A very important topic.

About the topic itself, I read advice from body builders, tried it out myself and it suits me well (always with exercise included) I ordered Tom Venuto's Burn the Fat-Feed the Muscle which went into a causal explanation of why people drop off diets and what to do about it.

Prominent points

• Mental techniques are an important part of losing weight.
• Loss of muscle is a big no for maintaining fitness.
• Small balanced meals spread throughout the day. Bias towards protein, but all macronutrients are to be included. Try to stick to natural foods as much as possible.
• Aerobic exercise and strength training have to be done to maintain fitness (sorry for bringing this into a diet thread, but the issues of diet and exercise for fitness are quite inseperable). In venuto's words, It is better to burn the fat than attempt to starve the fat.
• Cheat meals once in a week to relax your stretched willpower

The Meta-topic about how to make up our mind about this.

I would actually ask people who have to keep it real. People who have to be fit. But the issue with atheletes, models or military is that they have a lot of time to devote to themselves which normal people may not.

Your best bet may be asking people who take part in fitness compettitions as amateurs. They have real lives and have things to go back to. What they can do, you can do.

Try things out yourself, note your results and give any new experiment atleast 3 months sincerely. Since most body transformation programs are in that range, there must be measurable results in 3 months. Infact, in venuto's own words, he tried almost everything till he settled down on his present program.