Extra weight is a big problem and people should watch it but also avoid risky diets. Here are some weight loss guides for safe weight loss. Researchers found that individuals who ate foods similar in color to the plate they were eating on—like pasta with tomato sauce on a red plate—ate 30 percent more than those whose food contrasted with the dish they were eating it from. And since there aren’t many blue foods out there, blue plates are a great place to start your weight loss journey!

If you want to lose weight fast, then one of the easiest things you can do is make a meal schedule for yourself and stick with it. “When people stick to a meal pattern, they rarely overeat,” explains Julie Upton, MS, RD, co-founder of Appetite for Health. “Stick to eating three meals a day and two snacks. Don’t graze all day and don’t skip meals.”

“This doesn’t mean you have to do the same boring squat routine every day – it just means you have to be consistent with your fitness routine,” says Kira Mahal, trainer at MotivatePT. “It’s easy to start a new fitness routine but it’s very difficult to continue it. Write down your workouts for the week and make sure to stick to that. “I recommend working out five days a week with two rest days in order to see results. Keep your workouts exciting by switching it up every day. After a few weeks, working out will become a habit and you will start to crave it.”

“The crucial factor to success is forming new, healthier habits. When you first learn to drive a car you must focus on changing gear, indicating and braking all at once, which can feel overwhelming – but it soon becomes automatic,” says personal trainer and fitness model Jamie Alderton. “Once you start to develop new habits, such as planning your meals, sticking to a structured training programme and getting better-quality sleep, it becomes easier not only to lose body fat but also to keep it off.”

Ironman Foundation ambassador athlete Marcus Cook is proof that patience and perseverance wins every single time. Cook dropped from 489 pounds to 233 pounds in a year and a half after his close friend and boss died from cancer. “Before he died, he said, ‘I’m dying because I have an incurable disease, and you’re dying because you have a choice,'” Cook told INSIDER. “When he said that to me, I changed everything about what I was doing and made an about-face turn.” To get started, Cook committed to doing something new every day, a tip he often gives to others. “I realized that my weight didn’t appear overnight, so it wasn’t something that I could change in one day,” he said.

Want a slimmer body? Then start bringing the heat in the kitchen. Research published in 2013 in the journal PLoS One reveals that capsaicin—the component in chili peppers that gives them that trademark heat—increases a person’s ability to burn fat. Better yet, people tend to eat smaller portions of spicy food than they would a milder dish, so adding peppers to your meals may also help you cut back on portion sizes.

Not an eating plan designed for those of us in a hurry, DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. It’s a plan specifically designed to help lower blood pressure. It involves reducing your salt intake and loading up on foods that are chock-full of heart-friendly minerals like calcium, potassium and magnesium. Again, it involves you limiting how much red meat and sugar you consume, as well as fats. See extra details on How to lose weight advices.