The weight-loss industry preys on scientific naivete, often conflating good nutrition with the caloric deficit necessary to lose weight.

While nutrition matters for overall health, it is substantially more complicated to eat a nutritious diet than one that allows you to lose weight.

If you want to lose weight, focus on weight loss first.

Focus on nutrition once you've reached your target weight.

The advantage of this approach is that you can eat any kind of food you want and still lose weight. Sodas? Fast food? Chocolate cake? All allowed.

There is only one rule for weight loss:

On average, consume less calories than you burn.
I followed this approach for six months and dropped from 198 pounds (90 kg) to 152 pounds (69 kg) while running a steady 1000 calorie/day deficit.


The chariot I rode to a healthier self.
I achieved this by applying my "path of least resistance" methodology: I reshaped my life so that it was easier to lose weight than gain it.

Making weight loss easy means erecting barriers to consuming calories and removing barriers to burning them until you're running a caloric deficit.