When it comes to the world of fitness, most people cannot tell you how to lose weight and prevent it from piling straight back on the moment you come off your healthy eating routine. In today's post you will discover why it's not rocket science.

The good news is you're not alone in your problem. In fact, well over half of the gym population in the UK and USA have no idea how to drop unwanted body fat, such is the level of confusion surrounding this controversial topic.

Yet despite the masses of people looking for an answer to this problem and the countless so-called miracle fixes to it, it remains one of health and fitness' biggest troublesome areas. There are a few things you can do right now, today, in order to fire up your body for a new healthy way of life, dropping unwanted body fat levels and keeping them down forever.

The four rules to fat loss are as follows:

1. Look to improve your protein intake.

2. Stop cutting out carbohydrates and fats.

3. Start weight training in your local gym.

4. Swap out long aerobic workouts for shorter, more effective cardiovascular exercise like interval training.

Increased protein intake has been well documented for it's fat loss benefits. Protein has less impact on the body's fat storage system than the other two nutrients, carbohydrate and fat, therefore it makes it the perfect snack throughout the day. You should be consuming around 1.5 grams of protein for every kg of your body weight.

This will do you no good, of course, if you then fall for the commonly made mistake of avoiding fat and carbohydrate based foods. This misconception was first made popular in the early 2000's by celebrity diets who believed that cutting these two vital nutrients would lead to quicker weight loss. It did, but at a very high price. Individuals often felt very ill and then piled on any pounds they had lost the moment they went back to eating a regular diet. An eating plan high in protein, moderate in carbohydrate and quite high in healthy fats is a perfect match here.

Next, it is time to dust off those old dumbbells in the garage and start lifting them on a regular basis.

As soon as people think about dieting, they couple that thought with cardiovascular exercise. For some reason, weight training is relegated to the status of afterthought, something which they later come to regret. Resistance training has been shown to burn considerably more body fat than steady state cardiovascular exercise, as well as helping you to take advantage of an increased protein intake and getting your muscles leaner for when you lose some body fat.

If you are just starting out in the gym, try using an approach to training which allows you to perform a full body resistance training session, either with free weights or resistance machines and cables, three times per week. Increase that frequency to four times per week a few months down the line.

The other important aspect of any effective fat loss program is, of course, cardiovascular exercise. Just as many people wrongly believe that lifting weights won't aid fat loss, many people also wrongly believe that the way to build a better body is to spend two hours per day jogging on the treadmill. High intensity interval training, otherwise known as HIIT for short, allows you to complete your cardiovascular work in far less time and has been proven to burn more than six times the body fat of a much longer aerobic workout.

If your goal is to learn how to lose weight and maintain your new results into the long-term, combining a high protein, high fat, moderate carbohydrate diet with a combination of high intensity interval training and resistance based training is currently by far the most effective way to do so.