9 Years Of Calorie Deficit Advice in 32min
In this 32‑minute instructional video, Eric Roberts, a coach with over 9 years of experience and 17,000+ clients, shares a concise, step‑by‑step system for achieving sustainable fat loss through accurate calorie deficit management. He begins by exposing common tracking errors—using volume measures instead of gram‑based food scales and inconsistently logging raw versus cooked weights—then explains why protein is the most thermogenic macronutrient and how to calculate a minimum protein target (0.7 g per lb of goal weight). Roberts stresses that total calories trump protein goals when they conflict. He outlines a repeatable grocery‑shopping framework (order‑ahead, a fixed list of protein, fruit, veg, carbs) and a simple rule‑based shopping list to keep the pantry stocked with the right foods. Cardio is positioned as a supplement: daily step goals plus optional low‑intensity, high‑incline walking or weighted‑vest walking, rather than excessive high‑intensity sessions. He provides practical tips for eating out, using light‑oil requests and reasonable estimates, and introduces the 80/20 sustainability rule—most days in‑range, occasional indulgences are acceptable. To reduce tracking friction, he recommends focusing on single‑ingredient foods and a quick logging workflow (under 5 minutes per day). He warns against “healthy‑but‑high‑calorie” pitfalls (granola, trail mix, oil) and against overly low calorie diets that trigger yo‑yo cycles. Finally, he offers a free calorie calculator and encourages realistic, maintainable deficit targets for long‑term weight‑maintenance.
Chapters
At the time of this video, I've coached over 17,000 clients with their calorie deficit over the last 9 years and done it myself to get into pretty decent shape as well. If I had to give you some brutally honest advice that can help you avoid costly mistakes and speed up your fat loss progress, here's exactly what that would be. Lesson number 1: don't use Cups, tablespoons, or ounces. The problem I see a lot of people make with their calorie deficit is you think you're eating in a calorie deficit because you're weighing your food out using cups, tablespoons, and ounces to try and track your calories. The issue is you're probably eating hundreds of more calories than you actually realize. In fact, let me show you exactly what I mean. This is everybody's favorite peanut butter, and on the serving size of peanut butter, it says 2 tablespoons is 34 grams. So if you're tracking your calories by using tablespoons, let's see what that might come out to. This is roughly 2 tablespoons, which should come out to 34 grams, which should come out to 190 calories. But if we put Put this on the food scale, you can see this comes out to 41 grams. Meaning if I was to track this, it would end up around 230 calories as opposed to 190. Now you may think that's only 40 more calories—not that big of a deal—but if you're doing that two, three, four, five times a day, that is hundreds of extra calories you are consuming. that you don't know about, and it might be the reason why you're not losing weight. So instead, make sure every food that you weigh out, you are weighing out on a food scale in grams, because that is the most accurate way of knowing if you're eating the correct portion size and tracking your calories. And on the back of every food label, it will tell you how many grams The serving size is. And as long as you're using a calorie tracking app that allows you to track in grams like the one I built— you can access this below if you'd like— then you'll get a much more accurate calorie deficit, meaning you'll lose more body fat. And actually, that takes us to the next lesson of tracking calories. Lesson 2: Should you track your food cooked or raw? This is a question a lot of the clients I've worked with have had, and the problem is you're probably tracking everything, weighing your food out, but yet you're not seeing the progress that you want to see, the issue might not be what you're eating. It might be how you're tracking it. If you're eating 4 ounces of chicken thigh, is that 4 ounces cooked or 4 ounces raw? Because there is a difference, and this one detail could be the difference in hundreds of calories per day. On every food label, this is going to be the calories the raw food. When you cook the food, it loses some of its water weight, but it wouldn't lose the calorie content. So for example, 4 ounces of chicken thigh is 180 calories raw, but 4 ounces of cooked chicken thigh could be anywhere from 230 to 260 calories cooked. And if you're doing this for the meat you're eating The rice you're cooking, the oatmeal you're making, this could be adding up to hundreds of calories per day that you are missing. So now your question is, well, which one should you track? And the answer is either one. And let me explain. As long as you are tracking in a calorie counting app, just specify if you are using the raw or if you are using The cooked. So when you scan the barcode, you can scan it for the raw food, but if you're weighing it cooked, just be sure to type in cooked chicken