Stop overthinking your weight loss nutrition. Here are a few actionable tips to simplify your fat loss diet and start losing weight for good.

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When you start a fat loss journey, it’s easy to buy into the need to go all in, rush the process and try to lose the weight as quickly as possible. That’s exactly what the marketers of the billion dollar diet industry want you to do; you’re playing into their hands.

As a result of buying into what they’re selling, it’s common to get sucked into the idea of dramatic rapid progress. That’s what they show on the covers after all.

So you’ve got a vacation or a wedding or whatever special occasion coming up and you want to look fantastic. And now you’re sold on this new diet because “Kathy lost 10 pounds in three minutes by drinking this juice.”

But in chasing these oftentimes unrealistic goals, you’ve likely thrown all measured sustainability out the window so you can “Suck it up and just see it through.”

This is the wrong way to approach a fat loss diet.

Look, dieting sucks.

This is not some breaking news that I just dropped for you here, either.

It’s long and boring and you’ll be hungry. You know this. But, despite knowing it, you’re still making it way harder on yourself than you need.

In today’s article, we’re going to talk about a few simple ways to simplify your fat loss diet. We’ll tackle a few quick and actionable strategies to make this work better (and easier) for you so you can stick to it.

Sustainability and consistency are the key to fat loss victory. This article will show you how to make both a reality.

Let’s get into it.

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Slow and steady wins the fat loss race

The first step to simplify your fat loss diet is to understand what actual realistic progress looks like so you can manage your own expectations. 

Losing 30 pounds in 30 days is not realistic.

It’s likely not even very healthy and it’s certainly not sustainable, either.

Instead, your goal is to set a pace to where you can lose about 0.5 to 1.0 percent of your weight per week on average.

That can look like anything from 0.5 to 2.0 pounds per week. The leaner you are, the slower the rate of fat loss will be, that’s just the nature of the game.

Likewise, if you have more room to lose weight, it should come off in chunks to start before eventually leveling out.

In addition to tracking weight on a regular basis, you should also be collecting all of the relevant data for measuring fat loss progress. Because weight doesn’t tell the whole story. More on that with this comprehensive guide to tracking your fat loss progress.

Remember, the goal is to eat as much food as possible and still see progress. Which is why I always preach about setting a moderate calorie deficit target and not punishing yourself with random 1200 calorie diets. 

Instead of getting suckered into some crazy (and ineffective) rapid fat loss solution that promises a flat tummy and washboard abs in just 6-8 weeks, focus on the actual path to victory.

One that is sustainable and won’t leave you feeling miserable and begging for this diet to end so you can look at a carb again without sweating bullets.

Of course, no matter the approach to your fat loss journey, it will come down to the core tenets:

Calorie deficit. Calorie deficit. Calorie deficit.

If you aren’t losing weight, it’s because you are not in a calorie deficit. It ain’t the carbs or the gluten or your hormones, you’re just eating too much. So find a calorie deficit and get to work.

Get up and move.

You should be strength training a few times per week. But at minimum, just walk … a lot. It’s the safest, easiest form of movement and is oftentimes the most underrated and overlooked.

Eat more protein.

Struggling to see some results? Simply upping your daily protein can be the answer for most people. It fills you up and powers lean muscle tissue. A perfect 1-2 punch of fat loss awesome sauce.

Eat your fruits and veggies.

Whole, natural, “unprocessed” foods should make up the majority of your diet. 

Not because they contain magical fat loss properties. But because whole foods will fill you up easier and help you feel and perform better.

Sleep better.

Our bodies recover when we sleep. Getting regular and quality rest will prevent cravings and help keep you on point throughout your stressful day.

You know these things already, though. It’s executing on them, even when they seem pretty easy, that is the difficult part. So, let’s find a few ways to simplify this eating situation.

It begins with taking inventory

Not with your environment, but with your nutrition.

Before you even get started losing weight, you need to earn the right to lose weight. Because if you don’t even have a clue about protein versus starchy carbs versus fruits and veggies, it’s going to be a long and tough road.

Begin by simply taking the next two weeks and write down every single bite of food that enters your mouth.

Log all of your meals. Even on weekends, even on holidays, even when you don’t feel like it. 

Log every bite of food, too. Including that bite of the pasta you’re making or the two chips you stole off of your kids’ plate.

Your goal in these initial weeks is not to lose weight.

The goal is to try and maintain your current weight as best as possible and get an understanding of how much you’re eating.

From there, it’ll be much easier to figure out how much food we need to remove from your day to day in order to create that calorie deficit.

As you’re creating your food log, be sure to make note of the following when you eat:

• Were you stressed out?
• Short on time so you had to eat your protein bar in the car on the way to the office?
• Did you eat enough to satisfy your hunger?
• How hungry were you when you started the meal on a scale of one to five (with five being ready to eat your mother-in-law’s bland meatloaf)?

All of this data will come in handy.

