Everything You Need to Know About Dieting [Ultimate Guide]

Losing weight is not easy. Especially today – there is A LOT of misinformation, weird trends, and fake tricks out there. It can be extremely discouraging to cipher through the information trying to find out what works and what doesn’t.

As somebody who lost over 30 lbs last year, got into the best shape of my life, is a certified personal trainer, and now has six-pack abs, I am going to go over everything you need to know diet-wise to trim down to your ideal weight.

Let’s get started!

1. Important Dieting Definitions
   • Calories
   • Calories In vs. Calories Out
   • Calorie Deficit
   • Calorie Surplus
   • Weight
     • Fat
     • Muscle
     • Water
2. Macronutrients
   • Protein
     • How much protein is enough?
     • Healthy Protein Foods
   • Fats
     • How much of my diet should include fats?
     • Healthy foods containing fats
   • Carbohydrates
     • How many carbs should I eat?
     • Healthy foods containing carbohydrates
   • Fiber
3. How to Read A Nutrition Label
4. Counting Calories
   • How to Calculate Your Calories
   • The Sustainable Calorie Counting Method
   • How to Count Calories
   • Tips on Counting Calories
5. What Diet Should I Do?
   • Popular Diets
   • High-Volume Diet
     • Low-Calorie Foods
6. What foods should I eat?
   • Healthy food examples
7. What to Drink on a Diet
8. Can I drink alcohol when dieting?
9. Conclusion

Important Dieting Definitions

Luckily, you don’t need to understand the science behind everything you are doing to do it successfully and see actionable results.

In fact, we are only going to discuss the absolute fundamentals that you do need to know.

Here are some key terms you should understand that will help give you clarity around weight loss, starting with calories.

Calories

Most of us know that calories are associated with food. Every food has a certain amount of calories your body consumes when you eat that food. Consuming too many calories results in weight gain while consuming not enough calories results in weight loss.

Now, think about why we eat food. In today’s world where food options are endless and we can have anything we crave delivered to our doorstep in 20 minutes, we often forget the true purpose of food.

Yes, food is enjoyable.

But really, food is fuel for our body.

Food gives us ENERGY. Anyone who has gone an extended period of time without eating knows that you will begin to feel sluggish and lethargic without it.

So ultimately, calories are a unit of energy, and consuming calories via food gives us energy.

Calories In vs. Calories Out

We consume calories through food, but we also burn calories throughout the day. This can be from physical activity (walking, running, weightlifting, playing sports); or from just being alive basically – when you blink, tap your foot, or fidget in your seat. This is why inactive people still need food to survive.

Ultimately, if you want to lose weight you need to have fewer calories in (eating food) than calories out (physical activity).

Calorie Deficit

The act of consuming fewer calories than you burn is known as a calorie deficit. This is the scientifically proven way to get the number on the scale to go down. You need to consistently be at a calorie deficit to lose weight. We’ll go into deeper detail about how to accomplish this.

(Many things in fitness can be disputed and are unknown, but not this. If somebody disagrees with this, they are wrong. They probably inaccurately counted calories or have their own agenda to peddle.)

Calorie Surplus

The act of consuming more calories than you burn is known as a calorie surplus.

This is how you gain weight.

There can be benefits to doing this but we won’t be getting into that in this article.

Weight

For simplicity, I have been saying weight loss, but the truth is you don’t necessarily want to lose weight…you want to lose fat.

See, your weight is made up of four main components – muscle, bones, water, and fat.

Fat

What we want is to lose FAT. Fat is the unattractive part that covers up your six-pack abs and prevents you from having a shredded, muscular, or lean look. Eliminating excess fat from our bodies will make us healthy and look great.

Muscle

Muscle is what makes somebody look, well muscular. Having more muscle has numerous benefits. The best way to gain muscle is by performing resistance training.

For dieting purposes, what is important to know is that you want to attempt to at least maintain, if not gain, muscle when attempting to lose weight.

If your weight on the scale goes down but you are losing muscle, you will most likely still not be pleased with how your physique looks. This is sometimes known as “skinny fat.”

There are 2 key things needed to ensure that we do not lose muscle when we are in a calorie deficit trying to lose fat:

• Protein intake

Make sure you have a sufficient amount of protein per day. We’ll discuss this more later on.

• Rate of weight loss

The goal should be to lose about 0.5% – 1% of your weight per week. Anything faster than this can result in muscle loss.

