The easiest way to cheat on your diet starts out innocently enough. It’s a colleague’s birthday, an anniversary, or a night out with friends. You’re at a restaurant, and all of the dishes just look so good. How can you avoid the tantalizing pasta or sizzling sirloin and stick with a boring salad?

Don’t be miserable while your friends indulge. Order what you want, but avoid the hundreds of extra calories prepared foods will cost you. Order the HALF SIZE portion.

What it Takes to Lose the Weight and Keep it Off

By Lauren Showers

The government estimates that $33 billion is spent on weight loss products and services each year. That is a lot of money, but with all that dough going towards losing weight, why are we still seeing rising numbers in obesity every year? Maybe the money is going in the wrong places. Fad diets and gimmicks are too numerous to count these days and without the right education on how your body responds to nutrition how are you to know what is going to work for you or what is healthy for your body?

Never fear, Lauren is here to help. First, I want to make sure that if losing weight is a goal of yours, you will always put health as your number one. You should never try to lose weight at the expense of your health. This means putting harmful stimulants into your body, not eating appropriate amounts of food, or trying to lose too much weight. A healthy approach will always turn out to be more beneficial than any superficial or overboard attempt.

We’ve discussed the benefits of raw food before, but I’d like to devote a little more time to the raw food movement. The push to eat all-natural, unprocessed, organic foods has taken hold of many dejected dieters. Unlike other fad diets, in which the weight piles back on the second you stop dieting, the raw food diet is a movement and a lifestyle change.

The next time you’re desperately trying a new diet or attempting to quench a craving with a quirky trick, remember this: no matter what lengths you go to in order to lead a healthy lifestyle, there’s always someone who’s even crazier than you. Food for thought:

• Julia Roberts eats on only blue plates in her home. Research has demonstrated that the color blue is an appetite suppressant.

How does “The Hills” star Lauren Conrad stay so slim? One of her secrets is the food she buys. Laguna Beach alum LC was recently spotted at Whole Foods Market in Los Angeles, making her weekly grocery pickup.

Growing up, Lauren was constantly athletic and active, maintaining a trim physique on her 5’6 frame. In recent years, however, her physical activity level slowed as she became more involved in pursuits of a career in fashion design and reality television endeavors and endorsements.

Determined to make her body a priority, Conrad turned to trainer Jarrett Del Bene, who created a customized plan for LC and her aspiring-“mactress” roommate, Audrina Partridge.