thigh, cooked rice, cooked ground beef, and that will give you the more accurate reading. And as long as you stay consistent with the way you are tracking it, you could weigh it and track it cooked or weigh it and track it raw. It doesn't matter. And this chicken thigh actually brings us into lesson number 3. Lesson number 3, the best food for burning fat. The issue most people have when they start a calorie deficit is you're cutting calories, you're always hungry, and you're just not seeing the scale go down. You've lowered your carbs, you're probably skipping meals, and it just seems nothing is working. But what you don't realize Your body doesn't treat all calories the same. Once I learned about the thermic effect of food, it changed everything for me and my clients. The thermic effect of food is how many calories your body burns digesting the food you eat. For every 100 calories of fat that you eat, your body burns 1 to 3 of those calories. For every 100 calories of carbs you eat, your body burns 3 to 7 of those calories. But for every 100 calories of protein that you eat, your body burns up to 30 of those calories. So you can almost think of this like you're not eating 100 calories of protein, you're actually only eating 70 calories of protein. Not to mention, protein is going to help keep you more full So in the long run, you will consume less calories during the day. And protein is the only nutrient that helps you build muscle, which is also going to increase your metabolism and daily calorie burn. So if you want to make a calorie deficit exponentially easier, you've got to make sure you're eating enough protein because it's the one macronutrient that helps work with you On a calorie deficit. And how much is enough protein? It's very simple. Take your goal body weight in pounds, multiply that by 0.7, and that's how many grams of protein you want to eat per day as a minimum. So if you want to weigh 150 pounds, your minimum should be 105 grams of protein per day. Now, protein is very important But the next lesson talks about calories versus protein goals. Lesson 4: Should you eat more calories to hit your protein goal? Tell me if this sounds familiar. You're tracking your calories, staying in a calorie deficit, and doing your best to hit your protein goal. But at the end of the day, you realize you're getting close to or hit your calorie deficit number, but you haven't hit your protein goal. Yet. You panic and start to consider eating more protein, even if that means going over your calorie deficit goal. But is that the correct choice? Here's exactly what I tell our clients to help them see the best fat loss progress. Protein is important and it will help you stick to your calorie deficit, but if the goal is fat loss, your number one highest priority is your overall calorie goal. If you consistently go over your calorie intake just to hit your protein goal, you will slow down your fat loss progress. Missing your protein goal by 5 or 10 grams isn't what holds people back from not losing fat. It's going over your calorie goal that holds you back from losing fat. So if you're stuck between hitting your calorie goal and protein goal, always stick with your calorie goal first. And now you see all this food here, which talks about our next lesson referring to grocery shopping. Lesson 5, how to grocery shop for success. The problem I see a lot of people stop themselves from losing fat Is with the way they grocery shop. I'm sure you head into the grocery store with the best intentions. You're gonna get fruit, you're gonna get veggies, chicken and rice. But then inevitably, you're walking down the aisles and you spot things that seem tempting or delicious to you. And maybe because you're already there, because you're on a calorie deficit and you're hungry, And because maybe you're a little bit deprived or feeling restricted, you end up buying foods that are not going to be conducive to you staying on a calorie deficit. Now you've got pantry and cabinets full of temptation, which is only going to make it harder for you to be successful with a calorie deficit and losing fat. So instead, I want you to implement this hack that almost all of our clients do, and I sure as hell do as well. Switch from going into the store to either ordering your groceries delivered or at least having the pickup option. This way you don't have to walk past the bakery and say no to the pastries, or you don't have to go into the store hungry, which is going to lead to you grabbing foods you wouldn't normally grab. You can logically order the food ahead of time without temptation. You can more or less only buy the foods that you need for your plan for that week, and this way you don't have to use as much willpower or discipline when you're home because there are less things to tempt you and your environment is set up for more success. And if you're like, Eric, it's more expensive to do that, I understand, but stick with me. Number 1, how much time is it going to save you? Which a lot of our clients are very busy and saving 10, 15, 20, 60 minutes could be an absolute game changer. And it could be the difference