How to Lose Weight for Life In our fast-food, eat-on-the-run culture, maintaining a healthy body weight can be a major challenge; for many of us, trying to lose those extra pounds is an enormous struggle. The diet industry (a billion-dollar concern in the U.S. alone) is a big part of the problem – fad diets, rapid weight loss supplements, and innumerable other programs that guarantee instant results only serve to contradict each other and confuse dieters, ultimately doing nothing to help us lose weight and keep it off.