"Eat anything and Lose Weight!"

Sounds too good to be true right?

Well, it might be. I've noticed that many fitness influencers preach this method for weight loss. Basically, they coach clients on how to create a calorie deficit eating "the same foods you eat now". I feel like this is fairly obvious, but the only way one can actually do this in practice is to eat significantly less of the same foods. So, yes, you could use this strategy, but it will mean slashing your portions of those foods.

Is that a potentially helpful weight loss strategy? Eat the same foods - cut down the portions. Yes! Of course. The problem that I see many clients rubbing up against in this scenario is that people pursuing weight loss may have already established habits of overeating highly palatable, non-satiating foods. If this is you, I'm not confident that you attempting to eat, say, 20% or 25% less of exactly the same foods is going to be very sustainable.

Let's just try this out as hypothetical exercise. I will list some of my favorite foods that I used to eat a lot of while I was living in an obese body (defined by BMI, diagnosed by my health care providers - no I don't love the term "obese", but it's currently the accepted medical term).  So, while I was obese, I would eat a very high calorie breakfast. I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back, I can see what happened. I would sometimes eat a giant bowl of cereal or granola or I would make a homemade breakfast sandwich if I was eating at home. If I was eating out, I might get a restaurant breakfast sandwich or a meal which consisted of eggs, bacon, bread, pancakes, etc. I'd often combine this food (which was probably somewhere in the 700-1500 kcal range) with a 200-400 kcal "coffee". By that I mean a latte or chai tea with milk and sugar etc.  So, I was usually looking at somewhere around 1000 kcals in one meal. And the rest of my meals (lunch and dinner) would usually be calorically similar. I would get *some* protein in (maybe an egg or a little meat, maybe some milk), but it wasn't much proportionately compared to the amount of carbs and fat that I was consuming. I'd throw butter on everything willy-nilly and if I ever were to track food or do a diet recall, I wouldn't have even considered "counting" butter or oil that I cooked in or that my food was prepared in.

So... if I were to continue to eat like that, but wanted to create a calorie deficit to get to the weight I am today (going from 200 lbs to 135-140 lbs), I'd probably have to slash those calories in half. It's worth noting that I was continuing to gain weight while I was consuming somewhere around 3000 kcal/day, so this was not me eating at maintenance - it was an (unintentional) surplus.

Let's say I decided to slash my 3000 kcal per day lifestyle down to a 1500 kcal per day lifestyle (not recommending this - just halving everything for ease of comparison). That would mean eating half an egg sandwich in the morning with a half a coffee. Maybe half a meat sandwich with half a bag of chips for lunch. Half a pasta bowl for dinner, and so on. None of the meals I regularly ate were very satisfying. So, I'd imagine that if I had tried this strategy out for a few days, I would have ended up ravenously hungry. Because, even though I was overeating and gaining weight, I wasn't feeling stuffed with even this very large (calorically speaking) amount of food. 

Everyone has a different set of circumstances, so I really don't know if this has been your experience or if you have had a totally different experience. What I do know is that sustainable fat loss over time is hard. Ridiculously hard. And one of the reasons it's hard is that we are often able to lose weight temporarily, but we often go back to old habits and ways of eating after the diet "is over." There needs to be a plan for maintaining a lower weight after weight loss.

And that plan needs to include a means of eating less food and still being satisfied. People who feel hungry all the time and never feel satisfied are pretty unlikely to keep themselves in a constant state of hunger forever. Add to that hormonal imbalances, medication side-effects, lifestyle stressors etc. that impact hunger and satiety and you can see why most weight loss attempts are unsuccessful in that they end in weight regain.

So, what can we do?

One strategy, and this is the strategy I use, is to completely change your way of eating to support staying full longer. This is not easy, but if you're able to choose more satiating foods, you may find it easier and more comfortable to sustain a calorie deficit during a weight loss phase AND to sustain maintaining your new (smaller) body after weight loss. Remember that a smaller body takes less kcals to run. This means that you'll need to continue eating less long after a weight loss phase is over. A note of caution here though - this does not mean that you'll need to eat at your deficit/diet calories forever. You should be able to increase your calories after a weight loss period ends. Using a TDEE calorie calculator can give you a good ballpark, but you'll really only know what your exact new maintenance calorie range is by trial and error. It's going to be highly individual and highly related to factors like how much you move - those who move more (especially NEAT) will require more kcal and those who move less will require less and so on.

How can you stay as full and satisfied as possible while consuming less total calories?
Add in more:
1. Protein
2. Fiber
3. Veggies (well, these are usually full of fiber too!)

Try out a bunch of foods and see how they make you feel. We all have different preferences, needs, cultural foods, etc. See if there are foods that you actually enjoy that can help you increase protein and fiber in your diet because these foods will really help if you are struggling with a deficit or even at maintenance and find yourself hungry. Obviously, some amount of hunger is pretty typical during weight loss, but building your meals around a solid foundation of protein and veggies can really help!

Here are a few simple ideas:
Protein + Carb + Fat
chicken + rice + cheese
tofu + stir fry veggies + oil
yogurt + fruit + nut butter
eggs + toast + butter

And so on! It's always pretty easy to fit a serving of green veggies in with whatever meal you like - green veggies are usually very low in calories, but they will help fill you up and provide you with some fiber and nutrients. Talk about a win-win!

Fat loss is hard, but it doesn't need to be overly complicated.

Hope this helps - always here if you need me! 

- Julie