How to Lose Weight While Eating Whatever You Want

I swear, the title isn’t that misleading. OK — here’s a little story for you.

My friend Jake lost a reasonable amount of weight — he went from size 40 to size 32 jeans, nothing drastic, but a good effort — while also getting in pretty good shape at the gym. But when I asked him about what he was eating, his answers surprised me.

“I don’t really pay attention to what I eat,” he said. And yet he felt better, looked healthier, and had more energy than he’d ever had in his entire life. How’d he do it?

This Isn’t a Mystery Diet.

We went over some parts of his diet — he enjoyed beer, ate quite a bit of bread, and liked his pasta. He also ate a lot of fruits and vegetables, but face it — there were carbs all over the place. To balance out the fact that he didn’t want to cut down on any of these things, he was jogging on the days he wasn’t hitting the gym. That was good, but I still didn’t get it. How could he eat all this stuff and still claim to be losing weight in a healthy, steady way?

He told me — his crucial point was that he wasn’t eating junk.

Sure, standard pasta is nutritionally “empty”, beer doesn’t do much for us health-wise (unless we have it in great moderation), and it’s very easy to have too much bread.

Cutting Down vs. Cutting Off

“Why don’t you cut down on all this stuff?” I asked him. His answer was pretty simple: “I don’t eat junk food, I don’t buy soft drinks, I don’t eat anything with more than 4 or 5 ingredients, and all the ‘indulgences’ I make are for things like high-quality sausage or really nice chocolate.”

Because he was careful about the origins of what he ate, and knew exactly what he was putting into his body at all times — even if most of us would see it as a bit too much bread or a few too many microbrews — he wasn’t introducing crazy variables that he (and his body) couldn’t track.

No excess sodium sneaking into a processed bar. No corn syrup hiding in his hamburger buns, no sugar hiding in his table salt (yeah, it’s there).

Not Paying Attention

It’s worth going back to his original quotation: “I don’t really pay attention to what I eat.” Obviously, this wasn’t exactly true.

What he really meant was that he didn’t count calories, he didn’t work out ratios on nutritional labels — he did his research ahead of time, and if the numbers of crazy ingredients started adding up — he avoided them.

He bought stuff without useless additives, so that he knew how much sugar, salt, and fat he was getting in his diet without having to make complex charts and graphs and journals every day.

Rules to Live By

So — while it’s true that he ate (and still eats) whatever he “wants”, he does two fundamental things that let him get away with it in a sustainable, healthy way:

• he only wants good, real food, even if he enjoys it a little too much sometimes
• he does a good amount of physical activity every day, because he doesn’t want to give up enjoying what he enjoys.

While these aren’t necessarily rules for everyone, it’s great to hear about people’s different approaches to getting — and staying — healthy, and living happy, full lives as a result.

Your Thoughts

Do you know anyone with an unusual-but-great approach to diet and exercise? I want to hear about it — leave a comment!