Is It Possible To Eat The Foods I Love And Still Lose Weight?
Hey…
In honor of this article, guess what I’m having for lunch today!
You guessed it…
I’m having Stouffer’s microwave lasagna.
And you know what else…
Tomorrow morning I’ll weigh the same as I did this morning.
I won’t gain one single pound.
This evening I’ll have a half-pound cheeseburger with fries for dinner.
And in case you’re wondering, when I hit the scale tomorrow morning I still won’t weigh any more than I did this morning.
A candy bar, some chocolate covered raisins, a brownie, and some buttered popcorn will be my snacks today.
And I still won’t gain any additional weight.
Right now you may be thinking, ‘Uh huh. Keep eating like that and tell me how your pants fit in three months.’
You may be thinking I have some special genetics, or that I’m a high metabolism twenty year old. (I wish.)
You may be thinking it’s not possible to eat lasagna, then snack on popcorn and chocolate, then have a cheeseburger and fries for dinner, and still gain absolutely zero weight.
But the truth is that you can.
It is one hundred percent possible!
You can eat the foods you love and still get in the best shape of your life.
Don’t believe me?
I’m living proof.
Here’s a before and after pic of me, myself, and not Irene.
The picture on the left is when I was first beginning this fitness journey and the one on the right is a picture of me from a few weeks ago.
Trust me, I am no where close to being a twenty-year-old spring chicken.
I was 43 when I first started this fitness journey; I am 44 now.
And I promise you, I have no super high metabolism.
What I do have is a method that has helped me lose over 35 pounds of fat, gain a significant amount of muscle, and get in the absolute best shape of my life — all while eating foods that I actually enjoy.
But my journey is definitely not all cupcakes and sprinkles.
It took me years of searching, testing, failing before I figured out how to eat the foods I love and still get in the best shape of my life.
After this article I hope you choose to do the same!
Let’s get to it.
Are you losing weight today, gaining weight today, or staying the same weight today?
Quick question: let’s say I’m sitting on my couch watching Sports Center, and I’m munching on a salad and an avocado and I’m washing it all down with a great big glass of ice water — will I lose weight, gain weight, or stay the same weight when I hop on the scale tomorrow morning?
I’m guessing most people would think I’d lose weight eating a salad and an avocado.
Maybe a few would make an argument that I’d gain or stay the same weight.
But here’s the God-to-honest truth:
You don’t know.
You can’t.
Not with any certainty.
And the first reason you can’t realistically know the answer to this is because you don’t know how many calories I burn per day, and the second reason is because you don’t know how many calories I’m actually putting inside my body.
Sure, you’d know I was eating a salad.
And an avocado.
But here’s the thing:
You can still get fat eating salads and avocados and eggs and all the foods that we’ve always been told are ‘healthy.’
Now I’m not saying you should no longer eat salads or avocados or eggs or any of the foods we’ve always been told are healthy.
What I am saying is that in order to lose weight and get in great shape, we have to know which foods and how much of these foods we can actually eat before the balloon we call our bellies starts to expand.
Why?
Imagine this: you’re at a pizza restaurant with friends and you’re at that point where you’re thinking, ‘Hmmm, should I have one more slice?’
In today’s fairy tale you look down at your arm and there’s a handy dandy nifty little fuel gauge build right there into your body. Pretty neat, I know! Even better, it shows that your tank is only half full which means you’re good to eat another slice. You greedily grab another piece of Meat Lover’s Supreme and savor this cheesy gooey meaty delight, swallowing every last morsel. Then you look at your nifty fuel gauge again.
You’re three quarters full now.
Yessss! This means you can eat even more. So a few chicken wings go down your throat, two mozzarella sticks, a fudge brownie, and…yep…that did it. Your tank is now completely full. Blaaannkkhhhh Blaaannkkhhhh Blaaannkkhhh – that’s the overflow alarm going off. Even if you tried grubbing on one more tiny little loose piece of pepperoni then your throat would not allow it into your stomach.
You’d have to wait until some calories were burned and then there’d be more room in your tank. So you wait, and you walk; and your heart is beating (which burns calories), and your brain is thinking (which also burns calories), and your lungs are working, and so are your muscles, and all the while you are burning calories and before long it’s time to fill up again. This time maybe with the sweet nectar of Stouffer’s lasagna!
In all honesty, the above scenario would be a great way to live because we’d never have to worry about overeating or being overweight, but unfortunately we live in the real world and in the real world we don’t have a handy dandy nifty little fuel gauge built right there on our body.
