For Savvy Weight Loss: Know Thyself

A weight loss plan only works if you stay with it. And as any successful dieter can tell you, it's much easier to lose weight and firm up when the diet plan you choose fits your lifestyle and personality. Hate to cook? You won't last long on a diet plan better suited to budding gourmets. Living in a house full of kids and big eaters so you're constantly surrounded by food? A weight loss plan for you will have to face the problem of snacking head on.

With any endeavor to lose weight, most women think they need to go on a diet, says Lisa Sanders, MD, a clinician-educator in primary care at Yale University and author of The Perfect Fit Diet. But that's not exactly true. A diet is simply what you eat, which means you're already on one. That diet either works for you so you achieve and maintain the weight you want, or it doesn't.