How to Lose Weight With Real Food & Keep It Off Dietless
The frustration with the excess weight is stressful enough.
When you’re told that “this diet is the solution,” yet it doesn’t work, and then “that diet is the best,” and it also doesn’t work, the stress is multiplied by two.
This roller coaster gets you nowhere and ends with you getting frustrated and thinking it’s not worth it or impossible.
We’ll show you the simple forgotten method people have used for centuries, which has nothing to do with starving yourself, mainly eating salad and whole wheat, or putting your body through war at the gym weekly.
You can lose weight by eating Real Food (steak, pizza, etc.).
But first, here is what you need to know before getting into how to lose weight with Real food.
What causes the weight to begin with:
The correct answer is "it's 1 of 2."
Either it has to do with food (what you eat, how much you eat, how you eat, etc.), or it has to do with your body (something that has happened to your body that drastically slows your ability to lose weight or makes your body gain weight too quickly).
Start by determining which of the two is the problem; you can only solve it if you know what caused it.
Having Realistic Goals
Anytime you feel down on this journey, remember, “Just like it took months of something happening for it to come on, it will take months of that thing unhappening before it comes off.”
How to ACTUALLY Lose the Weight
If your problem is caused by something that has happened to your body, we will discuss that at the end.
If it’s because of food, your answer is in 5 steps:
Make sure everything you eat is REAL FOOD.
Real Food is “all regular foods that would not disappear or change if electricity stopped tomorrow. If it takes more than a paragraph with multiple words you can’t understand to explain to you on a basic level what the food is and where it comes from, it’s not REAL.”
Ensure these foods are as high quality as you can get them.
This means food that has not been altered with synthetic chemicals (pesticides, unnatural herbicides, growth hormones, etc.).
Organic generally makes choosing easier because the food cannot have more than a small (almost negligible) amount of approved versions of these chemicals added to it if it’s to be labeled organic.
If you can’t get organic, find the second-best option.
Go super low on the sugar you eat and the foods that are sugar in your body’s eyes.
This doesn’t mean you should cut out sugar; make sure you lower it by a lot because too much unused sugar in your body gets stored as fat (not to mention a higher chance of diabetes).
You can check this here to know how and why this happens.
Before we go further, if you’ve ever read novels from the past (over 100 years ago when people, in general, were much thinner than today), you see when characters are referring to losing weight, they almost always speak about it in the context of sugar (desserts or sweeteners). They would avoid the sugar yet go home and eat their dinner of meat, chicken, bread, etc, without worry.
A simple way to remember what foods are sugar in your body’s eyes is “any food that is not fat, protein, or plants.”
The food mentioned here means real food and not non-real foods.
Your body needs energy to keep functioning, and sugar is the quickest way to get it.
You usually need quick energy if you’re doing or going through something intense. If you don't have quick energy at that moment, you won’t be able to continue it.
Everything you do needs energy. The more intense the activity (running, high-stress activities, etc.), the more energy your body has to give you and fast so you can keep going.
The body has two choices for providing energy: readily available sugar (which can quickly be turned into energy) or stored sugar or fat (which would take a bit more time to turn into energy, especially the fat, which takes the longest).
No one, even your body, likes to do extra work. This is why whenever there’s a choice between using available sugar or stored fat, it always goes for the easiest and quickest (which is sugar).
It will not start to burn the fat unless there is no sugar for it to use.
That’s the first thing to know. Here’s the second.
If you’re doing an extremely intense activity, you need energy asap. In this case, your body will first try a chance at getting sugar by signaling to you that you’re hungry. When you eat sugar, it uses that to fuel your activity. When the sugar runs out and you’re still doing the activity, it will signal you’re hungry again. You will get hunger pangs that other symptoms like shakiness, dizziness, and irritability can accompany. Remember this example; we'll explain why you get these symptoms later. Anyway, this whole situation puts you and your body in a problem.
The problem is that sugar doesn’t make you full for long; it also makes your energy crash after a short time. Because it does this, you keep going through a cycle of eating sugar, getting spiked in energy, then crashing, and then eating it again. This whole cycle makes sugar very easy to overeat. Even though your body finds it easier to turn into quick energy, excessive sugar is bad for it, and that’s why it leads to diabetes. Because you overeat it, when your body’s not using it, it stores it as a backup energy supply for emergencies in places like your liver and muscles. If it runs out of storage in the areas it has, it turns the sugar into fat.
Sidenote: When you’re not doing anything intense (e.g., doing an intense activity or going through something intense) and simply going about regular everyday activities, you only need a steady supply of energy, not quick bursts.
The only time your body will use this stored fat is when you’re not in immediate need of quick energy, and there is no or very little sugar available. This forces it to start breaking down the fat as a means of survival (because the whole point of stored fat is to use it in emergencies like starvation).
That’s why when a person is starving, their body uses up all the sugar they have, and then they start to slow down and weaken even though they’re not bone skinny yet. It’s because their body has to ensure they are not using up a lot of energy while it’s trying to get more energy by breaking down their fat.