Here in the real world most of us are completely clueless as to how much fuel we are putting inside our bodies at all.
People guesstimate.
Or… to put it more accurately, normal people guesstimate.
And 99.999999 percent of normal people are absolutely terrible at this.
But these normal people, which is the vast majority of the world, will justify their terribleness by blabbering on and on about how healthy they are eating. I’m eating fruits, they’ll say. Or, almonds. Or you’ll hear all about how yogurt is extremely healthy. As are lentils and lean meats and salads and oats.
And then they’ll eat and eat and eat these things, and have a large M&M Blizzard as a reward for dessert. And why not, they’ve earned it. I mean they’ve been eating healthy, right?
Riiiiiiggggghhhht???
These same normal people will say, “I’m doing the Keto diet.” Or, “I’m doing Paleo.” Or avocados have healthy fats. Or eggs have a lot of protein.
And that’s great!
Because all those things are good and true.
But here’s another truth: you can still get fat on Keto and on Paleo and by eating avocados and eggs and any other foods out there.
You will get fat if you eat more calories than your body can burn.
The diet doesn’t matter. Nor does the food type. Nor does the time of day you eat.
What matters is this:
If you eat more calories than your body can burn, you will gain weight.
Period.
It’s that simple.
If you enjoy the Keto diet, then awesome. Keep doing the Keto diet, but to lose weight you must ensure that you are not eating more calories than your body can burn while on the keto diet.
Same with Paleo.
And Adkins.
Same with any other diet or eating preference.
The rules of all these different diets (like Keto or Paleo) are in place to encourage you to eat lower calorie foods so that you do not eat more than your body can burn.
Normal people have a hard time swallowing this. They think there is a magic in the Paleo diet. A magic in Keto, but there is no magic.
There is only math.
And the math looks like this:
If you eat 2,200 calories today but your body burns only 2,000 calories, then you will gain weight.
That extra 200 calories has to go somewhere.
And it goes into thunder thighs, love handles, and chubby chins.
However, if you eat 1,800 calories today and your body burns 2,000 calories, then you will lose weight.
Because your body needs those 2,000 calories for fuel, so if you’re not giving it all 2,000 when you eat, then it will steal what it needs from the thunder thighs, the love handles, and the chubby chin.
That’s it.
That’s how fat loss works.
So now that we know that eating more than our bodies can burn is what causes us to gain weight, the two key questions for weight loss become:
1.) How many calories does my body burn everyday?
2.) How many calories can I eat everyday to guarantee weight loss?
These were (and still are) the fundamental questions I had to answer before I structured an eating plan that would both guarantee I would lose weight and allow me to maintain my sanity.
Both are important!
So the first thing I did to ensure I could eat the foods I love (Hello Lasagna!) while still getting in great shape was to figure out how much I could realistically eat without getting fatter.
Basically, when was my tank full?
There’s a couple different ways to figure out the answer to this simple question, but keep in mind, you only need one to figure it out.
Normal people will research method after method and decide they need to do the most difficult one, which they’ll then determine they can’t do right now and because they can’t do it right now they’ll justify that as a reason to not do anything right now and then they will eat half a Domino’s pizza and blame their ever increasing weight gain on their terribly slow metabolism.
This is not a joke. It’s not me trying to be funny.
I honestly used to do things like this. It happens.
But that doesn’t mean it has to happen to you.
With that said, the simplest and easiest way to figure out how many calories you can eat per day without getting fatter is to use one of the hundreds of online calorie calculators.
Are some of these online calorie calculators better than others?
Of course.
Is this method one hundred percent accurate?
Absolutely not.
But here’s the thing, nothing is going to be one hundred percent accurate in this regard. The amount of calories you burn today will be different than the amount of calories you burned yesterday. And they’ll be different than the amount you burn tomorrow.
If you sneeze tomorrow and didn’t sneeze today, then you’ll burn additional calories tomorrow because your body had to exert energy while sneezing. If you took a few stairs yesterday, or walked one more step than you did the previous day, or lifted an Amazon package, or any of a hundred things that change from day to day, then the calories that you burn would change in proportion to those different levels of activity.
So don’t worry about obtaining one hundred percent accuracy in regards to daily expenditure of your calories burned. Don’t let something that mundane prevent you from beginning. You only need to worry about getting yourself a baseline that is fairly accurate.
