Step 1: Look at the big picture
Shift from seeing your weight problem in personal terms and instead see it as part of a larger system that includes your family needs, social life, work hours and whatever else affects your exercise and eating habits, including any ethnic-food preferences and peer pressures.

Once you discover how many outside factors affect your eating and exercise, you'll realize that losing weight with willpower alone is almost impossible. "Using willpower for self-improvement is like applying brute force," Alemi says. "Using a systems approach is applying intelligence."