If you’re reading and paying any sort of attention, then you’ve read by now that a calorie deficit is where you’re looking to go if you want to drop weight. You cant outwork a bad diet. This means that while exercise is important and should be done in tandem to, you cant and shouldnt ignore your diet. Increasing your caloric expenditures by activity alone is much more difficult than it is to alter the intake.
Since the start of 2025 until very recently, I was wearing the Whoop fitness band. I felt it provided me with some valuable feedback. One of those was the total calories burned – which was a combination of resting and active calories (what I burn just by existing in life as a human plus whatever calories I burned exercising through the day). It was nice to have the number be in a concise place. If you can afford the subscription, it might be a worthwhile expense to put that number right in your face and keep you accountable. I look at it as an investment in healthcare. By the way, if you have health savings, it may let you cover that as a valid expense (look into TrueMed if you’re curious – I dont know a ton about it but Ive seen it mentioned).
Do we really need to wear a fitness band? Probably not. Im not a huge fan of wearing any kind of jewelry, including watches. I go back and forth with my Apple Watch, mostly because it syncs to my glucose monitor, so thats helpful for me. One of the things Ive been trying to do in my life in the last little bit is to make things simpler and try not to overthink everything. Its an easy thing for me to do and sometimes get lost in the details. However, i think there’s more value in the execution of a plan consistently, even if the plan isnt totally perfect. I dont think a fitness band is required. I think we just need to get an idea of how many calories we burn through a normal day, on average. We can then use this as a target.
There are a couple of numbers we’re after – BMR, which is Basic Metabolic Rate. This is the amount of calories we burn just by being a human being, waking up in the morning, and existing until we go to bed – wrapped up in a 24h time period. There are a couple of different calculations for this. The other is TDEE – Total Daily Energy Expenditure. This calculation factors in your lifestyle, also. The problem i have with the TDEE calculations is that its definitions for the type of activity are kind of vague. This is ok, because in my reading, it had said to choose Sedintary as the Activity level – which will give you the lowest number of calories. Then you factor in your exercise separately – which you can track easier based on what the machines tell you or a fitness band should you choose to wear one. If you walk X amount and get X amount of steps, you can probably calculate this out too.
The goal here isnt to go into the specifics of the math. There are a few different formulas to give you somewhat of an idea of where to start. The gist and the point is that I would go with finding out what my TDEE is. Currently, Im somewhere in the 2500-2600/day range. As you lose weight, this will change.
Once you know this number, the rest of the math is pretty basic. Eating in a deficit means eating less calories than you burn. So if you burn 2500 per day, then the goal is to eat less than 2500. There’s some theoretical math that says if you burn 3500 calories, thats 1 lb of bodyweight. This doesnt factor in water retention and such. So depending on the rate in which you wnat to lose weight, you can theoretically adjust your intake calories by so much and you’re supposed to lose more. The human body isnt quite that simple, as the body will get used to doing things and trying to be as efficient as possible with the calories it gets. This is why building muscle is important, because lean muscle burns more calories. There are calculations that take this into account, but thats not important right now.
Find your TDEE, and eat less. I would recommend somewhere in the 250-500, just as a start. So, if you burn 2500, eat 2000 calories a day and no more. Now you have something to work with.
If you’re just coming into this and you’re eating high calorie foods, just switching to cleaner, healthier foods (lean meats and veggies, sugar free soda, sugar free sauces, etc) will drastically reduce the number of calories you’re taking in.
Ever notice whenever someone decides to go “on a diet”, they instantly tend to gravitate toward eating more salad? Why? Because it theoretically has less calories. Nevermind the fried chicken and 1/2 gallon of ranch dressing (Ranch is good, isnt it? If you dont like ranch, thats cool too!), which bumps the calories into the quadruple digits pretty quick.
If you’re looking to try to hit a calorie target and you are still hungry – keep in mind that you can increase the amount of food, but you have to be smart about it. Portion control is a thing, but if you’re hungry all the time, you’re a lot less likely to succeed. Im always going to encourage being full (not stuffed). While a little hunger is expected, being ravenous is not. Increase the amount of vegetables – especially low calorie ones. The green bean steam bags are usually like 350g (3/4 lb or around 12oz) per bag and they cost a $1. Broccoli, cauliflower are the same way. If you’re really trying to keep the calories low, I would stay away from the more starchy veggies like peas, corn, potatoes and such. BUT, these are still better if you’re hungry. I usually put together a bowl of various mixed veggies every week, with like 6 bags of veggies. That usually lasts the week, and i probably eat about 300g per meal.
We can talk about calorie breakdown per meal later, but this should give you something to chew on for now. Find out your TDEE – calories burned through the day and use that to set your calorie intake, probably 250-500 cal less and you’re in business.