Here is the calorie calculator I used when I started my journey.
If your goal is to get in shape but you didn’t plug your info into the above calorie calculator and calculate how many calories you can eat to reach your goal, then go back up there and do it. Otherwise, why read any further.
I used to read and read and read and read, always learning but never doing. And that’s why it took me 44 years to reach my goal of getting in great shape and having a body that I like, rather than a body I hate.
Don’t make that mistake.
It sucks being out of shape and not liking yourself and not liking how you look.
Trust me, I know. So choose to be different.
Choose to not be normal.
Because normal is not what you want to aspire to be, it’s what you want to get away from.
Normal is the majority. And the majority of people will do nothing and then get nothing and then make excuses as to why they are getting nothing.
So be different.
And start.
And then be really different. And continue: day after day after day, rain or shine, on both the rare days when you actually feel like doing it, and especially on all the days when you don’t.
Anyhow, enough ranting. Plug your info into the calculator. It won’t hurt, I promise!
Moving on…
Once you’ve submitted your info into the calculator, you’ll see some numbers pop up. The two that will safely help you drop pounds are TDEE and RMR.
Let’s break those down.
TDEE stands for ‘Total Daily Energy Expenditure.’ This is the amount of energy (how many calories) your body expends each day. Essentially, this is your fuel gauge.
If you eat more calories than your TDEE, you will gain weight. If you eat less calories than your TDEE, you will lose weight.
It is honestly that simple.
Right now you may be wondering: ‘Well if it’s really that simple then why is everyone not doing this?’
And it’s because the hard part is not in knowing, it’s in doing – consistently.
But don’t worry, we’ll get to how to conquer consistent action later, but right now let’s roll through the other parameter that will help shrink your pant size: RMR.
RMR is your ‘Resting Metabolic Rate.’ This is the number of calories your body burns while you’re at rest. Otherwise known as your ‘keep me alive calories.’ These are the required calories your body needs to keep your heart beating, and your brain functioning, and your lungs inhaling/exhaling.
RMR has nothing to do with the calories you expend when you tug the sweatband on and beat feet on the treadmill. These RMR calories are being burned day and night, asleep or awake, twenty-four hours per day, seven days a week, all the freaking time.
So why is RMR important and why should you care about it?
Again, these are the calories needed to keep you alive and healthy. If you consistently eat a lower calorie amount than your body needs to function, then your body will cease to function.
So if your body needs a minimum of 1,200 calories per day to ensure your vital organs are able to function and you instead consistently eat 1,000 calories per day, then your body will not have enough energy to keep you alive and healthy.
Your body won’t have the fuel it needs to keep your heart beating and your brain functioning and your lungs breathing.
Don’t let this freak you out too much though, because this process of self destruction would take weeks, months, years. If you fast for a day or two every now and again, then good on you. But in general, it’s a good idea to consistently give your body at least the minimum fuel it requires everyday.
My Real World Numbers.
Now that we know a quick and easy method to determine the amount of calories needed to guarantee weight loss, let’s jump into a real world example of how this all comes together.
Here’s what my own personal TDEE and RMR looked like when I began:
I’m 5′ 7″ and was 43 years old and weighed 177.2 pounds.
As for my goal weight: at one point I had read an internet article about fitness, and the guy in the article was also 5’7″. But unlike me, he was ripped at 160 pounds with something like 10 percent body fat.
The picture of that guy became a baseline dream of what I believed to be possible. It was what I wanted to look like.
He was 5’7″.
I am 5’7″.
In hopes of having a body like that guy, my goal weight became 160 pounds, but no way I ever thought I could get and maintain 10 percent body fat. Which is funny because today I weigh 140 and my body fat is 5.7 percent.
I say this to let you know that you can obtain and surpass your wildest goals. You may not fully believe that right now, and that’s okay. But you need to believe that you can do something easy for a long time. Because that is truly, honestly the key to fitness. That is the secret of it all. It’s what makes a weirdo a Weirdo. Just start and then stick with it consistently. Every single day. Click here to read more about how to create and stick to your streaks.
Anyway… for my activity level I put ‘Moderately Active’ because I was beginning to workout at the time. I was walking. I would get out and about. My day job does require me to kinda sorta sometimes do something that halfway resembles moving around.
After I entered all that info into the above calorie calculator I got a TDEE of 2,488.
This means if I ate more than 2,488 calories during the day, I would get fatter. Simple as that.
My RMR was 1,659.
