Published February 14, 2025
This blog post is about how to lose weight and how to prevent weight gain without counting or tracking calories!
Maintaining a healthy body weight in the long term is key to our overall health. How do we do this without constantly being hungry and restricting ourselves? In this blog post, I will share my top seven strategies for answering this question. Each strategy is supported by high-quality research and will point you toward concrete steps you can take right away.
Let’s dive into it.
You may have heard that it’s best to eat until you are just comfortably full, not over-full, and this is good advice, but… When do you think you do feel comfortably full? Most people assume it is once you have eaten a certain number of calories. They also assume that the number of calories you need to feel full is a rather fixed number. Well, this is a misconception.
The number of calories we need to eat to feel comfortably full is actually NOT a fixed number, but more of a range. And whether we need to eat a high or low number of calories in that range is related to the quality of our diet!
This is a key concept to understand and is the basis of my weight loss approach. Let me briefly explain this in more detail before I share concrete suggestions with you on how to lose weight without counting calories. It’s important first to understand why we often eat too many calories in the first place.
The Relationship Between Diet Quality and Calorie Intake
The quality of our diet partly determines the amount of calories we need to feel comfortably full after a meal.
Let’s look at an example. Sam is an average 24-year-old who eats a pretty average US-American diet—in other words, not a great diet (see figure below). Most of his calories come from ultra-processed foods, fast foods, white flour bread, and sweetened breakfast cereals. He also drinks soda and beer and regularly enjoys candy, chips, and ice cream.
Sam doesn’t count or track his calorie intake and just eats until he feels comfortably full at each meal, and his daily calorie intake on this diet is around 3,600 kcal. He has been gaining weight regularly on this diet. His weight is now 210 pounds, with a BMI of around 29 kg/m2.
Worried about his recent weight gain, Sam wants to lose some weight. One approach that is often proposed is that he should simply start to track his calorie intake, and make an effort to consciously restrict his calorie intake. So, of course, if he restricted his calorie intake to, say, 1,500 kcal per day, he would start to lose weight. But would this be the best approach and would Sam be able to maintain it in the long run? Evidence shows most people can not maintain this in the long run.
Because an important question we need to ask ourselves is WHY Sam is eating 3,600 kcal per day on his typical diet. We understand this very well if we look at the scientific evidence.
Why We Eat Too Many Calories and Gain Weight (and What To Do About It)
Research has identified several factors that spontaneously lead to higher calorie intake in people who simply eat until they are comfortably full. Let’s discuss these, and how they could help us figure out how Sam could change his diet to reduce his calorie intake without ever counting or actively restricting his calorie intake.
1. Consumption of Liquid Calories
The first factor known to raise calorie intake strongly is liquid calories from sugar-sweetened or alcoholic beverages. We have lots of very strong data showing clearly that calories consumed in these types of beverages are simply consumed on top of whatever solid foods we are eating; they don’t seem to contribute to our sensation of satiety during a meal, and so our overall calorie intake goes up the more sugary and alcoholic beverages we consume.
In Sam’s case, depending on how much soda, juice, energy drinks, and beer he drinks regularly, he could easily cut a few hundred calories from his diet if he cut back on these beverages. And because these beverages don’t contribute to his feeling of satiety anyway, cutting them out would not make him more hungry.
I therefore consider eliminating sugar-sweetened or alcoholic beverages to be the lowest-hanging fruit for anyone who wants to lose weight. This is strategy number one: stop drinking sugar- and alcoholic beverages (perhaps outside of a few special occasions).
2. A High Content of Ultra-Processed Foods (UPF)
Second, ultra-processed foods, or UPF, seem to very robustly contribute to higher calorie intake. UPF are industrially designed foods that usually contain ingredients extracted from whole foods, such as starch or modified starch, sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, and oils. And they typically also contain food additives not commonly used in a kitchen, such as emulsifiers, thickeners, artificial sweeteners, flavor enhancers, and the like.