For extremely overweight individuals it is a little different. They will likely lose fat quicker during the beginning of their diet.

Also note that since muscle makes up a portion of your weight, it is possible for the number on the scale to stay the same or even increase while simultaneously losing fat. This is why the number on the scale is an indicator you are headed in the right direction, but not the only thing that matters.

Taking progress pictures or even measuring body parts like your waist circumference can also be beneficial.

Water

Have you ever weighed yourself and in the matter of one day you lost/gained 3-5lbs? Don’t worry, that is completely normal! That is most likely water weight. There are many reasons that your body stores water, but just know that extreme day-to-day shifts in weight mostly come from water weight and they do not really mean anything in the big picture of things.

For example, after a night of drinking, I may be heavily dehydrated and my weight on the scale can go down by as much as 5 lbs.

This is why daily weight does not matter. Rather, you want to weigh yourself daily but only pay attention to your weekly averages.

How to Properly Weigh Yourself

In the example above, the person lost .7 lbs from week 1 to week 2. However, if they weighed themselves only once a week, they could think they gained or lost weight. A person who weighed herself only on Monday would think she lost 2 lbs. If that person weighed herself only on Tuesday, she would think she actually gained weight!

Weighing yourself daily but not letting the scale number affect you is not easy, but it is the most accurate way to ensure you are on the right track.

How to Read A Nutrition Label

In order to keep track of your food intake, calories, and macros you need to understand how to read a nutrition label. The below image shows the main things you want to pay attention to when reading a nutrition label:

• Serving size
• Calories
• Fat
• Carbohydrates
• Protein
• Fiber

Counting Calories

So far we know:

• that we want to consume fewer calories than we burn
• that we don’t want to lose fat, not weight
• about macronutrients
• how to read a nutrition label

So, what do we do with this information?

Well, if losing weight is about calories in vs. calories out, then it makes sense that we want to know how many calories in and how many calories out we have, right?

I am a big fan of counting calories. This can be extremely overwhelming for people who have never done it before, but my method will make it as simple and sustainable as possible.

Some people are against counting calories because they think it will give you an unhealthy relationship with food. I can say from my personal experience that counting calories actually heavily improved my relationship with food as I became far more knowledgeable about what I am putting into my body.

“Ignore people who say counting calories will give you an eating disorder. That’s like saying drinking alcohol will make you an alcoholic. It can, but it probably won’t.” –Mike Matthews

If you already have an existing eating disorder, then counting calories may not be right for you and please consult with your doctor.

To start counting calories you will need:

1. A food scale
2. A free calorie tracking app

That’s it!

How to Calculate Your Calories

First of all, you need to know what your maintenance calories are. We defined a calorie deficit and calorie surplus earlier, and maintenance calories are right in the middle of that.

Maintenance Calories– how many calories you need to eat every day to maintain your current weight.

There is no surefire way to know exactly what your maintenance calories are, so here is what I suggest:

1. Go on google and type “calorie calculator”
2. Pick 3 of the top results and input your stats into all 3 (should take only a few minutes)
3. Take the average of all 3 and use that number (round to the nearest hundred for simplicity)
4. Monitor your weight for 1-2 weeks. If you are losing weight, your maintenance calories will be slightly higher. If you are gaining weight, they will be slightly lower.

Now that you know what your maintenance calories are – let’s say it’s 2,500 calories per day to maintain your weight – we are going to subtract 500 calories from that number and voila you have a calorie deficit.

The reason we are subtracting 500 calories is that 1lb weighs about 3,500 calories and 500 x 7(days per week) = 3,500. So, you will lose about 1lb per week, which is a healthy amount for most people.

The Sustainable Calorie Counting Method

Now, counting calories can get a little tricky, but if you follow my method it should be very sustainable.

Some people will tell you in addition to counting calories you also need to count your macronutrients (also known as macros) – which are protein, carbohydrates, and fats.

The problem is going from counting nothing to 4 things at once is extremely difficult. Here is my advice:

Start with just counting your calories.

Don’t worry about the other stuff – yet. Ultimately, if we want to lose fat, calories are the most important thing.

There are many free calorie-tracking apps you can use to log the food you are eating. The most popular is myfitnesspal. Whichever calorie-counting app you decide to go with, just make sure to double-check the food inputs with the nutrition label as there can sometimes be errors.