Sidenote: Remember the example? You get those symptoms because your body is running on low energy, and it's trying to slow you down, so it has time to tap into your stored energy (your stored sugar and then fat) because these take more time to break down than sugar in your stomach.
For the starving person, once their fat is used completely, their body breaks down their muscles, and things keep going like this until there is no other way of getting energy, and they pass away.
This doesn’t mean if you want to lose weight, you should starve yourself because that’s unsustainable, and you will regain the weight (once you stop starving yourself, you will return to your old ways because you can’t starve yourself forever 🪦). It’s about putting your body in a slow “starving” state while still eating. The following two steps will show you how.
Eat more fat. No, it’s not bad for you and doesn’t make you gain weight simply from eating it.
Fat keeps you fuller for longer, so you won’t need to eat as often. High-quality fat also comes packed with nutrients, which your body uses to produce energy throughout the day.
Eat enough (fat, protein, and plants) to fuel your activities, and stop when you're full.
Fat gets digested slowly, gradually giving your body energy instead of the spike and fall sugar gives it.
This forces your body to rely only on the fat you've eaten for energy needs, and the moment you need a quick spike of energy, it can’t make you hungry right away since you’re still full from the fat you ate, so it starts to use any sugar it has stored. After it uses it up, it might send you small signals of hunger, but if you know how to ignore it, as we will talk about in the fifth step, it becomes desperate. It will have no choice but to start breaking down the stored fat to meet this quick energy need it has to deal with, but it will make you tired and weak in the meantime to prevent you from forcing yourself into collapse, so it has time to do this.
Eat when you’re hungry, and STOP when you’re full.
This last step seems simple, but it’s the one so many people worldwide have trouble with (because it’s so hard).
Many of us think we’re hungry every time there is a small amount of space in our stomach because we’re so used to being packed to the brim.
Sidenote: You don’t want to keep your body working on digesting food almost every hour of the day. Give your body time to relax and repair parts (and time to completely use the food you ate in peace 😂 ) by going longer between meals (i.e., fasting, but you can drink water, of course). This fasting, without doing intense activities, is one of the ways to get your body in the desperate state you want it to be in.
You must train yourself to recognize true hunger (it will take practice). In a nutshell, once you’re feeling low in energy and it’s starting to get difficult to continue doing whatever you’re doing, you need to refuel (eat). We’re not saying don’t eat until you’re about to collapse, but rather recognize when your body is in low energy mode.
It would be best if you stopped eating when you’re full, but ideally (train yourself to stop eating right when you’re about to feel full and not when you’re full because that causes less sluggishness, and you won’t feel so tired every time you eat).
What About Exercise?
You might be thinking, “What about exercise?” Let’s talk about it.
When it comes to losing weight (average weight gain, i.e., not from a health disorder), your goal is to get your body to use the stored fat for energy.
AND WE DO NOT MEAN CALORIES.
DON’T GET STRESSED COUNTING THEM.
Think of this energy like gasoline for your body; just like your car won’t run without it (unless it’s electric, which is still a form of energy), your body won’t run without energy.
Everything your body does needs energy, even to read this post.
All the things our bodies do in the background (stomach digesting, mind thinking, heart pumping, immune system immuning, eyes looking, etc.) need energy.
So, you can imagine how much fuel your body burns daily.
Once you understand that fat doesn’t make you fat, that if we eat excessive sugar, we gain more fat, and that our bodies will not start using the stored fat for energy until there is no immediate sugar, you will see that you don’t need to go to the gym two or three times a week to lose weight.
Unless we are not moving all day (like being a statue), we will lose weight by doing regular everyday activities.
If you understand all this, you will know that hitting the gym is unnecessary; regular, active, everyday activities are enough (walking around to get things done, work, cooking, showering, etc.).
Being active is good for your health in general because it has many benefits, including getting your blood pumping, maintaining mobility, lubricating your joints, strengthening your muscles, and lowering your stress.
Living a primarily inactive life is like leaving a parked car unused for years. The battery, fuel, tire, brake, seals, and gaskets will all have problems. Our bodies are similar. You have to move it regularly for things to keep working and not weaken to the point of damage (even if someone is paralyzed).
When you eat just enough to keep your back straight (meaning not until you’re full to the brim), leave large spaces between each meal, and are not doing high-intensity activities, you give your body time to use what you ate, use up any stored sugar, and tap into that stored energy (fat).
Instead of doing high-intensity activities, try moderate activities like going for long walks, biking here and there, playing mind-challenging games, etc. Combined with what was mentioned in the paragraph above, these give your body a higher need to break down the stored fat for energy throughout the day.
Over time, you will see how much weight you lose naturally.
If you try to exercise it off at the gym with intense workouts, etc., your body will use any quick energy (sugar) available. You will be hungry afterward and will eat, and your body will run on that food you just ate. This becomes a cycle; all the while, those intense exercises you’re doing make your joints work extensively for no reason (as though you’re going to war every day) and put your body under unnecessary high stress; plus, it’s not sustainable. When will it get a chance to tap into its stored energy?
As we age, our bodies degrade, which is why we get weaker and weaker. Why voluntarily expedite the process by putting your body under immense stress weekly for no reason?