Many of these types of “foods” have been designed to be what we call hyperpalatable by combining the right amounts of fat, sugar, and salt, so that they trigger our bliss point. In other words, many UPF were designed to trigger overeating. And, it seems, very successfully so. Data from observational and a few intervention studies consistently and strongly suggest that people spontaneously eat way more calories if their diet is rich in UPF. On his typical American diet, Sam gets about 60-70% of his calories from UPF, and reducing these to consume more unprocessed or minimally processed foods would help him eat fewer calories without feeling deprived or hungry.
So, my second strategy is to replace ultra-processed foods with unprocessed or minimally processed foods, as much as possible.
3. A High Content of Hyperpalatable Foods
Third, people tend to eat more calories if they consume hyperpalatable foods even if they are not UPF. For example, a donut or cake made at home may not be a UPF, but if it consists primarily of fat, flour, and added sugar, it may be similarly irresistible. Hyperpalatable foods are generally combinations of fat and sugar, fat and salt, or refined grains and salt (see figure below).
So Sam should eat fewer baked goods that combine fat and sugar, such as cake, cookies, pancakes, waffles, or donuts. And also fewer foods that combine fat and salt, such as bacon, hot dogs, potato chips, and pizza. If we value our health, all of these should be seen as occasional treats, not everyday food. So, strategy number three is to minimize your consumption of hyperpalatable foods consisting of fat and sugar, fat and salt, or refined grains and salt.
4. A High Energy Density
The fourth factor worth paying attention to is energy density, meaning the number of calories per 100 g of food. We have lots of very compelling research data showing that if a meal or a diet has a high energy density, people consume more calories, independent of other factors. Foods with a high energy density are isolated fats and oils as well as added sugars and syrups and also refined grains and starches.
One thing to consider with grains and starches is that if these are baked into a bread pr cake or cookies, they lose water and their energy intake increases. However, grain or starch products that are boiled in water, such as rice or pasta, take up water, and these foods, therefore, have a substantially lower energy density. For example, if we take wheat flour and bake it into a bread, this will have an energy density around 260 kcal per 100 g, which is fairly high. By comparison, if we make the wheat flour into pasta, boiled in water, the resulting energy density will be around 160 kcal per 100 g, which is a very substantial difference.
That means that foods or meals that contain a lot of added fats and oils, or a lot of added sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, flour or starch (particularly if baked) tend to be very energy-dense, and as explained just a minute ago, they also are often hyperpalatable if they combine fat with either sugar or starch.
If Sam replaces some of the ultra-processed foods and fast foods he eats with home-cooked meals, he should pay attention to how much of these concentrated sources of energy he uses to prepare his meals.
So, strategy number four is to consume mostly meals with a low energy density by using added fats and oils, added sugars and syrups, and refined grains and starches sparingly.
5. A Low Protein and Fiber Content
OK, so far, we have mostly emphasized what to eat less of: less sugar-sweetened and alcoholic beverages, less UPF, less hyperpalatable foods, and less added fats and oils, sugar and syrups, and refined grains and starched.
That raises the question what to eat instead. That brings us to our fifth point, and that has to do with the observation that people eat more calories if their diet is low in protein and fiber. That is because per calorie, protein is more satiating than fat or carbohydrates, and fiber provides a lot of bulk that makes us feel full without providing any calories. So, Sam should increase the amount of protein and fiber he consumes relative to his overall calorie intake.
Strategy number five is ,therefore, to ideally center each meal around a solid portion of a protein-rich food and high-fiber plant foods.
Protein-rich foods include meat, fish, dairy, eggs, tofu, tempeh, beans, and lentils.
High-fiber plant foods include vegetables, beans, lentils, fruit and berries, and whole grains.
An example meal would be a piece of meat with a large salad, fish with roasted vegetables, low-fat Greek yogurt with berries, or a soup with lentils or beans and vegetables.
Two additional factors contribute to high calorie intake. These factors are not directly related to diet quality, but they are still worth mentioning here to explain why Sam may be eating so many calories.
6. A Long Eating Window
The first of these, so our sixth point, is that if people eat in a long eating window, for example, by starting with breakfast early in the morning, a late dinner, and then snacks right before bedtime, they tend to eat more calories.
