To start with, I recommend that you eat whatever you want. Forget all the hype around fat or carbohydrates making us fat, because they don’t. Too much food makes us fat. No matter what food it is, we will gain weight if it is more calories then we burn off a day. At the same time, we can lose weight eating anything we want as long it is less than our body needs.

Now doesn’t that just make sense?

The problem with strict dieting is that it deprives us of the foods that we love. Our natural tendency is to want whatever it is we aren’t allowed to have. So then, this deprivation increases our cravings, testing every inch of our willpower. Eventually, our cravings get the best of us and we ruin our diet on the very foods we weren’t allowed to have.

Just remember that fat loss is as simple as burning more calories then we eat. It’s that simple. This is the number one reason why all those fad diets work. It has nothing to do with the foods they make you give up; they are simply low in calories.

This is why I recommend eating whatever you want. It will keep your cravings under wraps and will help you stick to a reduced caloric intake for much longer.

So how many calories should we eat?

Now obviously eating too much will prevent us from losing fat. What many don’t realize though, is that eating too few a calories will also make it extremely difficult to lose fat. This is because when there is a severe reduction in calories, our body panics. It becomes very reluctant to use our fat stores for energy, as it wants to keep it for as long as possible to survive.

Since there is a lack of food coming in, and the body wants to keep our fat, our body actually breaks down our muscle tissue to use as energy. This is how we lose muscle on low calorie diets and our metabolism slows right down.

To prevent this, all you have to do is eat more. This will show the body that there is plenty of food coming in, and that hanging onto our fat stores is pointless. It will then feel more comfortable to burn our fat for energy.

So a safe figure will be to eat 12-13 calories per pound of bodyweight, spread out over 4-6 meals. For example, a 200 pound man should eat 2400-2600 calories.

Even though this is a safe figure for fat loss, eventually our metabolism will adjust and slow down. After all it is less calories then our body actually needs. Our body is just trying to survive the best it can on the amount of food coming in.

To prevent this have a cheat meal once or twice a week where you eat as much of anything you like. This will again show your body that there is plenty of food coming in and that it is safe to use our fat for fuel. It will also help keep you consistent, as it will help you survive in social situations. Don’t worry; you won’t be ruining your progress. It helps you burn fat even faster by giving your metabolism that boost when it just starts to adjust and slow down.

So to sum up eat whatever you want and focus primarily on your total caloric intake. Combine this with an occasional meal off and regular exercise and you will be surprised with how easy fat loss can be.