The Definitive No Bullsh*t Guide
Ben Carpenter
Evidence-based fat loss without the noise — behavior, environment, and sustainable consistency.
The fitness industry profits from your confusion. Carpenter strips away fad diets and metabolic hacks to reveal what the evidence actually says: fat loss is governed by energy balance, and everything else is noise dressed up as science.
Everything Carpenter wants you to walk away with
Whether it's low-carb, low-fat, keto, or intermittent fasting, the reason any diet works is that it gets you to eat fewer calories than you burn. There is no metabolic magic. Understanding this frees you from chasing the next trend.
Moving a bowl of M&Ms from 20cm away to 70cm away reduced consumption. People who live closer to fast food outlets weigh more. The easier it is to eat something, the more likely you'll eat it — so redesign your environment, not your discipline.
73% of people increase snacking when stressed, preferring chocolate and sweets over fruits and vegetables. Boredom promotes snacking on unhealthier options specifically. Pausing to ask why you're eating matters more than just telling yourself to eat less.
Foods high in fat and palatability — croissants, cake, doughnuts — score worst on the satiety index. The most satiating foods are minimally processed with high protein, fiber, and water content. Energy density is the key concept.
When served a 12-inch sandwich instead of 6-inch, people ate 56% more calories but reported no difference in hunger or fullness. Discrete portion manipulation nudges you to overeat without awareness. Serve yourself less and you'll eat less.
People who read weight-stigmatizing articles consumed more calories afterward and felt less capable of controlling their weight. Fat shaming reliably backfires. The research is consistent: exerting weight stigma is directly harmful.
A single chocolate bar can exceed an entire workout's calorie burn. But exercise reduces risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and all-cause mortality. Aim for 150 minutes of moderate cardio plus at least two resistance sessions per week.
Meta-analyses show slow loss may be slightly better for preserving muscle and metabolic rate. But rapid loss can be more motivating for some people. At the end of trials, body composition outcomes were basically the same between groups.
A lighter body requires less energy. Movement burns less. You digest less food so TEF drops. Your deficit shrinks and weight loss plateaus. This isn't your metabolism 'breaking' — it's physics. You'll need to readjust.
Training intensity, fasted cardio, meal timing — none of these make-or-break differences are worth stressing about. Find a form of exercise you enjoy enough to actually do. Sustainability is the only variable that compounds over years.
These notes are inspired by direct excerpts and woven together into a readable guide you can follow from start to finish.
By Ben Carpenter
Before you begin any fat loss journey, you need to know where you are heading. If you don’t know what your destination is, how can you decide which way to aim? Ask yourself: do you want to lose fat because you want to change the way you look, or change the way you feel? What habits are you willing to adopt to get there — and are those habits going to be sustainable for you? Will they improve your overall quality of life?
Key Insight
If getting leaner were a sure-fire way to improve how you feel about yourself, you would expect those who push this endeavor to the limit to be the happiest people around — but that is unlikely to be the case. One review paper concluded that male and female bodybuilders experience high levels of muscle dysmorphia, associated with anxiety, depression, neuroticism, and perfectionism, and negatively associated with self-esteem.
Your happiness is not guaranteed to go up when your body fat levels go down, and obsessing over the way you look can come with its own psychological risks. It is possible to spend your entire life trying to change your body only to find you never reached that elusive point of happiness. None of this is meant to deter you if your goal is fat loss — just to make sure you are not chasing the wrong thing.
Some people progress in their career much faster than others with the same level of effort — perhaps they inherited a more fortunate starting position, like the best private education or a family connection at the company. If they find it easier, it doesn’t necessarily mean they “wanted it more.” Likewise, some people go through life without ever feeling like they struggle to manage their weight, and that doesn’t automatically indicate superior willpower.
Body weights are trending upwards; it has been estimated that the global prevalence of obesity has almost tripled since 1975. One of the largest contributors is thought to be our changing food environment — a rapidly increasing availability of high-calorie, ultra-processed foods that make us more likely to eat. A medium-sized apple has roughly 100 calories, while a single doughnut can contain a few hundred. Which one do you think is easier to consume in large quantities?
Research consistently shows that the closer food is to you, the more likely you are to eat it. In one study, participants could eat from a bowl of apple slices or a bowl of popcorn under three conditions: apple slices within arm’s reach and popcorn two meters away; popcorn within arm’s reach and apple slices two meters away; or both within arm’s reach. Participants were inclined to eat more of whichever food was closest to them — even though they considered popcorn the tastier option. Another study found that simply placing a bowl of M&Ms 20 cm away instead of 70 cm away encouraged more people to eat them. Multiple research studies also suggest that people who live in closer proximity to a higher number of fast-food outlets are at greater risk of having heavier body weights.