Therefore, Sam should adopt time-restricted eating, or TRE, in which he eats all his calories in a 6-10 hour eating window each day. So if he did 8-hour TRE, he could eat between, say, 9 AM and 5 PM, and then he would fast the remaining 16 hours of the day. That is why 8-hour TRE is also sometimes called 16:8.
Independent of all other factors, following TRE reduces the number of calories someone spontaneously consumes without consciously restricting food intake.
So the sixth strategy is to follow time-restricted eating and eat only in a 6-10 hour window each day.
7. Non-Hunger Eating
We know that almost no one eats only because they are physiologically hungry. Most of us also occasionally eat for social reasons or because we are dealing with certain emotions such as boredom, anxiety, or depression. We call this non-hunger eating, and this food intake does contribute to excess calorie intake and weight gain.
For Sam, it would be worthwhile to learn about this topic, and – most importantly – understand whether and how this may apply to his eating habits. That could be the first step on a path to reduce non-hunger eating, potentially by addressing the psychological factors underlying it.
So, the seventh strategy is to identify what may be contributing to any non-hunger eating, and find other ways to respond to these triggers.
Now, let’s assume Sam takes all of these suggestions to heart and starts implementing them. How will that affect his calorie intake and body weight?
The Impact of Diet Quality on Calorie Intake and Body Weight
OK, so Sam had been eating about 3,600 kcal on his average American diet. And he was slowly gaining weight, which means his daily energy expenditure was lower than 3,600 kcal. Let’s assume it was 3,400 kcal per day.
Now, what I have been explaining is that if Sam starts improving the quality of his diet, on the y-axis in the figure below, then the number of calories he needs every day to feel comfortably satiated will gradually decline. So even if he just makes a few small improvements, his daily calorie intake will decrease to 3,400 kcal per day, which matches his energy expenditure, and he will stop gaining weight. That’s a first success.
Now, let’s assume he is very motivated and implements all of my suggestions. He cuts out all sugar-sweetened and alcoholic beverages, minimizes ultra-processed and other hyperpalatable foods, reduces the energy density of his meals and dramatically increases his protein and fiber intake. He adopts 8-hour time-restricted eating, and finds different ways to act on the psychological triggers that used to make him grab some rewarding snacks.
How does all of that affect his calorie intake? We don’t have any study in which all of these factors have ever been tested together, and the effect almost certainly varies somewhat from person to person, but I would guess, based on the research on all of these factors, that he may very well reduce his daily calorie intake to somewhere around 2,400 kcal.
Again, that’s not because he is tracking calories or actively restricting his food intake. He still eats every meal until he is comfortably satiated. It’s just that now his diet quality and eating habits are so good that he will be as satiated with 2,400 kcal per day as he was on 3,600 kcal per day on the average American diet. That, at least, is my best estimate of what ad libitum (spontaneous) energy intake on these diets may look like.
Initially, his daily energy expenditure will still be around 3,400 kcal per day, so if he only eats 2,400 kcal per day, that’s a 1,000 kcal per day deficit, and he will start to lose weight. And as he is losing weight, as his body mass is reduced and his body responds to the lower food intake, his total energy expenditure will also gradually decrease. Until at some point, he will find a new balance, or equilibrium, at a lower body weight where both his daily caloric intake and his energy expenditure will be around 2,400 kcal.
Well, not exactly, because as Sam is losing weight, there will be adaptive processes in his body to prevent excessive weight loss. As a result, he’ll get more hungry over time and need more food to be fully satisfied. And he may get sick of being so perfect with his diet all the time, and some of his old habits will sneak back in. Maybe he will want to enjoy a beer or some pastries every once in a while. But maybe he’ll find his new equilibrium at, say, 2,600 or 2,800 kcal a day. His body weight would certainly be much lower on his new, improved diet, and as long as he can happily maintain his new eating habits, he has a good chance of maintaining that lower body weight.
Why I Don’t Recommend Calorie Counting By Itself
Ok, now, wouldn’t Sam be able to achieve the same result just by tracking and actively restricting his calorie intake? That would allow him to maintain his normal diet with all of his preferred foods, and he could simply count calories and make sure he doesn’t get more than 2,400 kcal per day.