So if I consistently ate less than 1,659 calories per day, then I would be begging for health concerns. And these potential health concerns would be caused by my body having too little fuel. My body would not have enough fuel to provide me with the resources needed to properly function.
Armed with my TDEE and RMR, I knew my calorie range fell somewhere between 1,659 – 2,488.
If I ate anywhere between those calorie limits I would lose weight.
At this point, most people (me included) would jump at the lowest number (the RMR) and say, “Okay I’m gonna eat the least amount of calories possible because I need to lose (10) (20) (30) (40) pounds like yesterday.”
I did this and it is a mistake. You’ll most likely fail. It will put you in a place I call ‘The Fat Boy Rollercoaster,’ and ladies, don’t worry, this ride does not discriminate. There is most definitely a line for ‘The Fat Girl Rollercoaster’ as well.
If you’re unfamiliar, this is how the ‘The Fat Boy Rollercoaster’ works:
You get all amped up to lose weight. There’s fire in your belly and motivation in your veins. You can eat healthy, you know you can. “Bring it!” you whisper scream at yourself in the mirror.
And then you suffer through low calorie meals that you don’t much like. Day after day you do this. And you begin to lose weight.
Yahhhh!!!
And you reach your goal!!!
Whoo Hoo!!!!
I did it, you think. I really, really did it.
And because you did it, you reached your goal, then you stop eating the things you don’t very much like to eat.
You go back to being a normal person.
Eating with your friends. Eating with your family.
And that means you start eating just like your friends. And just like your family.
And then the rollercoaster of weight begins to go back up. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. And your pants suddenly don’t fit anymore. Your chubby thighs are back. And then you’re exactly where you started, ashamed and completely disgusted with yourself all over again.
I’ve been on this ride so many times I should be a manager at Fatboy Amusement Park.
If you’ve ever experienced this, you know how frustrating and disheartening it can be.
It will literally steal your hope. Leaving you to wonder if long term fitness is ever really possible for you.
It is.
Possible for you.
You just have to stay off the Fatboy Rollercoaster.
Here’s what worked for me…
The ‘Fat Boy Rollercoaster’ Survival Guide
Okay, so how do you avoid looping around on Fatboy Rollercoaster for all eternity?
The answer:
You don’t get on Fatboy Rollercoaster in the first place.
Yes, I’m serious.
Let me explain…
This depressing cycle of eating ‘healthy,’ then reaching our goal, then getting fat all over again is caused when we go on a restrictive diet that we don’t enjoy and then we come off the diet and start eating to our heart’s content again.
You may be thinking, ‘Yep, knew it, the problem is the diet.’
And in a sense, you’re right, because if you could find a diet that you didn’t hate, one that you instead actually enjoyed, then you would be able to stick with that enjoyable diet forever and ever and everything would be summertime happiness in this place I call lasagna and cheeseburger heaven.
So… yes, there is some validity to this notion that everything is the ‘diets’ fault.
But here’s the weird thing, that devil diet that didn’t work for you…the one you tried and hated…the one that seemed impossible to stick with…the one that gave you stomach problems and headaches and made you feel blah.
That same diet worked for some people.
It is still working for some people.
And the reason this diet (that you hated) is working so well for these other people is because it is not a diet for them.
You hated it.
But they enjoy it.
To you, it’s a diet, it’s temporary until you reach your goal, it’s a struggle, it’s about using sheer willpower to eat a certain way.
To them, it’s how they like to eat. It’s permanent. It’s not called a diet, it’s only called lunch. Or dinner. Or my usual snack.
Dieting isn’t dieting if it’s permanent and if it’s how you like to eat all the time.
So the real problem is not necessarily ‘The Diet’ but rather it is ‘Dieting’ in general.
Dieting is temporary and that’s a problem because you need a long term permanent solution to eating how you like to eat while losing and then staying in a weight range that makes you happy.
Knowing that, I chose to eat foods that I like.
The caveat: I had to either find the healthiest versions of those foods that I like, or I had to figure out a way to create the healthiest versions of those foods.
I would recommend that you do the same.
But I Don’t Want To Eat The Same Foods Over And Over And Over And Over…
I get it.
For some, this whole idea of finding the foods you like, making them healthier, and then primarily eating only those foods may sound terrible because who wants to eat the same foods over and over and over again all the time.
I felt this same way, but then I realized that I was already eating the same 10-20 meals over and over, each and every day. The bulk of my meals were primarily coming from Papa John’s, or Five Guys, or Taco Bell, and from a handful of other places.