between getting a workout in or not, or meal prepping or not, which will help you stay more consistent. And number 2, is it really more expensive? Because if you don't buy the extra treats and temptations, you would actually be spending less money than you would if you either just got it pickup only or delivered. Remember, fat loss starts before the food hits your fridge or pantry, and this tiny habit change can make a huge difference along with our next lesson continuing about grocery shopping. Lesson 6: Follow this grocery shopping rule. Tell me if this sounds familiar. You want to start eating healthier, but every time you open the fridge, there's nothing you can throw together. And you either bought too many random snacks, or you forgot the basics again, or you ran out of all the healthy food. Now you're ordering out, you're skipping meals, you don't know what you're gonna make for dinner. There's too much guesswork, and your fat loss plan goes out the window. So instead of winging it at the grocery store and just hoping that you can buy the right things to stay on track, here is a simple list you will follow every single time you order groceries. Number 1, you're going to start with buying 4 to 6 protein sources. Notice how I'm not telling you exactly what protein sources to buy because you can eat the foods that you enjoy on a calorie deficit And as long as you hit your calories, can still lose weight. For example, if you like ground beef instead of chicken, buy ground beef. Or if maybe you are a vegan and/or vegetarian, and maybe you wanna buy edamame instead of buying meat, do that. But no matter what, you buy 4 to 6 protein sources. Then no matter what, you buy 2 to 3 fruits. Again, you buy the fruits that you like and that you will stay consistent eating. And then you buy 2 to 4 veggies. And for this one, I, Don't care if you like veggies or not. You're a grown adult, you have to eat them. And last but not least, buy 2 to 4 carbohydrate options. The beauty of this is you have a repeatable system to grocery shop from here on out that you know if you follow this system, you will have the foods you need to be successful and you'll always have things to throw together and make meals with because you know exactly what is in your fridge and pantry And you know, they are foods that you enjoy. I didn't tell you what to eat. I told you how to grocery shop. But even if you buy all the right foods, if you're making this mistake with your cardio, you'll never lose fat. And that's what we're going to talk about in the next lesson. Lesson 7, the cardio mistakes stopping you from losing fat. When it comes to cardio for fat loss, most people get this wrong and I really don't want it to be you. Because you can end up doing 45, 60+ minutes of cardio every single day and the scale still wouldn't move. And then you think, well, you just have to do even more cardio and work out even more intensely. But the truth is, no amount of cardio that you do can ever out-cardio a bad diet and more specifically out-cardio being in a calorie deficit. But does that mean you should never do cardio and it won't help at all? No. Here's how I want you to think about cardio for fat loss instead. Cardio should be a supplement, not the solution. Meaning the solution to you losing body fat is doing what we've talked about thus far with your nutrition and eating in a calorie deficit. Technically, a calorie deficit does mean you are eating less calories than what you burn. So if you use cardio as a supplement to changing your nutrition and trying to eat in a calorie deficit, you will be able to burn a little bit more calories to help you be in the calorie deficit. But if you use it as the main tool, what's going to end up happening is you won't get your nutrition in check and you won't track your calories and stick to your calorie deficit, so you won't lose any fat. Or you will end up doing so much cardio and so much high-intensity cardio that you are going to get exponentially hungrier, leading you to not stick to your calorie deficit goal. And anybody who's ever tried to out-cardio a bad diet and do a lot of high high-intensity cardio knows exactly what I'm talking about. So what we recommend for the clients that we coach is first and foremost, hit your daily step goal as your main form of cardio, usually at least 6,000 steps. And if you would like to do 1 to 3 extra days a week of dedicated cardio, you can keep it to about 15 to 30 minutes. And you don't need to have a very high heart rate when you are doing it. But if you want even more specifics on the best form of cardio to burn the most fat, that's in our next upcoming lesson. Lesson 8, use specific cardio to burn more fat. I get it, you want to burn more calories to speed up your fat loss, but like we just mentioned, you shouldn't be doing tons of cardio. You should be doing the right kind of cardio. to maximize fat loss. And I have 2 kinds of cardio for you that are going to burn more calories without making you hungrier and really speeding up your fat loss. And no, it's not going to be running. And no, it's not going to be HIIT classes or boot camp