Now, once you count calories for at least a few weeks, then you can start to count your protein intake as well. ONLY do this once you feel 100% comfortable counting calories. There is no rush, it could take months and that’s totally fine. Once you feel comfortable counting both your calories and protein, then you can count your carbs. Once you feel comfortable with all 3, then count your fats.

This way you are slowly easing your way into calorie counting and the process won’t be overwhelming.

How to Count Calories

Now that we understand how to read a nutrition label, we can count calories.

Say we want to count the food from the nutrition label. This would be the step-by-step process for counting calories:

1. Get out your food scale, place the plate on top of it, and turn it on.
2. Add the food on your scale until it gets to your desired serving size.
3. Go to your calorie tracking app and enter the food. On most apps, you can look up the food by name and brand.
4. Once you find it, make sure that the calories and macronutrients match your nutrition label.
5. Enter the food into the app.

It’s that easy!

Tips on Counting Calories

Here are some things that can trip you up when counting calories:

• For meats (chicken, pork, steak, fish) the nutrition facts listed are uncooked. The weight of meat shrinks once it is cooked. So, if your chicken nutrition label serving size is 4 oz., that is 4 oz. of uncooked chicken. For accuracy, you should weigh the meat when it is uncooked. If you decide to weigh it after it is cooked, a good rule of thumb is to add 25%. So you would enter 4 oz. of cooked chicken as 5 oz. on your calorie tracking app.

• If the serving size is 55 grams and you give yourself 75 grams, you would enter that as 1.36 servings. (55/55 = 1 full serving. The remaining 20 grams (75 minus 55), would be 20 / 75 = .3636
  
  
• Seasonings like salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, etc. are typically zero calories and you do not need to account for them.
  
  
• If you take vitamins every day that contain calories, you do not need to account for them.
  
  
• It is very easy to inaccurately count calories by not tracking everything. For example, a spoonful of untracked peanut butter can add 200-500 calories. Unmeasured olive oil can add a few hundred as well. Just one of these small oversights can take you out of a calorie deficit for the day.

What Diet Should I Do?

I haven’t mentioned anything about actual diets yet. This is for a good reason.

Most people, when they decide to start losing weight they start here. Fad diets, miracle diets, etc. have always been popular. This is because most people think – or hope – there is some kind of magic trick you need to do to lose weight.

Here’s the truth:

All diets are just tools that can help you achieve your weight loss.

What does this mean? Well, we already established that the key to losing weight is calories in vs. calories out. Your body needs to consistently burn more calories than it consumes.

So in reality, it doesn’t matter what diet you are doing to lose weight. I like to use the example that technically, you can eat Mcdonald’s every single day and still lose weight. Sure, you will feel terrible and severely limit the rest of your food intake, but it’s possible.

What DOES matter is finding what works for you as everybody is different. The most important thing with your diet is that it is SUSTAINABLE.

A sustainable diet means that it is something you can do long-term. 1,200 calorie diets are growing in popularity, especially among women, but they aren’t really sustainable (or particularly healthy depending on the person). If you pick a diet that helps you lose weight but is not sustainable, more than likely you will fall back into your old habits and gain the weight back.

Popular Types of Diets

Here are some current popular diets. Remember though, none of these are magical, they are just tools that help aid your fat loss:

1. Keto Diet – Focuses on high fats (~80% of your diet), low to moderate protein, and low carbs. (go to the Macronutrients section for more detail on fats, proteins, and carbs).
2. Paleo Diet – Focused on eating mainly meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, and nuts.
3. Intermittent Fasting – Eating all your meals and necessary calories in a specific timeframe. Typically it is 16 hour fasting (including sleep) and an 8 hour eating window.
4. OMAD – One Meal A Day. This is another version of intermittent fasting, where you eat all your calories for the day in a single meal.
5. Low Carb Diet – This is where most of your macronutrients come from protein and fats, and very little comes from carbs. Keto is a type of low-carb diet.
6. IIFYM – If It Fits Your Macros. A diet where you have certain macronutrient targets and you can eat whatever you want as long as you hit your desired macros.

If any of these sound interesting to you, there is nothing wrong with giving them a try! Some people’s bodies respond very well to certain diets while others do not. For example, some individuals do not digest carbs well and do great on low-carb diets while others need carbs to fuel them and would respond poorly.

High-Volume Diet

I am also going to add in another type of diet that I don’t hear about often, but it is what I used and what worked for me. I like to call this a high-volume diet.

If you are like me and love to eat a lot of food, this might be the diet for you.

