To lose weight, diet coaches usually recommend following a diet with predominantly healthy food. However, healthy eating does not automatically mean that you will lose (a lot of) fat.

LIFESTYLE

Of course, healthy eating is part of a healthy and fit lifestyle, whether you are a bodybuilder or not. But many think that healthy eating is enough to lose weight, or to become shredded. This is not automatically the case. And that is why people on a healthy diet often notice that they lose little or no weight, or even see their weight increase.

ENERGY BALANCE

It is a big misconception that healthy eating is synonymous with fat loss. Losing weight is about the bigger picture, namely the energy balance. Fat loss is determined by how many calories you consume and how much you expend. If you eat more calories in a day than you consume, you will gain weight — even if you eat predominantly healthy, unprocessed or unprocessed food. So the point is that you create a negative energy balance, for example 500 calories below your maintenance level.

CONCLUSION

The moral of the story: you should not only pay attention to the type of food, but also the quantity. For example, if you eat a lot of oatmeal and nuts, you may be eat healthy, but you may be eating too many calories due to the high calorie density of these foods. So use a calorie counter — at least for a while.

IF IT FITS YOUR MACROS?

However, some people also go too far when they use a calorie app: they only pay attention to the amount of calories and no longer to the type of food (also known as If It Fits Your Macros). On the one hand, this is detrimental to your health, and on the other hand, it is not optimal for fat loss. In this article you can read that consuming unprocessed food has a beneficial effect on body composition in various ways compared to processed food. This is due, for example, to the vitamins that healthy food provides and to greater food-induced thermogenesis, which means you burn more calories after a meal. Healthy food – especially certain vegetables – also ensures good dehydration. This makes you look less fluffy and your muscles are therefore more visible.

In short, to lose weight you adjust your energy balance and supplement your calorie intake with mainly healthy (unprocessed or unprocessed) foods.

FULLNESS FACTOR

If you want to make losing weight a little easier, eat food with a high degree of satiety: the more food you choose with a high Fullness Factor (FF), the fewer calories you consume while still limiting your feeling of hunger. And food with a high FF is often also healthy food.