The One (And Only) Thing That Matters If You Are Trying To Lose Weight

If you’ve looked for inspiration to lose a little weight or get healthier lately, what you’ve probably found is a bunch of Instagram accounts you can follow that are “fitness” or weight loss related.

In reality these are actually just an excuse for hot people to post selfies and pretend like they’re gurus with faux inspirational quotes.

No thanks!

If you want to lose weight, you don’t need to do cross fit or squat or even work out at all.

You can lose weight by making just one change in your diet.

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All you need to do is make sure the calories you eat are less than the calories your body spends each day just to keep you alive.

You can eat cake and still lose weight if you eat less than your calorie limit.

Not convinced? Here’s a guy who lost 27lbs eating only Twinkies for 10 weeks straight.

There’s also this guy, who lost 56lbs only eating at McDonald’s for six months.

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Really!

Here’s how you can figure out how many calories your body burns each day just by being alive. It’s called your TDEE or “total daily energy expenditure.”

Next, just track how many calories you eat with a calorie tracker like My Fitness Pal.

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All you have to do is keep your My Fitness Pal number under your TDEE, and voila! Weight loss!

MFP will even tell you how many calories you have left every day.

And for extra motivation, you can find out how fast or slow your progress is because MFP calculates where you’ll be in 5 weeks if every day was like today.

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That’s it. The whole big weight lost secret. Calories in, calories out.

It makes weight loss a lot less intimidating to know you just have to chip away at it a little bit each day. Small wins help keep you motivated to achieve big goals, rather than trying to tackle a big thing all by itself.

Plus, you don’t have to deny yourself “bad” foods. You can eat whatever you want as long as you teach yourself to eat it in moderation.

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And chances are, when you log your calories you’ll become more intentional about choosing foods that have a good “bang for your buck” (fill you up without blowing your calorie budget on one item) most of the time.

And budgeting some calories to still enjoy the foods you love. (Like french fries!)

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Ella Ceron

That’s just fine! That’s how weight loss becomes a sustainable lifestyle — because it’s something you can live with day in and day out. Thought Catalog Logo Mark


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Erin Cossetta

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