Picture a big bucket.
think of water as fat.
think of water put into the bucket as the food you eat.
think of water taken out of the bucket as your exercising or using up the food you eat.

if you eat more than you burn off, your bucket overflows and you get that fat belly.

cardio every day.
Weight training 3 times a week.

I work out with a trainer at the gym for an hour, 3 times a week. after that hour, I usually try to put in another hour of some sort of cardio - treadmill, bike, rower.
On the other 4 days of the week, I do an hour of cardio only.
I cut out whites, all flour items, and starches. I have eliminated most sugars and salts.

Nobody can spot reduce so forget about just getting rid of the belly fat. You need to get rid of fat in general, to lower your fat percentage. And sadly, it's usually the belly that's the last to go.

So start jogging.

Yeah your right. I have to make myself do this! I have said I would make a change for weeks.. months even, many months. Now it is time to do it! Easter is by with so no more eating rubbish!

I think even if I start to go running every second day, thats a start, and I'll start doing some weights a few times a week aswell. Eating decent is a big MUST in my case aswell. I need to eat the right foods.

I really like pastas and salads so its not that I don't like the healthier options, its more of the being too lazy to actually prepare it! But that also, must stop!

Fruits, veggies, chicken, fish, salads are OK but not the dressings, forget about that pasta though.
Cut out the sugars and starches and salts.
all those flours in breads really should be kept to a minimum as well.

i cut out all breads and items with flours about 2 months ago along with sugars and salts; i am feeling ever so much better.

Switch out the fruits for vegies. The natural sugars can do a number on you just as much as the refined ones.

What about whole wheat pasta's? Without the dressing, even like a tuna pasta. That'd much better than normal pasta, yeah?

I think I eat too much bread aswell, on a daily basis I eat about 2 or 3 slice, maybe I should cut it down to one slice a day if I must, and eat wholemeal bread too, better than normal.

I'm going to say that you really need the carbs for recovery after a workout. Not bleached starches but whole grain starches. No, they shouldn't be everything you eat but they are important for your overall health. I would say that you need to look at the package and be certain that it is whole wheat pasta, it should say so right at the beginning and should indicate no processing. I think going the no carbs route is not healthy and many reports are coming out that support this. As for exercise, you have to step it up just as the others were saying. Fruits, veggies, lean protein, limited sugar intake, limited salt intake, water, water, water.

A lot of great points. In addition to removing fats and white flour carbs, drink lots of water, eat less, eat often and then cardio, cardio and more cardio.

Oh ya, throw in some spicy foods to help speed up metabolism. Good luck.

If you're trying to lose body fat then the carbs that are best for you are low on the glycemic index. The glycemic index is a rating that tells you how quickly that carbohydrate is being converted to sugar in your bloodstream. High glycemic carbs convert rapidly.

The problem with high glycemic carbs and weight loss is that the body will use the fuel that it finds in the bloodstream first and save the stored energy (fat) for later. Low glycemic carbs take longer to convert to sugar, so the body is more likely to burn off fat stores while the conversion process is taking place.

Pasta and bread of any kind is high glycemic. Whole grain a little less so than the bleached. Best not think of pasta/bread as an entree - use it as a condiment. Not more than a 1/4 cup COOKED at a meal. Most of your carbs should be leafy green vegetables.

Fruits and starchy vegetables are also high glycemic, so if you eat them, then in very small quantities. Avoid dried fruit - they're like concentrated sugar.

To find out more you can do an internet search on "glycemic index." There are several websites that will give you ratings for various foods and help you make better choices.

While I am not on the Zone Diet and haven't been for years, Barry Sears has put a lot of useful information in his books about the glycemic index and has included chapters with lists of low-med-high glycemic foods. Even if you don't follow his diet I think the books are helpful.

One further thought: muscle burns fat. To enhance your fat loss you need to build muscle, and that does mean lifting weights (and probably at a gym).

Make sure that you're eating enough protein daily to sustain the muscle you have and the muscle you want to build. Make sure your weight drop is not faster than 1-2 pounds per week. Faster means you're losing muscle, and that's counterproductive.

the thing with carbs just makes me crazy.
There's so much info, lots of it conflicting, so I just try different diet adjustments to see what works for me.
When my trainer suggested to cut back on the breads, and those starchy type foods, I went to the extreme and cut out ALL breads, flours, rices, and pastas for weeks LOL.
Now even my trainer said he meant to cut way back but not eliminate them all. Still, I am finally seeing amazing results in weight loss, soooo I am thinking that they had to have had something to do with it.

