Weight Loss & Diet Plans

Gaining Ground on Weight Gain

Shake It Up With Exercise

If cutting down or even a full-fledged diet doesn't seem to be doing the trick, it's likely you'll need to increase exercise time before you see results. 

"To lose weight effectively, you really should combine calorie cutting with exercise. Either one alone is not as effective as the two together," says Yanagisawa.

If you're already at a high level of exercise, he says, small cutbacks in your food intake and slight increases in physical activity should do the job. If you're a couch potato, though, you'll need to start really moving before you see the pounds melt away.

And can you lose those extra 10 pounds by exercise alone? Experts tell WebMD it's not likely.

Says Yanagisawa: "If you were capable of doing the amount of exercise it would take to burn off 10 pounds without dieting, then you probably would never have gained the 10 pounds to begin with!"