Principle
The easier it is to eat something, the more likely it is that someone will eat it. You can use this to your advantage by making preferred options more convenient. Research has shown that if you serve healthier foods like vegetables in isolation, you are more inclined to eat them than when they are competing with more delicious options.
If you give rodents — or humans — free access to a wide selection of highly palatable foods, it reliably promotes weight gain. One mechanism behind this is called sensory-specific satiety: the feeling of fullness is food-specific. In the same way you might stop eating your main course when you feel full but somehow still have room for dessert, eating a lot of one food may induce taste fatigue, whereas having lots of delicious options available makes it easier to keep going. One study gave participants sandwiches with either the same filling repeatedly or four different fillings; when served four different fillings, they ate approximately one-third more food.
Multiple research trials confirm that when larger portions are offered, people consume more food. In one study, participants were served sandwiches of 6, 8, 10, or 12 inches once a week for four weeks and told they could eat as much or as little as they wanted. Both males and females rated the 6-inch sandwich as close to their usual portion, yet when given the 12-inch version, males consumed 56 percent more calories and females consumed 31 percent more. Despite the higher intake, hunger and fullness ratings were not significantly different — suggesting that people can override their satiety signals to accommodate larger portions without even noticing.
Most research in this area suggests that weight stigma is not only unhelpful but directly harmful. Rather than motivating exercise, people who have experienced weight stigma are more likely to want to avoid exercise. In one study, participants who perceived themselves as overweight actually consumed more calories and felt less capable of controlling their weight after reading an article about weight-based job discrimination. Fat jokes and shaming are more likely to push people further away from healthy behaviors than toward them.
Rather than simply telling people to eat less, pausing to question what motivates them to eat more in the first place can be very valuable. Many people respond to life stresses by comfort eating: in one study, 73 percent of participants reported increased snacking when stressed, gravitating toward foods like chocolate, sweets, cakes, and biscuits rather than meat, fish, fruit, or vegetables. Research also suggests that some people are “stress eaters” while others are “stress fasters” — a small study on surgical patients found some increased their food intake by 25 percent the day before surgery, while others ate over 25 percent less.
Boredom is another driver. One study found that participants consumed more crackers while doing a boring task than an interesting one. A separate three-part study found that boredom was associated not only with higher calorie intakes but specifically with the desire to snack on unhealthier options.
Key Insight
A meta-analysis of 33 studies concluded that negative emotions play a causal role in greater food intake, especially in restrained eaters and binge eaters. It is also proposed that depression and obesity have a significant bidirectional relationship — having obesity can increase the risk of depression, and depression itself can predict the likelihood of developing obesity. Your emotional state is a driving force behind how much you eat and what types of food you lean toward.
So yes, weight loss boils down to calories in versus calories out — but there are a multitude of factors that influence how easy that is for someone to achieve. Keeping your expectations realistic and developing strategies to overcome these hurdles is essential.
As you lose weight, your body starts to burn less energy because a lighter version of you requires less energy than a heavier version. If you require approximately 2,500 calories per day to maintain your body weight and you reduce your intake to 2,000 calories, you will start off in a 500-calorie deficit and lose weight. However, as your body weight decreases, so does the number of calories you burn — through movement, exercise, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and the thermic effect of food (since you are consuming smaller quantities). At some point, 2,000 calories per day may no longer be a deficit for your smaller body, and your weight loss could plateau.
Key Insight
When you change how many calories you consume, you will also change the number of calories you expend, which makes the speed at which you gain or lose weight somewhat unpredictable.
Protein is a major component of every cell in your body and receives the most dietary attention for growth and repair. The recommended dietary allowance (RDA) is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. Protein has the highest thermic effect of the three macronutrients — around 20–30 percent of its calories are burned during digestion, compared with 5–10 percent for carbohydrates and 0–3 percent for fat. Because of this, high-protein diets may offer a slight weight-loss advantage. However, the number of extra calories burned by nudging your protein intake up a bit is relatively small — a little like getting a few extra miles out of your car’s fuel tank. You just are not really going to notice it in the short term, although it may add up to some additional weight loss over the long term. The contrast would be far more dramatic if you compared a diet of pure fat to one of pure protein, but in realistic dietary adjustments the difference is modest.
