3 Different Ways to Eat to Lose Weight

Naturally thin or a smart eater?

Cutting 200 calories from your diet per day is as simple as skipping your grande latte. To burn the same amount of calories through exercise takes anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour depending on how hard you workout (hint : you never burn as many calories as you think. The safest bet is to assume 30min = 100 calories, otherwise you could just be assuming you are burning more than you are and then wonder why you never lose weight…)

Losing weight through diet is all about eating fewer calories not about eating magic foods. There are a couple ways to do this -

First of all, figure out approximately how many calories you burn per day.

Kate Middleton eats on average 1400 calories per day divided up into many small meals and snacks.

Here is a simple way -

Bodyweight x (hours spent working out per week + 9.5) = calories burned per day

135 x (4 +9.5) = 135 x 13.5 = 1822.5 calories burned per day.

This is an estimate of how many calories you can eat per day and NOT lose any weight. Eat more – you gain weight. Eat less, you lose weight. (Keep in mind that this number is just an estimate to get you started, you may actually be burning fewer calories per day. Try eating at this level for a week and see if you gain weight, lose weight, or stay the same. Then adjust your calories up or down.)

Ideally, you do not want to cut your calories lower than 40% of daily calories burned. 25-30% is probably the best point to aim for. Eating more calories while dieting is really the best way to lose weight. You will of course, still feel somewhat deprived but the urge to eat should be controllable. Additionally, smaller calorie deficits also result in less muscle mass loss and more fat loss. Win win.

Scarlett hates to diet but cleaning up her food and workout was key to fitting in to her Iron Man 2 Black Widow costume.

Some people do this by eliminating foods high in calories. Examples include junk foods, processed foods, breads, pasta, chips, sugar, juice, and so on. Keep in mind not all foods high in calories are unhealthy (think avocados, nuts, and healthy oils) – but all will make you fat if you eat more calories than you burn. An example of eating this way would be a skinless grilled chicken breast (no oil added) on top of a large leafy green salad (very little to no salad dressing) with a side of steamed broccoli. The idea is everything is so low in calories you don’t really need to worry about over eating. This method works okay for some, while other people will always end up eating too much….

Model/actress Elsa Pataky (Fast Five and girlfriend of Thor's Chris Hemsworth) follows a macrobiotic diet, but keep in mind its total calories not majic food combinations that get you lean.

Other people choose to measure portion sizes or weigh foods. This allows you to add in higher calorie foods like roasted potatoes, oils, and nuts as long as you keep a food log and stay under your daily calorie limit. I find a food scale is the easiest way to do this. Simply weigh your food in grams, use an online calculator like fitday.com to determine calories, and then stay under your daily calorie limit. This method has a couple advantages in that 1) You always know exactly how much you have eaten 2) There are no forbidden foods – just stay under your limit. The main downside – tedious.

Lots of people are having luck with intermittent fasting. Essentially you pick 2 days per week to fast until dinner (about 18hr long fast.) Dinner is then a normal dinner size, not a monster size. On the remaining days per week you eat normally (but not overeating.) Intermittent fasting was first developed by Brad Pilon (read my original post here) but  has quickly gained a large online following among fitness bloggers and writers (IF is strongly recommended in Visual Impact for Women…) The advantages of fasting is primarily the simplicity – you just don’t eat for a short period of time. You don’t need to buy expensive health food or prepare lots of little meals. You also get to eat normally most days per week. Its just low hassle, cheap, and effective without feeling lots of deprivation.

Blake was able to get pretty lean just by making small tweaks to her diet like cutting out junk food and adding lean protein (fish, chicken breast, turkey) and adding vegetable juice for extra nutrition. This will work for anyone who stays within 10lbs of their ideal weightmost of the year.

(Side note – some people really will lose more fat and stick to their diet better if they eat multiple small meals throughout the day. For most people, the extra advantage comes from just not allowing yourself to get too hungry as this is when most people break their diets. Just make sure your meals are low in calories while being somewhat high in lean protein. This will keep you full longer and burn up to 20% more calories through normal digestion. You can learn more about how to diet this way in Tom Venuto’s book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle – which is pretty much a fat loss classic…)

Here is how you do intermittent fasting -

Take your daily calorie total (we’ll assume 1800 calories – 30% deficit = 1260 calories per day) and multiply it by 7 (one week’s worth of eating) = 8820 calories. Lets assume you want to be able to eat more on Fridays and Saturdays, and less on Sunday and one other day (Wed or Thursday). Friday/Saturday you will eat 1800 calories. Sunday and Wednesday you will fast until dinner time (where you will eat a normal sized meal of 600 calories.) To get the calories for the remaining three days per week subtract Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday’s calories form you total, then divide that number by 3 (days remaining.)

Here is the daily calorie breakdown:
Friday: 1800
Saturday: 1800
Sunday: 600
Monday: 1340
Tuesday:1340
Wednesday: 600
Thursday:1340

Models like Rosie Huntington Whiteley frequently do intermittent fasting due to the demands of their jobs.

Keep in mind, this is just an example. You could do only one high calorie day per week and cut one fast day (or spread those calories among all remaining days.) How you want to spread out the calories is up to you.

Within your day, you can also divide calories up however you prefer. You can do two meals of equal size, one small meal and two bigger meals, two small meals and one big meal – its up to you as long as you stay within your calorie budget – and no, you will not slow your metabolism. Instead you”ll just free up time, energy and sanity to do other things.

Again, check out Visual Impact or my post on fasting and weight loss for more information…