If you’ve ever tried to go on a diet but failed to reach your goal, don’t feel bad. It happens. Most of the time, when people fail a diet, it’s not because they can’t lose weight, it’s because they’re going about it the wrong way.

Extreme diets are the most popular diets online, with “miraculous transformations” being shared again and again through social media. Those kinds of things can have a negative impact on most people. Seeing the tremendous success that some people boast about make most of us feel overwhelmed, like we’re failing by not accomplishing the same results.

The fact is, extreme diets are not for most people. They require much more commitment, time and support than food reeducation does. That’s because most extreme diets ask people to give up favorite foods. That may work for those of us who don’t really care that much about what we eat, but for food lovers it’s a real challenge.

Add an extreme workout routine on top of that and it’s no surprise that so many people quit.

So if you love food, it’s important to know that you don’t have to give up on your favorite dishes. Just follow those simple steps to start the food reeducation process and begin to lose weight in a more convenient, more sustainable way.

Step 1: Forget what you think you know about losing weight.

Diets and workouts that promise “miracles” only work for a small number of people out of the many that try to go on them. Losing weight – and maintaining a lower weight – is about forming better eating habits that you can stick to and adopting a more active lifestyle.

Step 2: Adopt a more active lifestyle.

You don’t need to go on an intense workout routine that consumes hours of your week or even your day. You just need to do enough to put your metabolism and organism to work in your favor and burn those calories more quickly. How do you do it?

Find any physical activity that you can enjoy doing and set some time aside for a few days every week in which to practice it. That can be as simple as going out for a jog, or even taking a longer walk every few days.

Step 3: Adopt better eating habits.

Exercise helps to ensure your organism is working in your favor, but you really do need to pair that with better eating habits or you won’t see much change.

That doesn’t mean you have to give up on your favorite foods. It just means you need to control how many calories you consume each day and that you include healthy meals in your diet. People who are most effective at weight loss and weight management are used to setting aside “cheat days” in which they can eat whatever they want, then follow a healthy, specific meal plan the rest of the time.

Do this and within a few weeks you should start to see a difference. The best part is that, given how this method is a lot easier to stick to than any extreme program, most people get encouraged by how easily they’ve managed to improve their habits and started to see results over time.

Eventually, those new habits you’ll have to practice at first become second nature. So don’t waste time! Getting started is the hardest part.