When trying to lose fat and build some muscle so you can reshape your body, you need to find simple tricks to eliminate or burning more calories, whether it's through your weight training and cardio program, or through your nutrition plan.

1. Eat more vegetables. Try mixing and matching fresh vegetables for variety. Besides the numerous health benefits, most veggies are full of fiber, which will fill you up, as well as burn more calories than eating other foods.

2. Go ahead and snack, just snack on good stuff, like raisins, nuts (especially almonds) veggies and dried fruit. It's important to eat frequently when trying to lose fat or build muscle. Going too long between meals will burn off muscle and cause your body to store fat.

   This will lower your metabolism, making it even more difficult to lose fat. And then it becomes a vicious cycle. You keep cutting calories to compensate for your lowered metabolism and your body keeps slowing down your metabolism even more and storing body fat, thinking it's protecting you from starvation.

   In addition, you are more likely to binge and eat a whole lot of food you shouldn't eat.

3. Speaking of nuts, add nuts to your yogurt and salads. Chopped nuts make a great alternative to breaded style garnishes like croutons.

4. Specific food combinations can help to burn calories by ramping up your metabolism. Eat carbs that are rich in fiber. They take longer to digest and you will feel fuller for longer periods of time. Along with carbs rich in fiber, take in more protein. Your body burns more calories when you eat protein than it burns digesting either fats or carbohydrates.

   Eating more protein to burn fat was confirmed in a study published in the American Journal of Physiology. One group was fed a high protein diet (just over one gram per pound of bodyweight per day) while the second group consumed a protein diet near equal to that of the RDA.

   The group eating the high protein diet burned more fat than the group consuming protein near equal to the RDA.

   Want to burn fat or build muscle? Get lots of fiber and protein.

   Eating protein also helps to prevent muscle loss while dieting. You saw what loss of muscle can do to your fat loss efforts in step two.

5. Yogurt can help you lose weight while protecting muscle. A recent study of overweight people who ate three servings of yogurt daily for 12 weeks lost 22% more weight, 61% more body fat and 81% more abdominal fat than people who ate a similar number of calories but no dairy products. Make sure to get yogurt with real fruit and no added sugar. Yogurt is also an easy and convenient snack and containg high quality protein as well.

Put these 5 tips into practice and your new muscle building, fat burning machine (your body) will reward you for it.

Gregg Gillies

Gregg Gillies is the author of "From Fat to Fit...Fast!" and "The Skinny Guy's Guide to Building Mass Fast!". He is the owner of BuildLeanMuscle.com. He publishes two fitness newsletters, "Fast Mass Tips" and "Fat Loss Secrets", each with over 5,000 subscribers from all over the world. Gregg has been a columnist for Body Talk magazine for 3 years, as well as being published in Ironman magazine and various web sites such as bodybuildingforyou.com and bodybuilding.com.