One research paper tested what happens when you eat two versions of a sandwich: a “whole food” version made with deli cheese and multigrain bread, and a “processed” version made with cheese slices and white bread. The processed sandwich resulted in 50 percent less energy burned after eating. This study did not measure body composition changes over time, but if you eat an entirely processed diet and burn 50 percent fewer calories after every single meal, that might add up to something noticeable in the long term. It did not tell us definitively that a diet high in ultra-processed foods will cause weight gain, but it did show a plausible mechanism for why ultra-processed foods could be more fattening on a calorie-for-calorie basis.
Researchers gave participants the same 240-calorie portion of 38 different foods, recorded how hungry they felt every 15 minutes, and after two hours, let them eat from a buffet. The most filling foods tended to be high in protein, fiber, and water, with a higher serving weight. Foods that were high in fat and scored high on palatability tended to have lower satiety ratings — croissants, cake, and doughnuts took the three bottom spots. The most satiating foods were plain boiled potatoes, ling fish, and porridge — all minimally processed with a much larger serving size for the same calorie count.
Definition
Energy density refers to the number of calories a food contains relative to its volume or weight. Low-energy-density foods provide fewer calories for more physical food. One theory behind their benefit for weight management is that your hunger signals are influenced by the weight and volume of what you eat, so large platefuls that fill more space in your stomach may be more satiating than small platefuls — even when the calorie content is the same.
This concept has been demonstrated in creative ways. One study gave participants two versions of cheese puffs that differed only by how much they were aerated — the more aerated version was physically bigger per piece despite having the same calorie content. Participants naturally ate fewer of the bigger snacks, meaning their calorie intake was lower, yet they did not feel hungrier. Other research served yogurt-based milkshakes with different amounts of air before lunch; the highest-volume option reduced how much food participants ate afterwards.
In a series of test conditions, increasing the ratio of vegetables in a mixed meal led people to eat less food overall. Simply adding more broccoli to a plate of beef, rice, and broccoli probably will not change your calorie intake, but if broccoli takes up a larger percentage of the plate by substituting some of the beef and rice, it may nudge you toward fewer calories without increasing hunger. This effect has also been shown in children: hiding additional tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, or squash inside a pasta dish does not reduce the amount of green beans kids eat on the side, meaning those incorporated vegetables are purely additional.
One observation from the research was that participants ate ultra-processed foods approximately 50 percent faster than unprocessed foods in terms of calories consumed per minute. A follow-up study confirmed that the more processed a food is, the faster people tend to eat it. This matters because faster eating rates have been shown across a wide range of studies to promote higher energy intakes — you may be chowing down ultra-processed foods so fast that you consume more before your satiety signals tell you that you are full.
Principle
Although being in a calorie deficit is mandatory for weight loss and in some ways food quality is irrelevant to that fact, a massive amount of research shows how different food attributes help regulate appetite. Prioritizing unprocessed foods with a low energy density is a well-studied strategy to keep hunger in check during reduced-calorie dieting. A good diet that you can follow consistently will be better than a perfect diet that you cannot stick with because it is too strict. Your goal is to find a balance that works for you.
If you consistently consume more fruits and vegetables, fewer ultra-processed foods, less alcohol, and consistently hit your physical activity goals, you are implementing identifiable behavioral steps that can improve your health — even if you are not setting ambitious weight-loss targets.
There is an ongoing debate about whether rapid or slow weight loss is preferable. A review paper pooling 29 studies found that participants who started with more aggressive calorie deficits actually maintained more weight loss in the long term. The researchers proposed that fast weight loss may be more motivating for some people — participants in the rapid group ramped up their physical activity, whereas those in the slow group did not. Seeing the number on the scale going down serves as a reward that encourages people to stick with the plan. Dietary prescriptions for rapid weight loss are sometimes simpler, and giving people really simple advice to follow can work better, even when the intervention seems more extreme.
On the other hand, if you want to maximize muscle mass, strength, and overall performance, dieting slowly is the preferred option. A gentler reduction in calories will let you keep making progress in the gym, but it will take longer. Some people might prefer to rip the band-aid off quickly, diet more aggressively, and accept that they will not be setting any personal bests during the weight-loss phase.
Key Insight
At least one trial found that at the end of the study, everything was basically the same between fast and slow groups: body composition, hunger, appetite hormones, and resting metabolic rate. A meta-analysis of seven controlled trials concluded that although good long-term studies are lacking, slower rates of weight loss appeared slightly better for fat loss and preservation of metabolic rate. Since neither approach has emerged as conclusively superior, you can pick whatever dieting speed is easier for you to stick with — because it probably does not matter much.