Monitoring Progress
You recall when we said -remember, “Just like it took months of something happening for it to come on, it will take months of that thing unhappening before it comes off.”
Look for a good method and duration to check your progress (e.g., measuring your waistline or stepping on a scale).
Make sure this method and duration don’t make you obsessed. This would cause unnecessary stress and make you feel like there’s no progress when a lot is happening (like weighing yourself daily).
Think of when you live with a child for many years, and you could swear that they have not grown taller, yet one day you turn around, and they are nearing your height or are taller than you.
Don’t worry; we’re not saying it’ll take years, but keep going.
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Lifestyle and Behaviour Changes
Our bodies were not senselessly designed.
The real food you will eat to lose weight is not just for weight loss; it’s the food our bodies know.
After achieving your weight goal, you might not continue going low on sugar, but you will eat it moderately because you know the effects of having too much of it and how quickly and easy it is to overeat it.
As for eating foods that are not real, here is what you will feel about them as time goes on.
When you start only eating real foods, you will feel much better mentally and physically because your body starts to work with what it knows and is made to work with.
You will see how sick you feel when you return to non-real foods (which are usually lined with sugar since, without sugar, they would look nice but be inedible). Your craving for them will become much less because you’re no longer eating things in them that always make you crave more (sugar and other addictive things added to them).
You will almost start seeing these foods at the grocery stores and checkout stations as ‘things’ rather than ‘food.’
You will see that you eat much less because you no longer eat things meant to keep you full for only two hours, and then cause your energy to crash.
Sometimes, many minor health problems you thought you just had to deal with (like having an oily face) suddenly disappear because, without realizing it, you stopped eating the things that caused them.
We discuss all of this in detail in ‘Sweet Death.’
Overcoming Challenges
It’s no lie; it’ll be challenging in the beginning because so many of these non-real foods are made to be addictive, so staying away from them would be like fighting an addiction.
Still, people have done it, and you will get through it. To make it easier for you, we recommend not to stop eating chemical-filled foods cold turkey initially.
Keep eating them, but learn about what they do to your body while you still eat them. You’ll subconsciously create a feeling of disgust in your mind. You will naturally stay away from them afterward without much difficulty.
For example, buy the non-real food at the grocery store or elsewhere and have a friend read out to you the paragraph-long (or sometimes essay-long) ingredients list so, as you take every bite, you know exactly what you’re feeding your system and all the small ingredients you’re letting run through your blood.
As we mentioned, you’ll start to feel sick when you return to them once you only eat real foods.
Keeping it Off
When you reach your goal and choose to stay at that same weight or very near it for the long run, you can either continue to eat the way you used to when trying to lose weight or make sure most of what you eat is fat and some sugar but all REAL FOOD.
If you have achieved your weight goal and want to ensure that you don’t drastically gain much weight when it comes to food, you can continue to go low on sugar most of the time.
Whatever your goal is, ensure that sugar and things that turn into sugar fast (carbs) don’t always make up the bulk of your diet because your weight and general health will quickly go south.
Don’t stress or make it complicated.
The key here is REAL FOODS and moderate sugar.
A car can never run correctly on fake gas.
Speaking to a Professional
This paragraph is for people whose weight gain was caused by something that happened to their bodies.
If this is your issue, keep in mind everything we explained above, but still work with a professional to see how they can help you fix that body/health problem first. From there, you can see where you are from a health standpoint and how you can reverse the damage based on your circumstances.
FAQ
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Many people have this misconception, but we want you to experience the difference yourself.
Next time you shop for groceries, buy only REAL foods, as we discussed. Then, the following time, buy only non-real foods.
Compare the receipts and let us know in the comments.
Also, check out the post on Real Food, which simplifies this topic.
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Eating REAL food is not complicated, but unfortunately, a lot of money is involved with making and selling non-real foods, which is why they're everywhere. This makes it more of a hassle to go out and shop or eat without having to keep reading ingredients.
When your system is still addicted to these chemicals, eating out or attending social events can make them more tempting, but remember that anything of value is never easy. Take the necessary steps to call and find out, look at the menu before attending, find 'real food restaurants' in your area as alternatives, etc.
It shouldn't be this complicated to eat food, but until an alternative is made to make it easier for everyone to easily access Real food (whether eating out, traveling, or otherwise), it will be necessary to take some extra steps.
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It’s simple: as long as it’s REAL (without the things your body isn’t made to be processing), it’s okay.
When it comes to losing weight, be careful of the added sugars in many, if not most, juices. On your weight loss journey, you want to have it on very rare occasions only (or not at all if you want to be strict). Remember that sugar loves to give weight generously.
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Conclusion
It’s not complicated, as you can see. No salads every day, whole wheat pasta, or gym memberships. Eat real food and live a real life. That’s it.
Take the Next Step: Some of us have more than the weight holding us back. We have food habits we think are good for us that either damage our health or waste our time. Check out the 10 Common Food Myths Anyone Who Eats Should Know next.
Share Your Experience: How is your weight loss journey going?
Stay Connected: To know more about how changing your food can change your life, sign up for the M2oo Newsletter, which delivers Real Food and Real Health information straight to your inbox.
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