinks can help too.

Eat and run. Before you reach for that chocolate, think about how far you’re willing to go for it. How about a 2.87 mile walk? One mini peanut butter cup will cost you one third mile. A small brownie? A 26 minute run.

Chew slowly. In a recent study, when women were told to eat quickly, they ate 646 calories in nine minutes, but when they were encouraged to pause between bites and to chew each mouthful 15 to 20 times, they took in only 579 calories in 29 minutes.

Shut off the late night TV. Replacing one hour of all of inactive awake time with sleep cuts your calorie intake by about 6% simply by giving you fewer chances to eat. Turn in a little hungry. Night time snacking can add up to 300 extra calories daily. Don’t go to bed “starving”, but don’t go to bed with a full stomach either

Go a little vegetarian. Going meatless for at least two meals a week can help reduce the amount of saturated fat and calories you consume.

Change your dressing. Salad is certainly a healthy choice, until you pour on the dressing. In fact, women can often get more fat and calories from dressing than from any other food. Try one of the new salad dressing spritzers, which add flavor for just 10 calories.

Leave a few bites behind. This equals about 100 calories, which is all you need to cut from your daily diet to avoid gaining the one to 2 pounds most adults put out every year.

Go the extra mile to help ward off weight gain. That’s just 2000 steps or about a walk around the block.

Jump rope to up the calorie burn of your walking workout. Start by doing 20 jumps for every five to 10 minutes.

Sit in front of the TV on a stability ball. It gets you to hold in your abdominal muscles so you’re building strength and helping posture.

Exercise while you e-mail. Sit upright and inhale deeply. As you exhale slowly, drawing or lower abdominals in toward your spine. Hold on tight, while you take a few easy breaths, for as long as it takes you to write an e-mail or listen to a song on your ipod.

The first thing to do when starting any diet is to figure out what you’re trying to achieve, and set goals around where you want to be. Do you want to diet to lose weight? Do you want to diet to improve your health? The goals you make will determine how you should approach your diet, but more than that, setting the goals gives you something to work towards a specific goal - it’s easier to achieve something when you commit yourself to a specific goal.

However, one thing to keep in mind is that your goal should be reasonable - losing weight too quickly or losing it the wrong way can lead to either health risks, or can set you up to gain it back more easily. The most successful diets are the ones that allow you to pace yourself. Losing 1-2 pounds/week is more than enough, it took a long time to put on the weight, be patient taking it off if you want to remain healthy, and be successful.

Before you set specific weight goals, it’s important to determine the ideal body weight range for your height - this can help you to get an objective idea where you should set your goals. BMI (Body Mass Index) chart that can help you determine your ideal body weight.

When you meet a short term goal, such as losing five pounds, you will feel accomplished. You will be empowered by the knowledge that you are capable of accomplishing your short term goals, and therefore you will be just as capable of accomplishing your long term weight loss goal. After all, your long term goal will be met if you can continue meeting your short term ones. If you only have your ultimate goal in mind, you might start to get restless and impatient, and you might wind up giving up before you have made any real progress.

You can also have goals that are even smaller, such as daily goals. Your daily goal can be to eat well and exercise for at least forty-five minutes. If you have a hard time sticking to a diet, then starting out by setting miniature goals can help to give you the boost that you need to succeed. Once you have been dieting for a few months, you might decide that you are ready to extend your daily goals to weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly goals instead.

Eat negative calorie foods. These are foods that you can eat in any quantity and not feel guilty about eating them.  They work in a negative calorie way and are allowed to be consumed whenever you want.

Have soups in your meal. It takes a long time to eat, its filling, its low calorie, and its good for you.  There was a study a few years ago that stated soup added to a diet will speed up your metabolism and reduce the hunger cravings.  There are two things to look out for, creamy soups (higher in calorie) and the salt level in soups.  Unfortunately, most canned soups are also high in salt, so take that into consideration when eating soup.

Reduce the fats that you eat during the day. Lowering the amount of fats in your diet just makes good sense.  Fat is denser and less likely to fill you for a sustained period of time, also, fat and cholesterol is not a heart healthy solution. Be aware of the “no-fat” “low-fat” products they have in the store.  The way they usually make these items low-fat yet tasty is by adding more sugar.  Just because something says low-fat doesn’t mean that you can’t gain weight from it.  Another thing, if you substitute fatty foods with vegetables, you’ll find that you feel fuller because of the fiber levels in fruits and vegetables.