From a health perspective alone, being physically inactive is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and all-cause mortality. The potential benefits of exercise are vast: decreased risk of all-cause mortality and over 25 chronic medical conditions, as well as slowing down the decline of health and functioning associated with age. Although general recommendations suggest at least 150–300 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75–150 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise per week, you do not necessarily have to hit that target to improve your health. Even walking more is associated with reduced mortality risk, so just doing that would be a great start for many people.
From a body composition perspective, exercise plays a role in weight management because moving more means burning more energy. That said, it is not a reliably powerful stimulus for losing weight on its own. It is much easier to consume calories from food than to burn them through exercise — you could grab a chocolate bar or smoothie from the gym on the way out and the energy content may exceed what you burned during your workout. This is why even aerobic training, the common exercise of choice for fat loss, often delivers underwhelming weight-loss results in isolation and needs to be paired with dietary changes.
Key Insight
From a weight-loss perspective, consider dietary changes as your main course and exercise more like a side dish. In an ideal world, aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate cardiovascular exercise per week plus at least a couple of resistance-training workouts.
If you perform resistance training with multiple exercises and short rest periods, it can feel similar to aerobic training. Likewise, cranking up aerobic intensity to maximal effort for short bursts starts to resemble the energy systems used during resistance training. One meta-analysis pooling dozens of studies comparing different training intensities found that from a fat-loss perspective, it does not actually seem to matter much. If you are short on time you may prefer higher intensity work for time efficiency; if you are new to exercise you may prefer starting gently. From a body composition perspective it is not a make-or-break situation, so do whatever you prefer.
Research has not produced strong evidence that training fasted has a pronounced fat-loss effect compared with eating before working out. At the end of one trial, there were no significant differences between fasted and fed groups, and other research has come to the same conclusion. Pick based on personal preference.
There is one concept worth highlighting: progressive overload — giving your body additional stimulus to adapt to by doing more over time. While not specific to fat loss, progressive overload plays an integral role in maintaining or increasing lean body mass, which is a sensible goal when dieting.
Principle
If there were one piece of fitness advice to announce over a megaphone, it would be: find a form of exercise you enjoy enough to actually stick with, and then try to improve on it over time. What looks best on paper is irrelevant if you hate it and don’t stick to it in the long run.
To make things more enjoyable, play to your own psychology. Do you prefer working out alone or with someone else? Are you more motivated when you track workouts and see your progress? Do you prefer morning sessions, lunchtime workouts, being outside or inside, weights or bodyweight exercises? There are many variables you can choose to suit your circumstances and preferences.
Here is the secret that most weight-loss books rarely discuss: while short-term weight loss is relatively simple, long-term success rates are notoriously low. Although this is well established in the research literature, people do not like talking about it because it removes some of the magic from whatever diet they are trying to sell you.
One of the most successful interventions in the research used a multidisciplinary approach: not only a low-calorie diet, but also physical activity, nutritional education, and cognitive-behavioral techniques around self-control and relapse prevention. Participants revisited the hospital every four months for motivational support, saw a psychologist for at least ten sessions, and received regular diet reviews. This worked for nearly half of participants. Among those who regained the lost weight, one of the main culprits was overeating outside of hunger — loneliness, depression, and anxiety were potent influences on the desire to eat. This suggests that individuals who eat in response to negative emotions may be better suited focusing on emotional regulation skills rather than simply being prescribed a low-calorie diet.
Action List — Strategies Used in Successful Long-Term Programs
One reason people tend to regain weight is that they do not realize they need to adjust their food intake over time. After some initial weight loss, your body no longer needs as many calories as it did at a higher weight, so you are no longer in a deficit. Hitting weight-loss plateaus is not only normal but pretty much inevitable. However, many people become discouraged and revert to what they were doing before — they jump off the metaphorical diet wagon when it seems like it is not working anymore.
Sustainability comes down to finding things you actually enjoy. If you find a form of physical activity you want to keep repeating — walking for quiet time with music or an audiobook, jogging with a friend for social time, weightlifting for the feeling of getting stronger, boxing to let off steam — it becomes a completely different psychology. Nutrition-wise, you need a balance between healthy behaviors and sustainability, because diets that suck all the joy out of your life just are not going to work.
Key Insight — Common Traits of Successful Long-Term Maintainers
Among the smaller minority of people who maintain significant weight loss, several common behaviors emerge: eating a reduced-calorie and often reduced-fat diet, increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, high levels of physical activity, and regular self-monitoring of body weight and often food intake. Important psychological components include motivation, goal setting, prioritizing enjoyment, and relapse-prevention strategies such as addressing emotional eating.
