I've lost about 60 lbs as of March 2022, and I've come across a simple diet routine that seems to really work for me.
Here's the protocol:
That's it! Of course, you might want to tweak the numbers for yourself, as this depends on how fast you want to lose weight and how big you are. I'll explain how I got to my numbers and then why it works.
The first thing to realize is that while the body is very complex and processes foods in many different ways (macronutrients, sugars, etc), calorie count is by far the most important factor in determining weight gain or loss.
The simplest calculation is:
pounds lost = (calories eaten - calories burned) / 3500(the 3,500 in the formula is because 1 lb. of fat is approximately that many calories)
Calculating how many calories you eat each day is pretty straightforward - most foods have nutrition facts or can be googled. Many restaurants don't list calories, but you can estimate and try to avoid the high-calorie-density foods. More detail on that in another post.
Calculating how many calories you burn a day is doable (it has to do with figuring out your BMR and how often you exercise), but I have found that it's not all that accurate for me.
I would just say if you're starting out - take your goal weight and multiply it by 100 to get your target calories, assuming you're also working out or exercising at least a couple times a week. My goal weight is 200 lbs, so my target calories are 2,000.
Once you start doing it for a while, you can see how fast you're losing weight. If it's too slow, you can reduce the calorie count or increase exercise. That said, if you're starting out, don't over-exert yourself. Let your mind acclimate to a new lifestyle and don't expect huge progress right away.
The main macronutrients folks track are protein, fat, and carbohydrates. However, only protein can really help ayou keep the muscle that you have. If you're eating at a significant calorie deficit, then you are also probably not getting enough protein to keep your muscle, so you need to watch this number.
There are complicated ways of calculating how much is "enough", but a simple way to do it is to take your goal (lean) weight as the number of protein grams you should eat. In my case, the goal weight is 200 lbs, so my target is 200 grams of protein.
If you look at nutrition facts of common foods, you'll realize this is not that easy to do; most foods don't have much protein! For example, even an egg, which is thought to be a "high protein" food, only has 6 grams of protein. You'd have to eat 33 eggs to get 200 grams of protein, and that would already be 2,574 calories, over my limit!
Fortunately, it's not as hard as that looks. The problem is that eggs also have a good amount of fat in them, which adds to the calories. Instead, target low-fat meats - my favorite is chicken breast. It's easy to cook, tasty, and you can get 200 grams of protein in ~1,000 calories worth of chicken breast (about 600 grams). Of course, if you get other sources of protein in a day, you don't have to eat that much, but even if you did, still leaves you with 1,000 calories for eating anything else you want.
And that's the beauty of this diet - as long as you're under your calorie count and got enough protein, you can eat anything you want! You don't have to worry about keeping carbs down, or avoiding sugar/candies. Now, of course there are foods that are more satiating (i.e. greens, vegetables, eggs, fruits), but you don't have to force yourself to never have treats. And that really helps when you're having a rough go on a particular day.