Why You Should Eat MORE To Lose Weight
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Losing weight should NOT mean feeling starved and miserable.
Unfortunately, if you follow pretty much any popular weight loss nutrition advice, there’s a good chance that’s what you’ll get. I’m a member of a few online groups and I regularly see these suggestions:
Don't eat dairy
Don't eat gluten
Don’t eat sugar
Don’t eat carbs
Don't eat meat
Seems like all you need to do is cut something out to lose weight. FINALLY, an easy answer for weight loss, right? Right?!
Not so fast.
When you’re an actual nutrition coach who works with real humans, you come to see that most of the well-meaning recommendations from people who say “Do this… it worked for me!” simply tends to be advice that’s unhealthy and/or unrealistic for most people and will likely lead to temporary results.
It’s time to raise the bar.
Real Humans
There’s almost no one who consistently maintains good eating habits and is only overweight because they sabotage themselves with one specific type of food.
It’s much more often that, even if your eating habits “aren’t that bad,” the overall balance of everything you eat is off just enough to where you aren’t getting the nutrients you need to make weight loss feasible.
Since the problem is your body is lacking something (or multiple somethings) from what you eat, cutting foods OUT of your diet won’t fix that.
It might support weight loss for a little while because you’re literally just not eating enough. But your relationship with food will become boring, unsatisfying, and you’ll ultimately still end up overweight and feeling guilty that you seem to be incapable of following a diet.
An Alternative Method
What if you looked at dieting as an opportunity to have a healthier perspective on how to eat... all while supporting weight loss at the same time?
You can do that by focusing on adding nutritious foods to your diet instead of focusing on cutting foods out. This type of focus creates lasting habits that don’t perpetuate/encourage this common cycle:
If, instead, you work on changing the quality of your overall diet, you can slowly adjust your approach without the impractical restrictions that come with most diets.
How to Do It
Here are some ideas of foods (and strategies) for adding to your diet to lose weight:
Veggies
Have several veggies on hand, washed, cut, and ready to eat.
Plan your vegetable for each meal and have enough.
Most people need at least 6 fist sized servings of veggies per day. Work your way up, starting at an amount you can tolerate.
Protein
Find lean protein options to add to your diet like: chicken, fish, eggs, Greek yogurt, etc. (If you’re vegetarian/vegan you can find protein dense plant sources as well.)
Have protein at every meal!
Most people need at least 4 palm sized servings of protein per day. Work your way up starting at an amount you can tolerate.
Healthy Fats
Seek out foods with unsaturated fats like: seeds, nuts, and healthy oils (avocado oil or extra virgin olive oil are our go-to’s). Sample several until you find ones you like.
A serving of fat is the size of your thumb. The number of daily servings varies wildly from person to person, so the goal here is just to get a larger percentage of your fat portions from healthy fats.
Unprocessed Carbs
Think potatoes, wild rice, full flake or steel cut oats, fruit, corn, lentils, quinoa, etc.
Season and flavor them so they taste good. Bonus if you use some healthy fats to make them more flavorful.
A serving of carbs is the size of your cupped hand. The number of daily servings varies wildly from person to person, so the goal here is just to get a larger percentage of your carb portions from minimally processed carbs.
Should You Worry?
“Wait, won’t eating more make me GAIN weight?”
If you continued to eat everything you normally eat now and then ate more food on top of that… yes, you’d gain weight.
But that’s not what will happen.
The types of foods we’re talking about eating more of are typically lower in calories, and yet they make you feel more full and help you stay full longer.
In other words, when you start eating more of these higher-quality, nutritionally packed foods, you’ll naturally cut back on some of the other lower-quality, nutritionally lacking foods you had to overeat in order to feel full.
The benefit will be that you’ll have the freedom to continue to eat what you want, but you’ll become less likely to overdo it. And it won’t come with the stress — and statistically high chance of failure — of focusing on NOT eating something.
Long story short, you’ll wind up eating fewer total calories and your body will literally be bound by the laws of physics to lose weight.
Making This Work For YOU
If you ONLY ate single ingredient foods (like potatoes, chicken, broccoli, etc.), you’d have to eat until you were miserably stuffed every single day to gain any weight.
We don’t live in a perfect world though. You aren’t a perfect person. You aren’t ONLY going to eat “perfect” foods.
That would make life no fun.
So while the point of eating more of certain foods is that it will ultimately cause you to be more satisfied so you eat fewer of certain other foods, you do have to find the middle ground that feels right to you.
That could mean you’d rather have pizza and beer a bit more often even if you don’t lose quite as much weight because of it. (But yes, you can still lose weight.)
On the other hand, it could also mean you discover there are plenty of foods you already love that, if you just ate more often (or in higher quantities), you could lose more weight than you thought possible without feeling like you have to sacrifice anything at all.
Successfully finding that middle ground is how you lose weight in real life.
We can help you with that.
See how our online coaching can help you reach your goals, or check out our free video guides for busy parents:
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Most people are overweight because the overall balance of everything you eat (even if your diet isn’t that bad) is off just enough to where you aren’t getting the nutrients you need to make weight loss feasible.
Since the problem is your body is lacking something (or multiple somethings) from what you eat, cutting foods OUT of your diet (the focus of almost all popular weight loss advice) won’t fix that.
Eating more veggies, protein, unsaturated fats, and minimally processed carbs will give your body what it needs to feel satisfied, plus you’ll wind up eating fewer total calories and your body will literally be bound by the laws of physics to lose weight.
Want guaranteed results? See how our 1-on-1 online coaching can help.