Before diving into specific diets, a useful distinction: you can lose 1 pound of body fat and gain 1 pound of lean body mass and the number on the scales would not change, even though your body composition has. This is why “losing weight” and “losing fat” are not technically the same thing, even though they often happen in tandem.
The act of counting calories is also separate from whether calories matter. Think of it like saving money: one person tracks every dollar earned and spent, while another simply decides not to buy certain items. One counted and the other did not, but the underlying result is the same — they spent less than they earned.
Key Insight
A review paper examined 48 controlled studies involving 7,286 individuals to determine which weight-loss diet was superior, including Atkins, South Beach, Zone, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, Weight Watchers, Ornish, and more. None of them came out as clearly superior — the differences were too small for any to be considered a real winner.
High-protein diets are often recommended because they appear to have a slight weight-loss advantage. One meta-analysis comparing high-protein to moderate-protein diets found that high-protein diets resulted in a little more weight loss, even when calories were the same. From a body composition perspective, high-protein diets win — that is the simplified message. When someone is resistance training and not dieting, 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram per day appears to be sufficient for muscle-building purposes; intakes above that do not appear to offer much additional advantage. Some research in competitive bodybuilders proposes intakes as high as 2.2 grams per kilogram per day, essentially showing us the ceiling for people with the highest protein demands.
One theory behind reduced-fat diets is that because fat is the most calorie-dense macronutrient, aiming for low fat intake would be the best way to reduce your overall energy intake. This idea is not without merit — some studies have shown that if you covertly reduce the fat content of people’s diets, it nudges them toward eating fewer calories.
There is a lot of research showing that low-carb diets achieve greater weight loss than low-fat diets. In one meta-analysis of 11 studies, low-carb diets resulted in more weight loss at the six-month mark, and another meta-analysis showed very low-carbohydrate diets resulted in greater weight loss at the 12-month mark. But what is really driving that effect? One study used four diet conditions to isolate the contributions of protein and carbohydrate — normal protein/normal carb, normal protein/low carb, high protein/normal carb, and high protein/low carb — all following the same calorie deficit over 12 months. More body fat was lost in both high-protein conditions; carbohydrate content did not appear to have the same relevance. This means a big chunk of any fat-loss “magic” from low-carb diets comes simply from people’s tendency to increase their protein intake once they remove carbohydrates.
Principle
If you want to maximize fat loss and lean body mass preservation, consuming adequate protein is a well-agreed-upon recommendation. Once that is in place, the remaining ratio of carbohydrates to dietary fats can be based on your own personal preference.
Research on alternate-day fasting found that it did not produce superior adherence, weight loss, weight maintenance, or cardioprotection versus daily calorie restriction. One analysis concluded there was no evidence of health effects specific to fasting itself, and fasting was actually worse for fat loss and lean body mass preservation. Many review papers have arrived at similar conclusions: intermittent fasting is a viable strategy for weight loss but not inherently superior to daily calorie restriction. One meta-analysis concluded that intermittent fasting resulted in “marginally” greater weight loss in the short term, but this came with slightly greater losses of lean body mass and a higher risk of side effects including nausea, dizziness, mood swings, and decreased energy levels.
One meta-analysis of 11 studies on time-restricted feeding concluded that in observational trials it resulted in a significantly reduced energy intake of 200–350 calories per day, leading to more weight loss — though often at the expense of some fat-free mass. In controlled trials comparing it to traditional calorie restriction, differences in fat mass and fat-free mass tended to be very close. From a fat-loss perspective, fasting is just a different vehicle that ultimately takes you to the same destination: calorie restriction.
Since fasting methods offer similar body composition changes to regular dieting when total calorie intake is the same, you have a lot of flexibility on when you consume food. If you do not feel hungry in the morning, you do not need to force breakfast down thinking it helps “kickstart your metabolism.” Eating breakfast later or skipping it altogether and eating a bigger lunch and dinner are both perfectly viable options.
If you prioritize minimally processed foods with a low energy density, this is always going to be a great strategy for appetite regulation. From that perspective, the paleo diet sounds very solid — diets revolving around lean meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and eggs often result in weight loss and improved health markers even when people eat as much of these foods as they want.
A review paper’s summary: the Mediterranean diet has potential for reducing central obesity, but it cannot be confirmed whether it is superior to other methods. Given that there are few to negligible risks involved, it could be a worthwhile strategy. Since any calorie-controlled diet promotes weight loss in the short term, it is prudent to pick one that is healthy. You do not need to follow it strictly — simply prioritizing some of the same foods, like fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish, seafood, poultry, legumes, nuts, and olive oil, and letting them displace less nutrient-dense foods, is always a great idea.
