This is part one of a series on how to lose weight for cricket. To go to part 2 click here

Can losing fat, an industry worth billions, really be boiled down to one secret?

You might think not. Millions of people try and fail to shed the pounds using hundreds of different diets, pills and training plans. But every method still relies on one thing, and knowing what that is allows you to cut through all the options and get straight to the truth of weight loss.

The secret of weight loss (and why knowing it is only the beginning)

In study after study scientists have examined weight loss and found a remarkable thing. Despite the wide variety in size, shape and metabolism everybody is the same.

Like everyone else, your body needs energy to function. You need to breathe, you need your heart to beat and you need to be able to chase a cricket ball across the ground to stop it going for a boundary.

This energy is measured in calories and as you know, you get calories by eating and drinking. You burn calories by doing stuff.

The difference between calories in and out is called energy balance and that's the important part:

If you burn more calories than you consume you lose weight.

So it stands to reason that if you burn less caries than you consume you gain weight and if calories in and out are about the same then you stay where you are.

Or to look at it another way, it's like a scale:

In this picture the calories in and out are the same so the energy is balanced.

In this picture the extra training has lead to more calories out and so weight is lost.

So the key to weight loss is creating that imbalance in energy. You can do this by:

• Eat less. If you eat less food you take in less calories and go into a deficit.
• Exercise more. More exercise means more calories burned, again creating a deficit.

Either way, it's all about the calorie deficit.

So if it's so simple, why isn't everyone doing it?

It can get difficult very quickly to create an imbalance. We don't live in a test tube in a laboratory and the psychology of losing weight is the hard part. It's hard to resist food when you are hungry and it's hard to motivate yourself to train.

The people who successful lose weight and keep it off have learned how to manage their mind as much as their diet and exercise.

In part two we will go through the ways you can do the same.

To go to part 2 click here