1. Check your Body Mass Index (BMI) to determine if weight has become health risk. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 60% of Americans are overweight, defined as having a BMI (a ratio of height to weight) over 25. Of those, nearly half (27%) qualify as obese, with a body mass index of 30 or more. In 1980, just 15% of Americans were considered obese. You can check your BMI at website below.

2. Match your diet to your body’s requirements. If you eat and drink more calories than your body requires you will put on weight. Learn to control calories and portion sizes, make recipes leaner, and eat infrequently from fast food restaurants. Also learn how to snack with healthful choices.

3. Color your diet with a large variety of colorful, cancer-fighting fruit and vegetables. There are seven different color ranges of both fruit and vegetables and by choosing between 5 to 9 daily serves from a wide range of fruit and vegetables, we are extending our consumption of cancer (and other disease) fighting nutrients.

4. Eat lean protein with every meal. Protein provides a powerful signal to brain providing a longer sense of fullness. The right source of protein is essential to controlling your hunger with fewer calories and necessary to maintain your lean muscle mass. Choices of protein should be flavored soy shakes with fruit; white meat of chicken and turkey, seafood such as shrimps, prawns scallops and lobster and ocean fish or vegetarians may prefer soy based meat substitutes.

5. Rev up your metabolism with activity. If you want to enjoy a lifetime of well-being, exercise is a key ingredient. Colleen Doyle, MS, RD, director of nutrition and physical activity for American Cancer Society (ACS), says adults should do something for 30 minutes each day that takes as much effort as a brisk walk. Children should be active for an hour each day. We are more likely to develop habits around things we enjoy, so seek activities which you enjoy doing. It is also helpful to build physical activity into your daily routine: use stairs instead of escalator or lift at work, park your car in parking bay furthest from super marketing and don’t use remote control to change TV channels.

6. Get support to ensure you develop a healthful eating plan and reach your goal weight. Whilst a small percentage of people possess discipline to lose weight, many obese people have developed strong thoughts and habits concerning food they eat. In order to establish new habits, most people respond well to some form of consistent encouragement and coaching. A study, “Effects of Internet Behavioral Counseling on Weight Loss in Adults at Risk of Type 2 Diabetes” shows that participants who had support of weight loss coaching lost more weight than those who didn’t. The study concluded that support of a weight loss coach can significantly improve weight loss results.

Being overweight or obese has been identified next to smoking, as most preventable major risk to developing cancer. Even small weight losses have been shown to have beneficial health effects. So it’s never to late to start and you can never be too young or too old to be concerned about your health and do something about achieving a more healthy weight.

4 Experiment and use spices Get used to cooking with a wide variety of spices. It's possible to get fabulous flavor with spices without adding high calorie fats and oils.

5 Read "fat free" labels carefully Many "fat free" items contain additional carbohydrates in form of sugar or fructose to compensate for reduced flavor and can do more to add to your weight than "full strength" product.

6 Use low fat dairy products For adults, much healthier as low fat dairy products have nutrients without extra fat.