In one study, participants completed a “Barriers to Weight Loss” checklist. Three of the most common barriers were being prone to stress-related eating, being predisposed to eating when bored, and thinking in black-and-white, all-or-nothing terms — which reiterates the importance of underlying psychology and cognitive flexibility.
Research has found that vegetarians and vegans consume significantly higher amounts of legumes, nuts, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, as well as lower amounts of refined grains, fried foods, alcohol, and sugary drinks compared to meat eaters. Vegetarians also tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, and perform more intense exercise — which is one reason they often have lower body mass indexes on average. This aligns with energy density theory: a meal of steak and avocado could be much smaller on your plate than a calorie-matched meal of whole grains and lentils, so many people might find the former easier to eat in larger quantities.
For a long time, plant-based diets have been viewed as probably inferior from a lean body mass perspective because the amino acid profile from plants tends to be less conducive to muscle recovery than animal products. However, one study took habitual omnivores and habitual vegans who used supplemental protein to achieve 1.6 grams per kilogram per day in combination with resistance training — after 12 weeks, both groups had similar results. Animal protein sources probably come out at least slightly superior overall, as confirmed by a meta-analysis of 16 studies. Plant-based diets may also carry a greater risk of nutrient deficiencies and may require more careful planning, hence studies often including B12 supplementation or additional protein powders.
Research found that flexible restraint was a better predictor of long-term weight loss than rigid restraint. Rigid all-or-nothing dietary restraint can backfire more than simply cutting yourself some slack to begin with.
Definition
Intuitive eating is an approach that removes dietary rules aimed at weight loss and focuses solely on internal hunger cues, appetite, and satiety. Research suggests it is associated with positive psychological constructs including body image, well-being, and self-esteem. For example, you could aim to eat protein multiple times a day and allow yourself a wide range of micronutrient-dense foods, but let your own internal hunger cues guide how much you eat rather than relying on external cues like a predetermined calorie goal.
There is a balance between prioritizing nutrient-dense, minimally processed foods and not being so restrictive that it is impossible to stick to. Nobody thinks eating a single salad is going to give them a visible six pack, so why act like eating one slice of cake is going to ruin your health? Your overall calorie intake and diet quality matters far more than individual food items within that. If you want to succeed at losing body fat and improving your health in the long term, the goal is to strike a balance between adopting health-promoting behaviors and not going so far that it sacrifices your physical and mental health.
Key Insight
Research findings indicate that there is little robust evidence that reducing meal frequency is beneficial. While it is quite possible that changes in meal frequency may have other physiological effects that have not been fully studied yet, when it comes strictly to body composition, there does not appear to be any really powerful evidence that you should strive for a specific number of meals.
Given this, it makes sense to opt for personal preference rather than striving for a specific meal frequency. Eat the number of meals that works best for your schedule, appetite, and lifestyle.
Everything has a unique dose-response relationship, even things we view as beneficial. Too little exercise is unhealthy, but too much exercise is also unhealthy. If you do not drink enough water you will die, but if you drink too much you will also die. The same thinking applies to sugar.
One trial compared diets where 25 percent versus 10 percent of total energy came from sucrose — both diets identical in calories, macronutrient distribution, and fiber intake. At the end of the six-week intervention, no changes in body weight were observed, because participants were fed at their maintenance calories. This demonstrates why total calorie intake is more important than the proportion of sugar within it. Another trial pushed this further, comparing diets with 4 percent versus 43 percent of calories from sucrose — with the high-sugar group eating Kool-Aid powder at breakfast, jelly and marshmallows at lunch, and meringue cookies at dinner. Both groups were in a calorie deficit. The result? Both groups lost similar amounts of weight.
Principle
Sugars are fattening based on their calorie content, not because they have magical fat-storage powers that other carbohydrates do not possess. Although the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with body weight gain, energy overconsumption as a whole is much more important to consider in terms of the obesity epidemic.
It is very easy to eat a bag of jellybeans containing several hundred calories, but much harder to eat multiple apples for the same calorie total. Putting all sugar-containing foods under the same umbrella is very short-sighted. Fruit specifically does not appear to be linked to weight gain in the same way that sugar-sweetened beverages are. A systematic review concluded that fruit consumption is unlikely to contribute to excess energy intake and weight gain — longer-term studies where participants eat more fruit tend to show weight maintenance or modest weight loss.
