Low Calorie Diet Plan & Foods For Weight Loss

When your goal is weight loss, you have a ton of different diet plans you could choose from to reach your goal. There’s low carb, low fat, Weight Watchers, Atkins, South Beach, Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, and literally hundreds of others that involve all sorts of different methods.

But, in the back of the mind of everyone who ends up choosing any of these types of diets to reach their goal is the good old low calorie diet plan. Why? Well, besides being free (of both cost and silly gimmicks), it’s the only diet that is actually required in order for the human body to lose weight.

In this article I will explain exactly why that is, if this type of diet truly is safe and effective, help you figure out how to make it work for you, and also cover low calorie foods. Let’s begin…

What Is The Low Calorie Diet Plan?

The low calorie diet plan is the most basic and straight forward weight loss diet there is. You just eat less calories. Whether you replace high calories foods with low calorie foods, keep eating the same foods but just reduce the amount of them you’re eating, or some combination of the two… that’s really all there is to it.

The #1 goal here is to just end up eating a lower amount of calories. How low exactly? Well, that depends on whether you’re doing the smart version of it, or the incredibly dumb version of it.

The Wrong Way To Do It

You see, some people hear low calorie diet plan and instantly think of barely eating anything. I’m talking about 1000 calories per day, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. Either way, this is wrong and flat out stupid. These are the people who incorrectly starve themselves and reduce their calorie intake by WAY too much and go WAY too crazy with the low calorie foods.

This is unsafe, unhealthy, impossible to sustain and just the complete opposite of how it should be done. If this is what you associate with this type of diet, then you need to remove that idea from your mind right now. That’s the wrong way to do it.

The Right Way To Do It

Now, if I was in charge of naming this weight loss diet, I wouldn’t have used the word low. Instead, I would have used the word lower because that’s what this actually entails. The true correct way of following a low calorie diet is by just eating slightly less calories than you’re currently eating.

Why? Because this is honestly as low as you need to go to actually cause weight loss to take place at the acceptable and sustainable rate that is most often recommended. Eating less calories than that just makes things unnecessarily hard and potentially dangerous.

Not to mention, you’ll never be able to stick to it long term which means your goal will never be reached in most cases and in the rare chance that it is, it will never be maintained.

For all of these reasons, the right way of following a low calorie diet plan is by just making a small reduction to your total daily calorie intake. That’s all it takes to lose weight. Here’s why…

Does This Diet Really Work?

Yes it does. In fact, it works better than any other weight loss diet on the planet. Why? Because the low calorie diet plan is the only diet that’s directly based on doing the one and only thing that actually needs to be done in order for a person to lose weight… eating less calories.

The proven science works like this. The human body uses calories for energy to do everything we need to do (live, breathe, move, exercise, etc.). That means we each have a certain amount of calories that our body requires each day to burn as an energy source. This is known as our calorie maintenance level.

  • If we consumed that SAME exact amount of calories each day, our weight would stay the same.
  • However, if we consumed MORE calories than this amount, it means we gave our body more calories than it needed to burn. So what does our body do with those left over calories? It stores them in the form of body fat. This is how we gain weight.
  • But, if we consumed LESS calories than this amount, it would mean we didn’t give our body as many calories as it needed to burn. So what does our body do? It uses our own stored body fat for energy instead. This is how we lose weight.

That’s how energy balance takes place in the human body, and once you see it laid out like that, you can clearly understand why a low calorie diet plan not only works, but why it’s the only type of weight loss diet that is actually required.

Every diet not based on just directly eating fewer calories is always just a silly unnecessary gimmick diet. Can those other diets still work? Yeah, but that’s only because they are always based on tricking you into a low calorie diet plan without actually straight up telling you.

For example, the low carb diet plan. It’s all about eating low carb foods, not low calorie foods. So then why does it work? Because when you reduce the amount of carbs you’re eating, you also just so happen to reduce the amount of calories you’re eating. Magic!

Take any other weight loss diet based on eating less of one or more specific foods, food groups or entire nutrients, and the same effect takes place. You end up eating a low calorie diet without actually realizing it. You think weight loss is happening because of some other magical reason, but it’s actually happening because you’re now eating less calories than you were.

A low calorie diet plan just avoids tricking you into doing it by making you remove things that don’t truly need to be removed. Here you just directly reduce calories, and then get those calories from a good mix of food groups and nutrients. Speaking of foods…

What Are The Best Low Calorie Foods?

For a minute there I was actually thinking of making some kind of list of foods that are low in calories, but I instead came up with a much better idea. Actually, it’s a question… who the hell cares what the best low calories foods are?

Seriously? Do you really need to see a list of foods like celery? That’s just annoying and completely useless to the success of your diet. Again, the true key to a low calorie diet plan (and really weight loss in general) is just eating the right total amount of calories per day.

Meaning, if you maintain your weight eating 3000 calories per day (just an example), you’d just need to eat about 2500 per day to lose weight. Simple as that. Whether those 2500 calories in this example come from 20 low calories foods or 10 high calories foods doesn’t make any difference whatsoever.

Your daily total calorie intake is what matters most here, and you can eat whatever you want to reach that total. You don’t need to torture yourself with low calorie foods and crazy restrictions that just make everything impossible to sustain. Just figure out what your calorie intake needs to be, and then get those calories from a good mix of your favorite (mostly healthy) sources of protein, fat and carbs.

Some of those might be low calorie foods, and some might be high calorie foods in reduced portions. In the end, who cares? As long as your total calories are what they needed to be, weight loss will take place just the same.

So, pick foods you enjoy, get enough protein, healthy fats (like the omega 3 found in fish oil supplements), and various other essential nutrients and ensure it doesn’t exceed the total amount of calories you need to be at. Speaking of which…

How Many Calories Should I Eat Per Day?

This is a question I’ve already fully answered in my article about How To Lose Weight. Check it out to learn how many calories your low calorie diet plan needs to contain along with what foods you should get those calories from most often. My Diet Plan Guide covers this, too.

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