A high-volume diet is where you eat a lot of low-calorie foods. So, you eat more while consuming fewer calories.

Remember, your body does not get full by the amount of calories you eat, it gets full by the amount of volume you eat, so this is a great way to diet without being hungry.

Examples of some low-calorie foods include:

• Vegetables (Broccoli, green beans, and spinach are some great choices)
• Chicken breast
• Cauliflower rice
• Eggs
• Egg whites
• Carb Balance Mission Tortillas (I really do love these)

Again, you can try out some of these different diets and see what works for you, or none at all. The most important thing still is and always will be calories in vs. calories out, or burning more calories than you consume.

What foods should I eat?

The answer to the question “What food should I eat?” depends again on a lot of individual factors and there is no one-hat-fits-all answer. 

The simple answer is healthy foods.

The other answer is foods you enjoy.

Remember, the goal of losing weight is to be healthy! But we want fat loss to be sustainable so you don’t gain it back. To be sustainable, you need to do things you mostly enjoy.

Examples of healthy foods to eat:

• Chicken
• Fish
• Eggs
• Vegetables
• Fruits
• Avocados
• Olive oils
• Nuts
• Beans
• Rice

You might not like broccoli but maybe you like green beans. Maybe you don’t like apples but you love pears. If brown rice and black beans don’t do it for you, have white rice and red kidney beans.

Find what works for you and you’ll have created a sustainable, healthy, and enjoyable diet.

What to drink on a diet

One very important thing to note when dieting is that you do not want to drink your calories. 

I repeat – DO NOT DRINK YOUR CALORIES!

When we are in a calorie deficit we want to be strategic about the calories we are consuming.

Drinks are not filling. This makes it extremely difficult to lose weight.

For example:

• 8oz of Simply Lemonade is 120 calories 
• 8oz of Tropicana Fruit Punch is 110 calories.
  (Not to mention the 20+ grams of added sugars.)

Just an 8 oz glass with each meal can add 250 – 500 calories or more. For a 2,000 calorie diet, that can be 25% of your total calories which is a significant amount to sacrifice for sugary drinks.

Make sure your drinks have zero calories. Some options here are:

1. Water
2. Tea
3. Coffee
4. “Diet” drinks

Water should be what you are drinking most, if not all, of the time. It’s great for you and will keep you hydrated throughout the day.

Coffee and tea are fine choices, just make sure to not go crazy with additives that include calories like milk, cream, and sugar.

I will not promote diet drinks as they are not necessarily healthy, but they can be an effective tool to lose weight. One can of coke is 140 calories vs. a can of diet coke is 0 calories. This makes a big difference when every calorie counts.

However, a better zero-calorie drink option is Zevia. A can of zevia has about 4-6 ingredients, has caffeine and caffeine-free options, and comes from stevia leaves. It is 0 calories.

Can I drink alcohol when dieting?

I’m not going to tell you not to drink, but if you are committed to losing weight you will want to cut back on alcohol. It has no benefits for your body and is basically “empty” calories.

Some realistic ways to cut back on drinking alcohol:

1. Only drink socially
2. Only drink on weekends
3. Don’t keep alcohol in the house
4. Plan ahead – account for it in your calories
5. Limit yourself to 1-2 drinks when you do drink
6. Limit yourself to drinking 1-2 times per month

Conclusion

Losing weight isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to be complicated either. You should now have all the information you need related to your diet to lose weight in a healthy and sustainable way.

Here are the main takeaways:

1. Be in a calorie deficit
2. Use the sustainable calorie counting method
3. Eat enough protein
4. Lose 0.5% – 1% of your weight per week
5. Find a diet that works for you
6. Try to eat mostly healthy foods
7. Do not drink your calories
8. Stay away from alcohol when possible

Here is what is not true about dieting and weight loss:

1. Calories don’t matter
2. Carbs are bad for you
3. Sugar alone makes you fat
4. A certain diet is universally better than others
5. Extreme/fad diets will give you sustainable results

Any questions, anything I missed, or anything that you want me to expand on? Want to share your own weight loss journey? Leave a comment or reach out to me directly at eric@ericgolban.com!

Best,

Eric

Disclaimer
I am not a doctor. Please consult your doctor, especially if you have any medical conditions as the information in this article may be different for you. I am not a dietician and I am currently in the process of becoming a certified personal trainer. I highly encourage anyone trying to lose weight and develop a healthy lifestyle to work with both a dietician and personal trainer if possible.