There are plenty of good sites with info, and this one is pretty good.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/carbohydrates.html

if nothing else, it will confuse you even more but knowledge is power so read and try for yourself.

I know what you mean, JustBlue. I think it's the hardest part of the diet to manage. When I was dieting down for the contest last summer for 8 weeks pretty much all I had, six times a day, was 2 oz asparagus, 2 oz of sweet potato plus my chicken and flaxseed oil. The occasional very low-carb salad greens, but that was it. Kinda boring but it worked, I lost fat steadily and at the correct rate.

Before that 8 week countdown I found it harder to manage my carbohydrate, I think because in my attempt to make more variety I miscalculated either the total number of grams I was taking in or indulged my sweet tooth with fruit too frequently.

I think your strategy of tinkering with diet adjustments is smart. Just curious - how did you keep track of what you tried?

Fiddler, I weigh just about everything. It's maddening and annoying, but my eyes just don't tell me the truth. If 3 oz is X amount of calories, I weigh to that amount.
Even if I cook/bake, I measure and write down the ingredients, how much calories, then the total is divided by how many portions of the whole.

I tried a general journal of all I ate and drank awhile back to give to my trainer. He told me where to cut down in size and what items to cut out for a few weeks.
I continued the journal.

for me, when i cut out ALL my bread, flour items, pasta and yes, even my brown organic rices, I started to notice a drop in fat. My trainer was almost shocked, as was I, because I honestly did not consume all that much of those items.

My diet is not all that varied, but it's working. Because there's not much to it, I have put the journal on hold.
If I can't remember oatmeal for breakfast, soup for lunch, and chicken veggies and quinoa for dinner, I am in sorry shape with the memory.

For drinking, I can't stop coffee, but it is limited to morns, with teas, green/white/herbal, the rest of the day.

i think much of my luck has to do with using no packaged items, excepting canned tomatoes that have no salt added.
All items I eat have reduced or no salt, no sweetener or sugar as an ingredient. Even juices I get are just juice. No sugars added or salts.

I make my soup with Bob's Red Mill 13Bean mix and a smoked ham hock from the market. The only meats otherwise are baby beef liver once a week, and then my chicken most other days. I'll get some kinds of fish fresh from the market once in awhile.
I started slicing up peeled apples and sprinkling cinnamon all over, then steaming them. It's a nice easy way to snack healthy while at work.
I do add some ground flaxseed to my oatmeal in the morns along with some currants.
I go the boring path for veggies; what is easy to steam is what I make. Broccoli, cauliflower-white/orange/purple, broccoflower, brussel sprouts, carrots-orange/yellow/purple. Sometimes I'll get a few other kinds, but that's the bulk of my diet.

I have found that most of the items I cut out, I don't miss at all. In addition, I find even the smell of fast foods nauseating because I can smell grease now.
I doubt that I will go back to bread unless they start baking 4-slice loaves LOL.

I have also found that as little as I eat, I am never hungry. I swear that all those additives and sugars made me hungry and craving more.

Because I removed so much salt from my diet, I can taste it in items and it does not taste all that great. For the odd time that I use butter, I had to switch to unsalted now.

I still have a long way to go; I think I want to lose at least another 40lbs but already I feel better and never feel bloated as before.

Back to the question.
I kept track of all foods in my journal and any changes I made would be for at least a couple weeks. I figure with being at the gym every day, 3 times with my trainer, it would take a few weeks for me to notice a difference in how I am feeling physically and how it is making a difference in my body fat.
I don't want to know the numbers, so my trainer does the calculating for me on the fancy gym machine/scale.
I don't think that 2 weeks is needed to recognize a positive result, but I want to be sure about it, so that's why I picked 2 weeks.
I just wish I knew more about starchy foods and complex carbs, and how to balance carbs and proteins in percentage of my daily diet, so I'll just keep reading.

I eat 6 samll meals daily! (NO fat!) I work out little right now until I lose what I want, but have been working out my; Butt, tummmy. (I lost another 1/2 inch on my tummy. (sit ups!)

Many thanks to you all for your help :D I will take in what you've all been saying and try my best. See how it goes! Thanks for that wee peice of info about dried fruit btw Fiddler! I was unsure about that. I thought they were quite good for you but not near as good as the actual fresh fruit I knew that much. I should drink more water, definately. so thankyee all :D