What do you have to do to lose weight? For most people who answer that question, their answer comes quickly and without much thought: diet and exercise. And if asked more about the type of exercise they had in mind, “aerobic” is the typical answer. While those are simple answers to simply put questions, the real answer to successful weight loss is a bit more complicated, however the good news is there is an answer!

The proliferation of fad diets and infomercials have misled many Americans into believing that there is some macronutrient elimination supplement or diet that will solve our weight loss problems. To make matters worse, we’ve all been told for years that aerobic exercise is the answer to fat burning. You’ve seen the “fat burning zone” on cardio equipment. Just another example of deceptive marketing designed to sell weight loss solutions in the multi-billion dollar weight loss industry.

Forget all that misinformation then. Let me clear up the confusion and give you the three essentials that clients who have successfully transformed their bodies have found so effective.

The answers to what’s wrong with aerobic exercise and how to master your weight loss are: synergistic implementation of resistance training (weight training), moderate aerobic exercise, and proper nutrition, or what we call The Essentials.

It almost sounds like common sense, but yet very few people effectively implement all three components when pursuing their weight loss goals. Significant fat loss and avoiding the common fat loss plateau can be achieved by incorporating a balanced effort of resistance training and moderate aerobic exercise supported by proper nutrition. Too often, efforts to lose fat are based solely on diet and aerobic exercise. This approach will only lead to a small amount of weight loss, a slower metabolism, and the frustration of gaining the weight back.

Diets usually don’t work. Diets are unrealistic and are often short-lived. One of the most popular diets actually asks you to virtually eliminate one essential macronutrient. In reality, the answer to your nutritional program lies in educating yourself about balanced nutrition and eating behavior modifications, not nutrient elimination or severe calorie deprivation.

Harsh calorie deprivation diets will only slow your metabolism by decreasing metabolically active muscle tissue and putting your body into a natural defense mechanism that we commonly call starvation mode. The release of a weight-regulating hormone and enzyme (lipoprotein lipase) will slow down your body’s metabolism when it interprets your diet as hunger.

Plus, an hour of cardio won’t give you the long-term weight loss you want. If you want to change your body, you need to lessen the importance of aerobic exercise and shift some of your efforts to resistance training. Resistance training is critical if you want to take control of your metabolism. An increase in muscle (and I don’t mean bulking up) will increase your metabolism.

For example, a pound of muscle requires 40 to 50 calories a day just to maintain it. Think of what an extra five pounds does to your body’s caloric needs in one day in one week! Not to mention, 48 hours after a resistance workout, your metabolism will still be elevated to aid muscle recovery. That’s the key to permanent, long-term fat loss. It’s not just what you do 5 percent of your day (exercise), it’s what your body does the other 95 percent of the day.

Let’s face it, most people don’t really enjoy the boredom of a prolonged cardio workout. Don’t get me wrong, cardio is a major component of Essentials, but in moderation. Excessive aerobic exercise will derail your toning efforts by decreasing lean muscle mass. If your body is not getting the proper nutrition and resistance training to increase or at least maintain your body muscle, your body will break down muscle protein for energy and now you know how important muscle is to your metabolism.

The synergy of the three components is essential. If your nutrition doesn’t provide adequate “fuel” for your resistance training efforts, you won’t increase your muscle tone, and therefore won’t increase your metabolism. Furthermore, poor nutrition will not help optimize fat utilization during moderate aerobic exercise. You see, with proper nutrition you can decrease the amount of cardio you have to do, this reduction will allow for optimal maintenance of muscle tissue, effectively turning your body into a fat burning machine.

Let me give you one more way to look at it. If you look at the chart on this page, all three components have equal pie chart percentages (33.33 percent), and all of the Essentials have been perfectly executed to form a perfectly round wheel. Now imagine that resistance training remains at 33 percent of the chart, aerobic exercise at 20 percent, and nutrition at 10 percent. It is no longer a perfectly round wheel. So which wheel do you think would allow your car to perform most effectively?

As you can see, an equal concentration on all three components of the Essentials will eliminate frustration, make your pursuit enjoyable, and reward your self-confidence with a successful body transformation.