Most of us have had a bad experience with diets. Which is not surprising, since 95% of people on old-style weight loss diets don’t lose weight. Of those who lose weight, 80% regain all the weight lost in less than 12 months. This appalling success rate demonstrates that there is a problem with diets that promise a simple or quick fix for habits, behaviors, and attitudes that have often accumulated over many years.

So is there a better path to long-term, sustainable weight loss? It’s certainly not the old calorie counting or food restrictive diets. Perhaps the answer is to make dieting a part of your daily lifestyle, in the same way that gaining weight was also part of your daily routine in the first place. By thinking about weight loss in this way, which is not the main focus but rather a byproduct of your lifestyle choices, it is possible to begin to reverse those bad habits. More importantly, however, you will begin to change the habits, behaviors, and attitudes that caused the weight gain, rather than just changing the symptoms.

You could start with some easy changes you could make to your lifestyle to start the process of losing weight without dieting. Here are three things you could do now:

Avoid processed foods. There is a simple mantra that you might want to consider memorizing, which is ‘don’t eat any food your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize‘. Or at least you should think twice before doing it. Processed foods are saturated in fat and sugar and low in nutrients, a combination that is an ideal recipe for weight gain. Alternatively, move towards fresh, whole foods instead of their processed counterparts. For example, whole wheat bread freshly baked on the day of purchase would be better than the white alternative with preservatives. Research shows that the more whole, natural foods you eat, the healthier and more satisfying your diet will be.

Eat well but eat less. The easiest and most effective technique to lose weight without dieting is to reduce, even a fraction, the amount of food on your plate. Since weight loss is a numbers game, consuming fewer calories than you need equals weight loss. Eating just 5% less will make a huge difference. Sometimes it’s hard to restrict your calorie intake, so always substitute quality for quantity. That’s why 5% is an ideal number, as anything higher can be noticeable and can leave you hungry and vulnerable to impulse eating.

Try to relax more. There is a body of evidence indicating that stress can cause weight gain and that one way to lose weight is to relax more. The stress process is part of the flight or fight response, as stress causes the adrenal glands to release adrenaline and cortisol into the bloodstream. A side effect that causes the body to retain fat. In addition to this stress hormone cortisol desensitizes your body to other hormones. This in turn reduces your sensitivity to leptin, the hormone that tells your brain when you’re full. The other drawback of stress is that we tend to turn to comfort food to cheer ourselves up.

If you think a no-diet weight loss program is the way to go for you, then one thing you’ll need is more patience than willpower. Because changing habits, behaviors and attitudes will not happen overnight. However, making small, minute changes over time will give you consistent, long-lasting results that provide gradual weight loss, making it more likely that the weight will be gone for good. So if the old style diets have failed you, why not give it a try?