I used to think that McDonalds Calories were just any other calories in food I ate until I realised that a lot of the McDonalds meals are either very high in fat or sugar - or sometimes even both.

Having said that, McDonalds are starting to realize that there is an ever increasing number of people who are making healthy choices about the food they eat, and so have started to introduce healthier and low calorie alternatives to their range of meals.

Regardless of where you eat, if you're trying to lose weight fast, it's important that you consume fewer calories that you burn up each day. An average person needs about 2000 calories a day, so if you're eating 2500 calories a day, you're going to gain weight - even if those 2500 calories are made up of some of the healthiest foods you can get your hands on. You're still eating more calories than you need, so the excess will be stored as fat.

As far as calories from McDonalds meals go, most of the main meals available from Maccy D restaurants, have a lot of calories, so it's a good idea to try to stay away from these kind of fast food outlets for a while - at least until you feel confident you can make up for the extra calories you'll be consuming when you visit one.

When I decided I needed to lose some weight, I realised that there's a lot of misleading and contradictory information out there, about what foods you should eat, and what to stay away from. And I didn't really like the idea of having to completely cut out all my favourite foods.

I think that's one of the important things that I did learn however, that you need to keep your diet interesting as well as healthy, or you'll have real problems sticking to it.

So I started to make a list of the foods that I really couldn't do without, and a list of those that I could quite happily cut down, but still have maybe once a week. I listed all the foods and how many calories are in each, then I just created a menu each day with somewhere between 1500 and 2500 calories, and made sure I didn't consume more than an average of 2000 calories a day over the course of a week.

This helped me get started, and on my way to losing my first half a stone (7 pounds). It took me 2 weeks to lose that weight, and at the end I was pretty ecstatic about it (as you can probably imagine).

I soon discovered that even though I was including some of my favourite foods in my diet (albeit on an infrequent basis), it was getting harder to stick with the plan, and keep the weight loss going.

I was starting to run low on will power, so I got to searching the internet again for anything that could help me "go the distance".

I finally found something that had nothing to do with how to lose weight fast - or at least not to start with - it was more in line with helping you control the cravings you inevitably get, and getting past them.

It's a program called Magic Hats that taught me how to regain self control and even hypnotise myself, so that I could more easily control my cravings, simply by controlling my thoughts. It took a couple of days to really get into it, but now that I'm familiar with the mind control tricks and techniques, it's really helping me to continue with losing weight.

The first part of the program is free, and comes with a series of 12 online videos (you can watch them direct from your PC) that cover things like how to develop more will power, and how to increase confidence levels. This was a big help for me, as I was beginning to think that I would never get my excess weight off. With the help of the videos I felt much more confident in myself, and really started to believe I could do it.