Eat smaller meals a day than larger meals. Eating small may help your metabolism to stay at a higher rate and will make the person not hungry throughout the day.

Eat to live, don’t live to eat.  The reason we eat certain foods or indulge in certain junk foods is often far from being hungry.  Some people eat to comfort themselves, some people eat for the pleasure of eating, the taste, texture, etc, but you really have to ask yourself, what should be the function of food in my life.  You want to shift the focus of food as entertainment to food being what fuels your body. Too much is bad and your body won’t function properly.  Changing your attitude towards food is important if you want to succeed in any diet.

Eat slowly.  I know that sometimes you have to rush your food down because you’re late for work or late for an appointment, but if you eat slowly you will enjoy the food more, you will feel a little more satisfied, and your body can honestly tell you, “Hey, I’m full, no need to finish that whole plate of food.”  If you eat too quickly your body doesn’t have time to send you the message that you’re full and you end up eating more.

Drinking water will flush out the bad toxins in your body, will get your kidney’s working, and even help your metabolism speed up a little.  Drinking water also takes up space in your stomach, it reduces the cravings just a bit, and will make you feel a little more full when you do eat your calories for the day.  If you want an added benefit from water, make sure you drink cold water, this will speed up your metabolism a bit and make you burn up a few extra calories.  Remember that when you are losing weight, the fat that you are losing sometimes has stored toxins in it, drinking water will help flush out those toxins.

Another useful diet trick is by keeping track of your progress.  It’s very easy to break your diet if you don’t monitor what you eat during the day.  Get yourself a little journal that you write down what you’ve eaten, the amount of calories you’ve eaten, and what type of workout you’ve done for the day.  By keeping track of the calories, you’ll make sure that you don’t go over a certain caloric amount during the day.  Also, tracking your workout will also show you the areas that you’ve improved in.  Keeping a journal of your progress is very important, because it shows you in some tangible way that you are making progress.

Plan ahead. It’s better to prepare your breakfast, lunch and dinner, since you become a little more in control of your daily caloric intake.  While you can eat at fast food places, know how many calories are in the food, how many grams of fat, etc.   Also, if you are going to a restaurant, think ahead of what you want to eat there. Remove that temptation and stick to exactly what you planned on eating before going to the restaurant.

Most of all, if you do break your diet one day, get right back on the diet…Do not go on a week of breaking or longer.  It just makes it that much harder to get motivated to start up again.  We are only human, people will break their diets from time to time, but it’s okay to break it one day as long as you get back on your diet the next day.

To be victorious with exercise—especially if it’s not normally part of your routine, is to look for ways to integrate it into your daily lifestyle, instead of just getting exercise whenever you have a free moment. Look for any chance to get more exercise like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, parking further away from your office and walk, as long as you’re actively moving around, you’ll be burning off more calories than if you were sitting.  A helpful tip is to schedule your exercise as you would other activities during the day—put it in your calendar, work it into your routine as a planned activity—or it will get pushed aside.

As has been said, one of the most helpful and healthy diet tips is through exercising. Why does exercise always get linked with diet?  Primarily because it helps you reach your goals of losing fat and looking great.  But first let us define the meaning of exercise. Physical exercise is any bodily activity that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health. It is performed for many different reasons. These include strengthening muscles and the cardiovascular system, honing athletic skills, weight loss or maintenance and for enjoyment. Frequent and regular physical exercise boosts the immune system, and helps prevent the “diseases of affluence” such as heart disease, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and obesity. It also improves mental health and helps prevent depression.

Childhood obesity is a growing global concern and physical exercise may help decrease the effects of childhood obesity in developed countries (Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia). Regular exercise helps to  improve how well your heart and lungs work, maintain a healthy weight or help you lose weight, improve balance, muscle tone and joint flexibility, relieve stress and tension and improve your mood, and reduce the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, osteoporosis and diabetes.

The benefits of exercising are awesome!  Indeed, it is the best diet tip one could ever have.