Well, yes, of course, initially this would work as well. However, there is a reason he eats 3,600 kcal and not 2,400 kcal per day on his typical American diet: the foods and drinks he consumes are not very satiating per calorie, and if he only eats 2,400 kcal, he’ll be hungry all day, every day. The figure below illustrates Sam’s hunger gap. The green dot shows that he would be able to keep his calorie intake at 2,400 kcal even while eating to satiety on the high-quality, highly-satiating diet. The red dot shows that if he restricted his calorie intake on his usual, average American diet without improving the quality of the diet, he would experience substantial hunger: on this diet, his body wants to eat 3,600 kcal per day, and eating fewer calories every day would leave him hungry. He may be able to tolerate this for a few days or weeks, but no one has enough willpower to ignore this much hunger every day forever.
That’s why I think that just focusing on tracking and restricting calories is not a good approach by itself.
Now, that said, I am not categorically against calorie counting. Evidence suggests that it can be helpful to some people. However, I feel strongly that calorie counting and active calorie restriction are not likely to be successful in the long term if they aren’t also combined with an improvement in diet quality. Whether you want to count calories or not, you need to improve the quality of the foods you eat if you want to reduce your calorie intake and body weight and have a chance to keep them reduced. The point is to feel satisfied with your diet so that you will continue it, ideally forever!
Summary & Recommendations
In summary, we have solid scientific evidence that the number of calories we eat is determined to a large degree by the quality of our diet. We can use this evidence to reduce our risk of overeating and weight gain, or even lose weight, without any calorie counting or active calorie restriction.
So what should you do if you want to be comfortably satiated with fewer calories and lose weight?
Practically speaking, I recommend eating as much of your food in the whole or minimally processed form as possible. Minimize beverages with calories, and be very careful with added fats and oils as well as added sugars and syrups. Always include at least some protein in each of your meals. As a woman, aim for at least 20-30 g of protein per meal. As a man, at least 30-40 g is the lower end.
Also, always include a solid serving of fiber-rich plant foods in each meal.
Implement a form of time-restricted eating, and become mindful of occasions in which you reach for food even though you are not hungry.
If your goal is to minimize your risk of weight gain, I think you can pick just a few of these suggestions and apply them loosely or most of the time. If you want to lose weight, you will find more success the more rigorously you follow these suggestions. However, my strongest suggestion is to experiment with these strategies, and only use those that you feel you can happily sustain long-term, ideally forever. If you can maintain your new way of eating happily long-term, you also have a much better chance to maintain a lower body weight long-term.
Give it a try, and let me know how it goes in the comments below.
If you have any questions about the specific strategies, I have made several blog posts to which I have linked throughout this article. You can also find all videos in a YouTube playlist entitled Keys to a Healthy Body Weight.
Lastly, let me say a heartfelt thank you to our patrons, who support our creation of this free blog post and the associated YouTube video. If you would like to support the creation of our free evidence-based content, please consider becoming a Nourished by Science Patron. Being a patron comes with some perks, such as being able to directly ask me questions about the blog posts and videos in live calls or a chat community.
Take care!
References
All references to the original literature can be found in these detailed blog posts about these strategies:
- Keys to a Healthy Body Weight: Avoid Liquid Calories
- Stop Dieting and Achieve Healthy Weight Loss by Maximizing Satiety per Calorie
- Keys to a Healthy Body Weight: Understanding the Triggers of Overeating
- Keys to a Healthy Body Weight: Being Mindful of Non-Hunger Eating
- Time-Restricted Eating: Effects on Body Weight, Fat Mass, Visceral Fat, and Liver Fat
- The Global Nutrition Transition (Why Nutrition Matters, Part B)
- Ultra-Processed Foods: The #1 Cause of Overeating and Weight Gain?
4 Responses
What should we feed our children
Hi Mari,
Same thing. I think that particularly for growing bodies, it is really important to have a diet that is mostly nutrient-dense whole foods. I try to minimize UPF and liquid calories for my kids, but of course, the societal pressures make it hard and I also don’t want them to develop an eating disorder or feel left out all of the time. It’s tricky. We try to make sure they get at least two solid meals at home every day.
