When you are trying to lose weight, it’s easy to feel as though your progress is doomed to be slow and difficult. However, when you have the right eating tricks on your side, you can actually speed up the process to a certain degree and, even more importantly, you can make sure you aren’t struggling along the way.

It is actually possible to feel happy and positive the majority of the time you’re losing weight. The key isn’t in simply being a happy person. It’s in knowing how to go about your fat burning through the best possible methods.

The following are some of the top tricks you can use to make sure you’re burning the most fat all day long.

• Stop restriction dieting – When you diet with the attitude of having to take things away or deprive yourself, you put yourself in a slump. You’re not as motivated to exercise, you don’t enjoy your meals and you’re more likely to cheat on your own restrictions. This will lower your resistance to the birthday cake in the break room, the inclination to skip your workout and your ability to burn fat. Instead, start thinking of the ways in which you can start eating more. How can you eat more nutrient dense foods? How can you add more flavor to your foods using great new herb and spice combinations? How can you eat more fiber and get more omegas? Try to work on adding the right things to your diet instead of focusing on removing what shouldn’t be there. As you add, the unnecessary components will be naturally bumped without the need for the negative attitude.

• Get more sleep – If you’ve ever wished you could just sleep the weight away, then your wish is about to come true…sort of. Though you won’t suddenly wake up ten pounds lighter, if you work on getting a decent amount of sleep on a regular basis, you’ll naturally give your body a serious fat burning advantage. There are many reasons for this, including stress reduction, which lowers cortisol levels (a hormone notorious for making it difficult to lose weight). When you’re well rested, you’re also more likely to make better food choices, which will equip you with the natural ability to select foods your body will burn more quickly anyway. When you’re sleep deprived, you’ll crave fatty, salty, and sugary foods that pack on the pounds and make it harder for your body to burn them.

• Eat the right macronutrient balance – Although some diets will tell you to eat lots of protein or very little fat, the key is actually to achieve the right balance among the calories you consume from fats, proteins and carbohydrates. As long as you make sure that the foods you’re eating in each category are nutrient dense and healthful, they will give your body better overall fat burning ability than if your macronutrient balance was off kilter.