Everyone wants to know how to lose weight fast.
But what do you really need above anything else in order to lose weight? We're inundated every day with diet plans, health plans and weight loss diets.
It seems everybody and his brother is telling us what we have to do to lose weight.
There's low-carb diets, pills and potions of all kinds everywhere we look.
But none of them will work without this one essential ingredient.
Some of them won't work even with this element, but certainly even the best diet plan will need it.
I'm talking about mental attitude.
Before you even decide what you are going to do about your weight or fat problem, you have to make a decision, and that decision is about a number of things.
It's about how important to you it is that you lose weight, how much weight you are going to lose, how seriously you're going to take the weight loss process, and how much you're prepared to change your whole lifestyle (or sacrifice, if you like) in order to succeed.
In other words, you need to develop (if you haven't already) a burning desire to succeed in what you do.
If you look at nearly any successful person - someone who has achieved something worthwhile in their life, especially if faced with daunting odds or strong opposition - you'll find that they had a burning desire to succeed in what they undertook.
They just wouldn't admit the possibility of failure.
That's precisely the attitude you need to adopt when you commence your diet plan.
I call it the "war mentality".
Countries on the brink of defeat in wartime pull out all the stops, make any number of sacrifices, to ensure they turn the tide and savour victory in the end.
If you've tried dieting before and failed, or you've lost weight only to put it back on straight after, then almost certainly you did not have this burning desire to win.
To avoid just playing at losing weight, to make sure you do it for real this time, and that the weight lost stays off for good, get your mental attitude right.
Decide that this is the most important thing you will ever have done in your entire life until now.
If anyone has doubted your ability to lose weight then determine to prove them wrong.
Focus on the advantages you will gain from losing the amount of weight you have decided upon.
It may be simply enjoying better health and fitness such as not having to suffer extreme breathlessness when having to run for a bus, or it may be becoming more attractive to the opposite sex.
Whatever it is, and it could be a number of things, imagine what it will be like when you have cut your weight down to your target weight.
Keep a diary or journal recording all your successes and failures, all the things you have done or eaten, so you can see where you went wrong if progress stalls.
Make targets for each week or month, but make them realistic - you don't want a string of disappointments.
Give yourself a reward, such as a trip to the theatre, each time you meet your target.
Stay focussed.
Keep a chart.
Refer to it as the "war room" to maintain the wartime analogy.
Tell yourself out loud frequently that you're going to meet your current target at the end of the week or month, and your ultimate target at the end of the planned period.
Now is the time.
Decide once and for all that getting down to your ideal weight is the most important thing in your life and that you're going to succeed.
Then choose the plan of action that you will follow.
That's how to lose weight fast.