The traditional three meals a day simply won't do it for burning fat. Every time you eat, your metabolism kicks in to start burning what you've eaten and you begin to break it down instantly, taking everything it has to offer, from energy to nutritional content.

While eating only three meals a day, your metabolism has time between meals to slow down. This is not very efficient for burning fat. Your goal here is to keep your metabolism going and burning as much fat as possible. This is done by spacing your food out to 5 or 6 smaller meals a day, or by eating approximately every 2.5 - 3 hours. This is not to say eat like a horse 5 times a day, it means simply, to have your three meals, but to eat something small and extra in between. Even eating 4 small meals a day (1 every 3 hours) can make a significant difference over eating only 3 meals! The advantage of this is two fold. First, it keeps your metabolism going, and second it will allow you to be less hungry during your next meal, in turn causing you to desire less food. Systrim adjusts your current eating habits and may help you to lose weight and inches in record time.

2. Drink Water

The importance of drinking water is often overlooked. Your body is 70 percent water, and so it should be treated that way. Give it what it needs. Water is essential when dieting or losing weight. It helps you properly utilize all of the nutrients you take in through food, which is essential when dieting. Your body should be utilizing every nutrient that you take in or what's the sense of eating?

How Much Water Do You Really Need?

Almost everyone agrees that water is good for you and that the biggest problem with water intake is that most people don't drink enough. Learn why and find out the truth...

Water helps you transport nutrients efficiently into your cells and helps determine how your cells use them. You need them to maintain health and preserve quality muscle .

At the same time, it will help you efficiently eliminate wastes while flushing all toxins out of your body to make you even healthier. Also, it will help make your skin more elastic so that while you're putting on quality mass, you can avoid getting stretch marks all together. It will improve your complexion. Also, water cushions joints. This is important because while losing body fat, you will also lose some of the fat cushion that helps protect your joints. Drinking plenty of water will help you avoid injury. Lastly, drinking generous amounts of water all day will condition your body to expel excess water from under the skin, giving you a slimmer, less bloated appearance.

3. Eating Before Bed

Eating before bed is not a wise decision. While you are sleeping, your metabolism slows down. It is for this reason and this reason only that you do not want to eat within 3 hours of going to bed. The food that you eat will possibly be stored as fat because your body will not be able to burn it off completely. Avoid it whenever you can and you won't regret it!

4. High Protein

Keeping your metabolism going and burning fat efficiently while retaining as much muscle as possible is dependent on taking in a high amount of protein. Your body will burn carbohydrates first, because this is your main energy source. Once it runs out of carbohydrates, it will begin to use your fat as fuel. You don't want your body dipping into your hard-earned muscle to use as energy. It is for this reason that it is of prime importance that you eat as much protein as possible while losing body fat. It will keep your metabolism moving! A good rule of thumb would be to consume approx. 1g of protein per lb. of your body weight a day - divided over 5-6 small meals.

5. Lower Your Carbs

Without lowering your carbohydrates, your fat loss will be minimal at best. Lowering your carbohydrates will keep your body burning mostly fat all the time. Since your body burns carbohydrates first, then fat, it will have no carbohydrates to burn and begin burning fat immediately. The trick with carbohydrates is that you want to consume more of your day's carbs earlier in the day (primarily breakfast) and taper them off as the day wears on. When eating breakfast, you want a combination of protein AND carbohydrates to give your body a jump-start for the day. Also, this will supply you with enough energy to get through most of the day.

6. Fats

The foods you eat should be relatively low in fats as foods with higher amounts of fat can become a limiting factor when trying to lose weight. People eating low fat diets may choose to add a few tablespoons of essential fatty acids to their diet (flax, fish oil, evening primrose oil, hemp oil, etc.) in order to remain healthy and aid in proper digestion.

7. Take A Multi-Vitamin

When dieting, taking a multi-vitamin will keep you strong and healthy. Since you are changing your eating habits in one way or another while dieting, you want to make sure you are getting in a good amount of your essential vitamins and minerals.

8. Cardiovascular and Weight Training

Cardiovascular exercise is perhaps one of the most important keys to losing weight. Your diet could be the best in the world, but it will never reach it's fullest potential without cardio.

For best results, there a few key rules to remember that when applied, will keep your cardiovascular exercise program burning fat for you for the long hall. Remember that cardio most definitely works for dropping body fat, but the same routine week in and week out will begin to have less impact on body fat as your body gets used to a certain routine. The three words to remember, in succession, for combating this are INTENSITY, DURATION, and FREQUENCY.

Let's say you are a beginner. First choose an amount of time that you wish to perform cardiovascular exercise 3 times per week - let's say 20 minutes to start (though this can certainly vary). As an easy guide, your proper INTENSITY level can be estimated as the pace of exercise at which it becomes moderately difficult to carry on a normal conversation while performing it.

* This may take a week or two before you are comfortable with this pace.

Once comfortable with a good intensity level and after a few weeks or as much as a month of doing it, you are ready to increase the DURATION of each exercise session. An increase of 5 (or sometimes 10) minutes is typical. This will again stimulate and heighten the fat burning process and can remain effective for weeks. The final phase in keeping the fat burning process going strong is to increase the FREQUENCY of cardiovascular exercise sessions per week (from 3 session to 4).

This time tested procedure, when executed, will make a tremendous difference in not only your pants size, but the overall way you look and feel as well. For those who continue to perform cardio as part of their lifestyle (and we hope you do), this process can be repeated until reaching 5 or 6 sessions a week for 45-60 minutes per session.

Note: For those with difficulty finding time to do cardio, even 20 minutes per session is enough to put your body in a cardiovascular state and help to begin burning fat.