Among the highest-ranking foods for addictive-like properties, many contain high amounts of sugar and appreciable fat content. Ultra-processed items that are high in sugar but not fat — like non-diet sodas and gummy candy — rank lower. Unprocessed foods high in sugar but low in fat, like fruit, sit near the bottom. Among unprocessed foods, items high in fat and salt — steak, eggs, nuts, bacon — were more likely to be addictive-like than fruit. Many things can make you want to eat more of a food, but sugar probably is not even the main culprit.
In one study, participants consumed approximately 450 calories per day from either jellybeans or soda, with the rest of their diet uncontrolled. After the 28-day soda phase, participants had gained weight, but after the jellybean phase, they had not. When consuming jellybeans, participants compensated by reducing their food intake elsewhere; they did not compensate when consuming soda. This does not show sugary drinks are more fattening calorie-for-calorie, but it does show they are easier to consume in excess.
Key Insight
The easiest way to regulate your sugar intake is to minimize sugar-sweetened beverages. Liquid calories are notoriously poor at regulating your appetite compared to solid foods. It is far easier to eat sugar in excessive quantities when your diet is high in ultra-processed foods than when it centers on minimally processed foods. You do not want to lump all foods that contain sugar under the same umbrella — food is far more complex than its macronutrient content alone.
Even consumed straight without mixers, alcohol’s calories add up quickly. A popular beer at 5 percent alcohol has 42 calories per 100 milliliters, while an 11.5 percent sauvignon blanc has 72 calories per 100 milliliters. When you consider that people tend to drink these by the pint and large glass, the calorie content racks up faster than you might realize.
To test the impact of alcohol on appetite, one study gave participants either a non-alcoholic lager, the same lager with one unit of alcohol, or the same lager with four units, consumed 30 minutes before lunch. One unit of alcohol produced no increase in appetite, but four units led to significantly higher hunger ratings and increased food intake over the course of the day. A large glass of wine with dinner is unlikely to make much difference, but two or three glasses may significantly increase your hunger for several hours.
Another study tested whether alcohol consumed before or alongside a meal had different effects — participants eating lunch under three conditions: no alcohol, 375 milliliters of wine consumed 20 minutes prior, or wine consumed alongside the meal. In both alcohol conditions, participants ate significantly more food: a 25 percent higher calorie intake when wine was consumed before eating and 22 percent higher when consumed alongside the meal.
When alcohol and protein were consumed together, muscle protein synthesis was 24 percent lower than when protein was consumed alone. When carbohydrates and alcohol were consumed together, it was 37 percent lower. In other words, if alcohol kicks your muscle protein synthesis to the floor, protein can at least help it get back up to its knees.
However, just because recovery from a single exercise session might be impaired does not mean doing this once a month would translate to significant differences over 12 months of training — a single speed bump over the course of a long journey does not mean you get there significantly later. In a study where all participants followed the same workout program with some consuming alcohol and others not, changes in fat mass and fat-free mass were similar across all groups.
Key Insight
From a body composition perspective, consuming a lot of alcohol can contribute to fat gain because of its calorie content and because it often makes you feel hungrier, increasing food intake. It can also impair muscle recovery and affect hormone production, so heavy drinking probably undermines gym performance and lean body mass goals — at least a little bit.
A trial compared continuous calorie reduction with a two-day-per-week refeed strategy — a pattern many people already follow naturally via “the weekend.” The result: fat loss was similar between groups, but participants who were refeeding maintained more fat-free mass and better preserved their resting metabolic rate. Refeeds might help retain more muscle tissue.
Research suggests that diet breaks could be advantageous from a fat-loss perspective, but they extend the total dieting period. Would you prefer to diet for 16 weeks consecutively or for 30 weeks with interspersed periods of maintenance calories? One being “better” is only really relevant if you actually want to follow the plan.
Psychologically, some people may prefer “planned hedonic deviations” — eating slightly more for a day or two — or “non-linear dieting” over eating the same amount of food every day. It is normal to want to eat more on days when you feel slightly hungrier or have social events, so having flexibility makes sense.
Principle
The idea of “cheat meals” or “cheat days” where you give yourself a free pass to eat unlimited quantities of normally prohibited foods is strongly discouraged. If you are dying for a “cheat day” to eat a specific food, it is worth considering whether prohibiting that food for the rest of the week is doing more harm than good.
Definition
Self-monitoring has been described as “the cornerstone of behavioral treatment for weight loss.” Think of it like a business owner implementing a new strategy: if they are watching their profits, they can assess whether it was successful and tweak what they are doing to improve the outcome.
