It’s hard not to have weight loss on one’s mind. Unless you’re fit, healthy, and have a positive body image, and who has the time for all that? For the rest of us, at least a couple of times a week, we try to come up with a new goal or plan for taking off pounds, whether we need to or not.

While there are more diets, diet books, CDs, and DVDs than there are stars in the sky, the best road to successful weight loss remains having a healthy diet and exercising enough to burn more calories than we take in. This is not as fun as the chocolate and lemonade or grapefruit and cabbage diet, but it tends to be more sustainable over time.

Unfortunately, even those who try to take a healthy approach to losing weight–eating more fruits, vegetables and lean proteins, reducing fat, salt and sugar in the diet and exercising–can go about it wrong or take things too far, too fast. Excessive dieting can lead to anorexia, which leads to heart problems, hair loss, bone loss, and death and therefore should be avoided. Healthy weight loss is the trick here.

There are also those who, not having worked out in some time, try to do too much too fast and wind up limping around for six weeks. Exercise injuries can not only impede weight loss, but also can negatively impact bone density, muscle strength, and a lot of other things vital for good health. So, the key in both areas is moderation and sometimes even advice.

There is no shame in not knowing how to exercise effectively. Most people don’t, even a lot of people who think they do. If you do it right, your body will burn calories much more efficiently, even if you don’t feel like you want to die at the end of a session. In fact, while you should feel tired, if you’re collapsing into a puddle at the end of each workout, you’re doing something wrong.

This may mean that you’re using improper motion while exercising. You’ll know this for sure when you stop being able to move one or more body parts and have to seek treatment. The most likely culprit is actually that you are improperly hydrated, so drink water while exercising.

However, it is also quite probable that you are not getting the right nutrition to fuel your workouts. This is especially true if you are exercising to lose weight and not just get stronger.

Calorie restriction is an important part of weight loss, but for exercise to be an effective and sustainable part of your plan, you need to be getting the right nutrition. Again, in this world of fast food joints clamoring for our attention, that isn’t always the easiest thing to figure out.

There are professionals out there who can offer you nutritional counseling. They can give advice on what to eat for effective weight loss, as well as how to avoid exercise injuries and what to eat and how to move in order to recover from the same. If you want to sustain your weight loss, you want to do it right.