[nisha]

Here, here!

I agree with you both.

Firstly it's very important that you eat the right foods. If you have been eating a lot of processed foods, high in chemical content and refined hidden sugars, you will automatically start to drop (a lot) of weight just by switching to a "clean" diet, where you eat only fresh, organic, non-processed, wholesome foods. If you then start to plateau you may then need to look at how many carbs you're consuming. If you are eating more than 40% of your calories from carbs, you'll probably need to adjust the balance to favour protein.

I found this website doing research for a project I'm doing at work. I'm a fat loss expert from London (UK), but have found some really interesting discussions on here so decided to join as part of my ongoing education. If you are interested in the nutrition principles I use with my clients (it follows the clean food route), please let me know and I'll post details.

Just as an aside. My housemate is a member of overeaters anonymous and has lost 3 stone in the last year. She doesn't count calories at all and in fact eats loads - like 1700-2000 CALORIES A DAY! She also follows the principles of healthy eating. Methods are many principles are few, methods may vary principles never do, (said by some ancient philosopher but oh so true).