Cheers
Mario
Once again, a great video and blog that does a fantastic job of summarizing a lot of research covered in your prior videos. Also, the slightly shorter length video help keeps the information from being overwhelming. I used this information as a checklist to verify that I have incorporated the information from your research into my diet. I’m pleased to say that I have, and in the last five months I have now lost about 40 pounds (193 to 152) and my weight has stabilized. The effect of this weight loss on my health has shown up in multiple tangible ways.
I have one comment and one question. First, my comment is that while I’m sure you are correct that counting calories is not a viable long-term strategy for most people, it was very helpful for me to count calories for about four months. I used an app called MyNetDiary. The app provides a lot of nutritional information about the foods being eaten. I found the use of the app very helpful in helping me learn which foods were more nutritious, and in managing portion sizes. About a month ago, I discontinued using the app but I am finding that the eating habits I developed during the four month period with the app have stuck with me so far.
My question relates to ultra processed foods. In general, I avoid most ultra processed foods (other than moderate amounts of a few types of protein, such as turkey sausage and small amounts of pork sausages) for all of the reasons you discuss. However, there is an exception. I am finding that a number of food manufacturers produce what appear to be highly nutritious ultra processed foods. In general, I am referring to foods that have a large amount of protein and/or fiber, and almost no sugar. Examples include Mission whole wheat “carb balance“ tortillas (60 cal, 18g of fiber, 5g protein, 0g sugar), Premier protein shakes (160 cal, 3g fiber, 30g protein, 1g sugar), and even “Protein Pretzels” by Crisp Power (110 cal, 6g fiber, 15g protein, 0g sugar). Have you run across any research on these types “synthetic” foods? Do you consider these an exception to the general rule of avoiding ultra processed foods, or is there some reason why you would still avoid these types of foods?
Thanks.
Hi Hugh,
Losing 40 pounds and maintaining that lower weight is amazing. Congrats! You are certainly doing many things right.
Regarding the use of food tracking, as I say in the video, I am not against it at all, and think it can be a valuable tool to learn and be more mindful. What I am against is to rely exclusively on calorie counting, thinking that only calorie intake matters and I can therefore just eat half a portion of my usual meals. That doesn’t work well in the long term.
Regarding UPF, the available data strongly suggest that the characteristics of UPF that cause us to overeat these foods include the following:
– High energy density (generally > 150 kcal per 100 g is what I would consider high, with > 250 kcal / 100 g very high)
– Low protein content (generally < 10% of total kcal) - Low fiber content (generally < 10 g per 1,000 kcal) - Hyperpalatable (combinations of fat and sugar, fat and salt, or refined carbs and salt that I will recognize because you will continue eating these foods mindlessly even if you are full) - Soft texture, i.e., they don't require much chewing - Liquid calories If you find UPF that don't meet these criteria, then it would be much less likely to trigger overeating. It is my hope that the food industry will offer more such foods that offer some of the benefits of UPF (convenience, affordability, long shelf life) while not being designed to trigger overeating. Now, that said, there is a second POTENTIAL concern with UPF, and that has to do with food additives and extracted components from foods that we don't usually consume. In the US in particular, there are > 10,000 different food additives, most of which have never been tested long-term in humans. So we are currently running a huge experiment and may find out in a few decades that some of these increase our risk of, say, neurodegenerative disease or autoimmune disease, though mechanisms we may currently not know about. What I can say already is that in clinical studies, diets free of food additives have been shown to bring inflammatory bowel diseases, such as Colitis Ulcerosa or Crohn’s Disease into remission in some children, and this may just be the beginning of our research into this. I personally try to minimize my consumption of UPF that contain all of these untested emulsifiers, food colors, artificial flavors, thickeners, etc., even though most of these are probably not harmful. We just don’t know yet which ones could be harmful, at least to some people.
I would also advise against certain plant protein isolates. I am, for example, concerned that some manufacturers add Fava Bean Protein to vegan protein powders. Beans contain the anti-nutrient lectin in large concentrations. These are usually destroyed if we prepare the beans in traditional ways, i.e., if we soak and cook them long enough. Using an uncooked bean protein is certainly something that humans have not previously been exposed to, and may hold some risks for at least some people.
Cheers
Mario