The law of calorie balance is an unbreakable law of physics: Energy in versus energy out dictates whether you will gain, lose or maintain your weight. Period.

To maintain your weight, you must consume same number of calories you burn. To gain weight (muscle), you must consume more calories than you burn. To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn.

If you eat more calories than your body can utilize, you're going to gain fat, period. If you only count portions and haven't slightest clue how many calories you're taking in, it's a lot more likely that you'll eat more than you realize. (Or you might take in fewer calories than you should and trigger dreaded "starvation mode" which causes your metabolism to shut down).

So how do you balance practicality and realistic expectations with a nutrition program that gets results? Here's a solution that’s a happy medium between strict calorie counting and just guessing:

Create a menu using an EXCEL spreadsheet or your favorite nutrition software. Crunch all numbers including calories, protein, carbs and fats. Once you have your daily menu, stick it on your refrigerator (and/or in your daily planner) and you now have an eating "goal" for day, including a caloric target.

That is my definition of "counting calories" -- creating a menu plan you can use as a daily guide, not necessarily writing down every morsel of food you eat for rest of your life. If you’re really ambitious, keeping a nutrition journal for at least 4-12 weeks is a great idea and an incredible learning experience, but all you really need to get started is one good menu. If you get bored eating same thing every day, you can create multiple menus, or just exchange foods using your one menu as a template.

Using this method, you really only have to count calories once when you create your menus. After you've got a knack for calories from this initial discipline of menu planning, then you can estimate portions in future and get a pretty good (and educated) ballpark figure.

For more information on calories (including how calculate exactly how many you should eat based on your age, activity and personal goals, and for even more practical, proven fat loss techniques that strip off body fat fast, check out my ebook, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle at www.burnthefat.com

The muscle that you build from weight training will also help you burn fat. 1lb of Muscle burns 50 calories a day or 1lb of fat every 70 days. Not only will you be burning more calories, you’ll look better – whatever your weight is.

2. Eat Breakfast Another way to keep your metabolism revved up all day long is to eat breakfast. After you workout in morning as discussed earlier, just have breakfast and you’ll give your body perfect 1-2 combination to jump start your metabolism.

Eating breakfast in morning is what gets your metabolism started. Don’t skip breakfast and wait until mid-morning or afternoon to eat, your metabolism will run slower causing you not burn any extra fat.

Think about this way-Your metabolism is a fireplace that’ll burn fat all day long for you if you operate it correctly. When you eat breakfast you are basically throwing a log onto that fireplace to get it started burning fat.

Eating breakfast will help stop those cravings you may have later on in day and along with working out in morning, eating breakfast will also keep you energized throughout day and lower stress levels.

Advanced Tip: Instead of eating only 2 more meals during day like lunch & dinner, try to eat 4-5 more small mini-meals spaced 2-3 hours apart during day.

Remember fireplace? By eating these mini-meals you'll be throwing just right amount of "wood" on fireplace to keep your metabolism burning calories throughout day. Don't shut down your metabolism by eating big lunches or dinners, keep that metabolism of yours burning fat all day long.

Morning Checklist 1. Workout for at least 30min after waking up in morning 2. Eat a healthy breakfast 3. Burn fat & lose more weight during day

Use these 2 tips to reveal that six-pack, fit into that dress for an upcoming event like a wedding or reunion, or to impress that special someone. Whatever your fitness goal is these 2 tips above will surely help you reach them.