We have all heard about weight trainers eating 10,000 + calories a day in order to build muscle and many have argued that it's the act of muscle building and having large muscles that burns all these calories.

Now you have a good example of someone who doesn't have huge muscles but burns 12,000 or so calories a day because he burns it off during physical activity.

The key to keeping weight off and losing weight has always been the same - it's not the amount of calories that you take in BUT the amount of calories that you will burn.

As long as you burn more calories than you take in you'll lose the weight. Take in more calories than you burn and you gain weight.

The diet itself in terms of calories is not as important than your activity level.

So don't be so concerned which diet you go on or if you have cheated and had a cookie - just up your activity level to match the calories that you took in.

So start planning on increasing your physical activity and you won't