Can you lose weight without counting calories? The answer is often YES

Inside: Can you lose weight without counting calories? You don’t have to count them, but you do have to cut them. Fortunately, you have lots of ways to go about that.

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The master cleanse diet has followers drinking a concoction of lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper – all day long.

If you follow keto, you give up multiple food groups because milk, grains, starchy vegetables, beans, lentils, and fruits all contain villainous carbohydrates.

The questionable body reset diet starts with 5 days of white smoothies for breakfast, red smoothies for lunch, and green ones for dinner.

What do these and other extreme diets have in common? They limit your choices.

And they get a lot of play on social media. Take Kevin Maginnis, the 57-year-old man from Tennessee who’s on a McDonald’s only diet for 100 days. Just a bit past the halfway mark, he announced a 40-pound weight loss! Impressive, for sure.

Can you lose weight without counting calories?

Maginnis did. He lost 40 pounds without counting calories.

But he definitely cut them.

Generally, the more restrictive the diet, the fewer calories a person eats. If ultra-restrictive diets didn’t cut calories, people wouldn’t lose weight on them. Most extreme diets do help people lose weight. Why? Precisely because they are so extreme.

Why does the McDonald’s only diet work?

Maginnis’ special sauce is eating only half portions and limiting his options, which hugely cuts his calorie intake.

He’s not to first to lose weight eating only McDonald’s food. High school science teacher John Cisna lost 56 pounds in 6 months with (almost) nothing but food from McDonald’s. He limited his choices, but counted his calories with a goal of eating no more than 2,000 per day.

Cisna proved that calories count when it comes to weight loss.

Maginnis’ success also comes down to cutting calories, but he did it without a calculator. No counting for Maginnis. He would have lost 40 pounds eating a similar amount of calories whether he limited his choices to McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, or fancy French food. The McDonald’s magic was limiting Maginnis’ choices.

Like Maginnis, you can lose weight without counting calories.

What’s wrong with restricted diets?

If they help people lose weight, what’s the problem?

Sure, you can order salads, unsweetened iced tea, and a handful of other healthy foods at McDonald’s, but an all-McDonald’s diet is no healthy way to live. If you ate all your meals and snacks at McDonald’s for 100 days, you could easily meet your protein needs, but what about fiber, vitamins, minerals, and the throng of health-boosting phytonutrients in our huge assortment of plant foods? You’d cut key disease-fighting compounds while cutting calories.

Weight loss doesn’t require a healthy diet, but good health does.

Check out 15 tips to eat healthfully without counting a darn thing.

3 smart strategies you can take from fad diets

Super strict diets help people lose weight because they’re super strict. Dieters know the rules. They don’t have to make nearly as many decisions every day as they would have to if following a less restricted eating plan.

If your diet calls for a white smoothie at breakfast or nothing but McDonald’s food, your brain doesn’t get tired and annoyed trying to figure out what to eat.

But super strict diets eventually fail for the same reason. They’re too strict. Little flexibility means fewer options for fun, spontaneity, or shortcuts in a hectic day. And the dieter, who once loved the exactness of the diet plan, simply can’t stand the feeling of being in food jail for one more day.

And the diet ends.

So how can you get the best of both worlds – losing weight without counting calories and without landing in food jail? Try these 3 strategies that help fad diets work – but only temporarily. With your own spin, you can make them work for the long haul.

#1: Change your food environment

Look around you. If you’re in a room with lots of chocolate chip cookies, you’re more apt to eat cookies. But if instead of cookies, you see a bowl of fruit, your next snack is more likely to be crunchy and juicy than chewy and chocolatey.

• Put healthy food in sight and keep tempting foods out of sight. Use opaque containers, and store treat foods in a high cabinet or buried deep within the pantry.
• Be prepared with baggies of cherries or cherry tomatoes to make grabbing a wholesome snack as easy as grabbing chips or crackers.
• Schedule some time this week to make these and other changes. Look around your kitchen, office, car, and other places you routinely spend time. Clear out and clean up, so you have the perfect spaces to make healthy eating the easier choice.

#2: Limit your menu options

Whether it’s red smoothies, McDonald’s food or a 7-day pre-printed diet menu you found on the internet, when you limit your choices, it’s easier to follow a diet plan (short-term). Your brain loves the break from having to make so many decisions. Make this hack work for you in a more reasonable, less rigid way.

• Plan your meals for 3 or more days in advance.
• Create a list of healthy food options at your favorite fast food restaurants or other restaurants. Take time now, to write down at least 3 choices from at least 4 places. Make this your personal menu. When ordering, don’t look at the restaurant’s full menu. Instead rely on your short personalized list, in which you’ve already limited your choices.
• Write a list of Stay on Track Snacks. Again to limit your options, write down a handful of healthy snacks to choose from. Make them things you like and can keep on hand.

#3: Make it convenient

Healthy eating doesn’t mean everything is made from scratch. In fact, you can eat healthfully even if you have just a short time to put your meals together. I shrink my meal-prep time with healthy convenience foods.

What’s the difference between most fad diets and a DIY healthy eating plan?

A fad plan has the rules and food options pre-planned for you.

In a do-it-yourself eating plan, you consider your life and preferences before you do the pre-planning. Your DIY plan will be flexible, tasty, reasonable, long-lasting, and yours!