In fact, after that two to three week period is up, you will then sit down and review what you’ve done. Judge every bite of food. Be super critical of yourself and your choices. Then identify areas where you think you could improve.

The next step is to then do your best to figure out just how much food and how many calories you were consuming.

From here, we have a baseline. We have data and we can analyze this stuff to find room for improvement.

And that’s exactly what you’ll do. 

You’ll find one small thing to improve and focus on that for the next two weeks. Continue logging your meals and holding yourself accountable to that new one small habit.

For most people, that small habit should be a commitment to adding a portion of protein to each meal.

The next couple of weeks, you can commit to swapping out a snack for a piece of fruit. 

Your third habit can look like adding more veggies to each meal.

Don’t try to go super creative with your options just yet. Stick to my 3 x 3 approach to meal planning by picking a few protein sources, carbs and vegetables and get familiar with those.

Then you can eventually branch out and try some newer options.

Eliminate the decision fatigue and potential for overwhelm by keeping things simple at first.

This is how you build routine.

Now let’s say you’ve mastered this part of the journey and you’re ready to advance to the next level to really simplify your fat loss diet.

You’ve been food-logging and seeing progress, but you’re ready to really dive into that calorie deficit. 

We can make things simple here, too.

Variety is the spice of life. I totally get that. And when it comes to food, it can be important to have options for what you eat to avoid some of the boredom that kicks in during the dieting phase.

However, I advise starting things slow and opting for the same rotation of meals if you are just getting started on your weight loss journey.

Let’s say you’ve just utilized calculated your calorie deficit.

As a result, you’ve figured out that in order to lose weight, you’ll need to hit 1500 calories per day and eat about 110 grams of protein.

You’ve decided not to track all of your macros at first and will just go with a more relaxed approach of calories and protein.

It won’t matter how you compose your fats or carbs as long as total calories of 1500 and total protein of 110 grams are met on a consistent basis. Got it? Awesome.

So, what does that look like?

Now, it’s up to you to do a little bit of work to build out a little meal plan for yourself.

Take a good 20 to 30 minutes to sit down with Google, or a calculator, or just your handy food/calorie tracking app, like MyFitnessPal. Your goal is to come up with a handful of meal options to make 1500 calories and 110 grams of protein work for you.

Too often, you’ve likely grabbed some handy equation off of the internet and then randomly punched calories and food into your app as the day unfolded, trying hard to figure out how to fit square pegs into round holes as you frustratingly aim to solve the Macro Tetris of making everything fit as you go along.

Stop that. Stop that now.

Instead, your goal is to plan ahead. And you’ll plan ahead by creating a list of foods that work for you, learning their calorie and protein counts and then saving them and keeping them handy so you can return to them throughout your week.

Let’s put this into action.

Mikey is embarking on a fat loss journey for the first time.

He’s already gone through his little three week period of logging all of his food and realizes that he needs to up his protein game a bit, but otherwise, Mikey believes he’s ready to dive into this calorie deficit thing.

Instead of just downloading MyFitnessPal and randomly logging food throughout the day in hopes of magically making his macros fit in a perfect box, Mikey is smart.

Mikey’s read the musings of his favorite neighborhood fat loss coach (that’s me) and he’s calculated his deficit target to a nice 1800 calories per day.

A things that Mikey is considering:

• He’s got to hit 120 grams of protein per day (which is 480 calories, because one gram of protein = four calories).
• Mikey likes to eat three meals per day. 
• Sticking to some staple meals for now will be his friend until he gets comfortable with creativity.

Mikey takes a few minutes to do some math.

Hitting your calories takes top priority. So, everything must add up to about 1800 calories at the end of the day.

Take those 1800 calories and split them up into three meals at 600 calories each.

It’s important to hit that protein goal of 120 grams per day, which divides nicely into 40 grams of protein per meal (or 160 calories).

That leaves 440 calories for each meal that can be divided into carbs and fats.

Mikey will sit down and create a few meals that come out to about 600 calories each, including 40 grams of protein while dividing up some carbs and fats however he’d prefer.

Start small and slowly build up so you can simplify your fat loss diet on your own

The goal is not to create a 100-page recipe book of Mikey-approved 600-calorie tasty meals for his fat loss journey.

Instead, the goal is to create one breakfast, one lunch and one dinner and then slowly build from there.

In doing so, it provides a little more freedom from having to constantly log and track foods.

You know the calorie amounts of the meals you’ve prepared inside and out. And then you can just plug and play and still hit your calories and macros every day without thinking about.

You’ve just simplified your nutrition so you can worry about other things throughout your day and remove the constant decision fatigue that can lead to confusion and eventual failure.

Sounds too good? Too easy to execute?

Of course it does, because you’ve been led to believe that this should be hard and restrictive and punishing on your way to unrealistic progress. 

Stop that cycle now. Avoid overthinking things. Just get to work with smaller and more measurable and sustainable strategies like this one.

Let me help you simplify your fat loss diet … 

I’m here to help you out. 

If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “Simplify your fat loss diet” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.

Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

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