The closest most people get to measuring body composition is stepping on the scales, which will not tell you about fat mass or lean body mass specifically, but is quick and easy. More precise tools like DEXA scans or hydrostatic weighing are inaccessible to most, skinfold calipers used by yourself tend to be unreliable, and digital body-fat scales are not yet accurate enough to put a lot of faith in. Your body weight fluctuates a lot based on menstrual cycle, what you ate for dinner, and whether you have been to the bathroom — it literally changes over the course of every single day, which is one of many reasons not to obsess about the number on the scales.
That said, weighing yourself regularly has been shown repeatedly to help with weight loss. If the number trends down over time, you know you are in a calorie deficit; if it trends up, you know you are in a surplus. Having this information allows you to change what you are doing if you want. However, just because it can help does not mean it is always a great idea for everyone — health is far more multifaceted than how much you weigh.
One study found that while 93 percent of a smartphone-tracking group stuck to the plan, only 55 percent and 53 percent of website and paper-diary groups respectively did so — indicating that tracking food on your smartphone is significantly more convenient and therefore easier to continue with. This is probably because searching and selecting a food item on your phone automatically calculates calorie values, and most people carry a smartphone but rarely have a notebook in their back pocket.
If you are struggling to lose weight and have no idea how many calories you are consuming, it may be helpful to learn more about the calorie content of foods you eat regularly. In a world with a growing number of calorie-dense foods, more calorie awareness can be eye-opening and often helps inform simple changes.
Key Insight
Even though calorie tracking can be notoriously inaccurate — food labels in some countries are allowed margins of error up to 20 percent — it can still be a useful tool. You do not need to know exactly how much money you are spending every day to make periodically checking your bank balance worthwhile. It is entirely possible to improve your health and lose body fat without tracking calories at all. It is a tool, and not a tool everyone wants to use.
A study directly tested whether sleep deprivation impacts how much people eat. Participants slept either four or eight hours; after only four hours, they ate an average of 22 percent more food — 559 more calories. The effects were even more pronounced in some people, who ate 36 percent more food, while a minority actually ate 15 percent less — an example of how people can respond in totally different ways to the same situation, and why overall averages can hide important parts of the puzzle. Less sleep will not stop you losing weight, but it can skew results away from fat loss toward losing lean body mass, which is not ideal.
Action List — Improving Sleep Quality
Good sleep quality can naturally help regulate your appetite, encourage you to consume less food, improve gym performance, help retain lean body mass when dieting, and increase the amount of body fat you lose.
Research shows that drinking a large volume of water before eating may promote weight loss. Although the difference might not be groundbreaking, it is an extremely simple strategy to implement — telling people to drink water before main meals is about as easy as weight-loss advice can get. However, drinking far more water than your body needs simply to override natural hunger signals is not advisable.
Softer foods require less chewing, reducing the time between mouthfuls. One study served the same meal either whole or mashed; when the food was mashed, eating rate was approximately 20 percent faster, which nudged people toward consuming more calories overall. Same foods, same taste — simply a change in texture was enough to influence eating speed and, inadvertently, how much food someone consumed. Another study told participants to chew their food either 15 or 40 times per mouthful; chewing more times resulted in 11.9 percent less food being eaten plus significant differences in appetite-related gut hormones. In a separate study, participants ate the same portion over either six or 24 minutes; when they ate slowly, they consumed 25 percent less food at a subsequent sitting three hours later.
Key Insight
The foods you eat more quickly are likely easier to eat in volume and at speed. Part of the reason people eat more ultra-processed “junk” foods may simply be that they tend to eat them faster than unprocessed foods. Taking bigger mouthfuls, barely chewing, and not pausing between bites is the best strategy to eat as much as possible before your appetite signals catch up — so it makes sense that how fast you eat can impact how much you eat.
In one study, even though hunger scores were similar across conditions, participants ate an average of 11.6 percent more food when watching TV or listening to an audio story. The theory is that environmental distractions cause people to eat more food even when they are not feeling hungrier. If you enjoy distractions while eating — TV, phone scrolling — there is a strong possibility this nudges you toward consuming more, and over time it might tally up. Minimizing distractions while eating may be worth considering: eating dinner at the table instead of in front of the television, or taking a break from your laptop for lunch. This may allow you to pay more attention to hunger cues and naturally feel less hungry, without changing the foods you eat.
Whatever your goal is, the message is clear: say goodbye to overhyped, short-term fad diets and hello to making educated decisions that are best for your health in the long run. There are better things to do with your life than constantly worry about how much you weigh.