So I was already eating cheeseburgers, and tacos, and pizza, and lasagna over and over but I was eating the Fatboy versions of those foods.
Which was a big problem.
To fix this problem I had to figure out how I could make those same meals healthier so the calories could come in lower than my TDEE.
To this day, it’s still primarily cheeseburgers, and tacos, and pizza, and lasagna going into my belly, but it’s now a heathier version.
So if you are reading this because you are serious about losing weight, then your homework at this point should be to pay attention to what you eat, not to necessarily count the calories, but to get a good idea of what 10-20 meals you are already eating eighty percent of the time.
Then the goal is to make those same foods healthier, but still scrumptious.
That is the process I have used to lose forty pounds while eating lasagna, cheeseburgers, steaks, pasta, and several other meals that I love. It’s how I’m still maintaining my weight to this day.
As an example: I’m having a massive bowl of Chicken & Crawfish Gumbo tomorrow for lunch and then a seventeen ounce steak with rice and sweet peas and ketchup and a coke zero for dinner.
I’m already looking forward to it!
Yesterday I had a massive serving of Chicken Pot Pie Stew for lunch and then six hefty beef tacos for dinner. Full on with cheese and salsa and seasonings.
To me these are all great meals and even better, they all fall well under my TDEE so I also get to have my usual snacks of a candy bar, some chocolate raisins, a brownie and then some popcorn.
So that’s pretty much it.
Now you know exactly how I eat, but let’s go a little deeper and wrap all this up by jumping into the heart of the noodles and cheese where I’ll show you one of my actual meal plans that I used when I was losing weight.
Let’s Jump Into The Noodles & Cheese
As I mentioned earlier my TDEE was 2,488. So I needed to eat less than 2,488 calories per day to ensure I would lose weight.
I also needed to do this while eating foods that I enjoyed so that I could ensure I would stick to this eating plan for a long, long time.
Note: When I mention long, long time I’m not referring to a 30 day diet. None of this is a 90 day challenge. Think, ‘decade diet’ if you must think in terms of dieting.
By now, I’m assuming the secret is out and you know I like lasagna and cheeseburgers. Being that I love them so, I will use those as my examples.
I log the majority of my meals because I am a true and absolute weirdo, and I’ve been logging them for quite a while. During both the fat times when I was struggling to lose weight and I still log them now.
Anyhow… I just went back and looked at my very rudimentary food journal. November of 2022 is when I really began to start taking weight loss serious.
On November 14th, 2022 this is exactly what I ate for the day:
Breakfast:
- Body Fortress Protein Shake: 180 Calories/ 40 grams protein
Lunch:
- Stouffers Meatlovers Lasagna: 820 calories/ 39 grams protein
Dinner:
- Half Pound 93% Lean Burger: 340 calories/ 46 grams protein
- 2 Slices Publix Whole Wheat Bread: 120 calories/ 08 grams protein
- 2 servings Ore-Ida Fries: 180 calories/ 04 grams protein
- 14g Kraft Mozzarella Cheese: 25 calories/ 04 grams protein
- 90g Heinz Ketchup: 106 calories/ 00 grams protein
Daily Total: 1,771 Calories/ 148 grams protein
I didn’t eat salad, or fruits, or fish, or avocados. I ate the foods I liked. But I made sure those foods would put my total daily calories at less than my TDEE.
And then I ate in a similar fashion every single day, finding more and more foods that I like to eat and then making them so they are low enough in calories to work with my plan.
I follow this process religiously.
And that is the other side of the equation.
Following your process.
Every single day.
No matter what.
Even if people think you are a weirdo.
Because being weird is what you want to be — being ‘just like everyone else’ is what you want to avoid.
I hope this helps you better achieve your fitness goals, but please keep in mind that this is what worked for me. And you and I are different people. With different tastes, different likes, different dislikes.
And this is obviously fine. So if you’re grimacing right now and dreading eating this way then don’t do it. Instead, find a method that you enjoy and that you are confident you can consistently stick with for years and years.
There are a million methods out there. You just need to find the one that works perfectly for you.
I have created a ‘method’ collection, so if you are still searching for your perfect method then these are true and tried, time tested methods that have worked well for others. Steal one that you like and get started!
You can find the entire collection here.
Please feel free to email me at the following email address if you have any questions, comments, or advice on how this article could be better: [email protected].
Thanks!
Josh