workouts or 30-minute interval training. The first is going to be incline treadmill walking. Now don't get me wrong, regular walking is enough for you to lose fat. But when you add an incline of anywhere from 8 to 12, your body will be forced to work a little bit harder and burn a little bit more calories without having to go very high intensity. I used this during my fat loss journey where I dropped 20 pounds in 10 weeks on a calorie deficit, and I would do 15 minutes to 20 minutes of incline walking after a workout. So that was 4 times a week for me, and that's the results it helped me get. So you can add that as well, either after a workout or on rest days. Or the second kind of cardio you can do is regular walking, but you throw on a weighted vest or a weighted backpack. And what this does is if you add 10, 15, 20 pounds, your body almost gets tricked into thinking you weigh more than you actually do, which will end up burning more calories because your body has to work harder since there is extra weight on your body. And this works especially well if you're somebody who has already been losing weight, but maybe it's starting to slow down, or maybe you're hitting a plateau. Throwing on the weighted vest or backpack will trick your body into thinking you actually weigh more, so you'll burn more calories and kickstart that process again. And this doesn't have to be fast-paced walking. You can walk at a moderate pace and still get the benefits. So now that you're good on cardio, let's talk about something that throws most people off track, which is eating out and trying to stick to your calorie deficit. Lesson 9, how to eat out and still stay on track. Everything is great when you're at home, you're cooking your own food, weighing your own food, you know exactly how many calories you're eating. But then the weekend rolls around. Because you're a normal person, you want to live a normal life and go out to eat here and there. But now you're guessing on how many calories you're eating. You don't know the exact calorie amount, and you're worried that you're going to ruin all of your progress. Don't worry, because I have a solution for you. First, you need to understand you are not going to track your calories perfectly when you go out to eat, and that is okay. It doesn't mean you're ruining all of your progress, especially if the rest of the week you are using your food scale, you're weighing in grams, you're tracking your calories, you're eating at home. Just because you can't be perfect please don't let that throw the entire week away. Guesstimate to the best of your ability. And this is the cool part about tracking calories the rest of the week. The more you track your calories, weigh out your food, you will be able to look at certain foods and guesstimate roughly how many calories is in those foods. So then when you go out to eat, you'll be able to guesstimate how many calories that was You put it into your tracker to the best of your ability, and you just move on knowing that you got within a good range and one meal out isn't going to ruin progress. And number 2, when you do eat out, oftentimes they cook in a lot of oil. So either account for that oil when you're tracking your calories, or do what I do. I always ask to use light oil, or if I'm ordering veggies, they usually douse veggies in butter or oil. So I ask for no oil or no butter on my veggies. Easily saves me 200 calories. So if you guesstimate, you ask for light or no oil, and you're tracking calories the rest of the week, don't worry, you're still gonna reach your goals. Which brings me into my next lesson about you might have to make some sacrifices. on a calorie deficit. Lesson 10, how much to sacrifice for your calorie deficit. I know you're trying to eat clean, staying consistent, and you really want to see fat loss progress, but then life happens. Birthdays, dinners out, cravings, vacations. You either force yourself to be perfect and miserable, or you say screw it and completely go off the rails. And now you're stuck in this all-or-nothing cycle and you're not making any progress. So let me educate you on what gives a lot of our clients peace of mind and allows them to still make progress. And that is simply understanding that yes, sometimes you will have to skip the extra desserts or the extra drinks or bring your food, and that is gonna be a part of seeing progress on a calorie deficit. But also sometimes you're going to have the extra drinks or you're going to go out to eat with your partner, enjoy it, and go over your calories a bit. And that's a part of a calorie deficit too. There's something that we call the 80/20 rule. 80% of the time you're staying on track and doing what is necessary to hit your calories. And then 20% of the time you're not going to do what it takes. stay on track. You're gonna say, I'm enjoying this night and I don't care, and then you just get right back on track the next day because 1 day out of 31 days in a month isn't going to ruin all of your progress. Another way I like to explain this is the concept of saving money. If you wanted to save money faster, well then all you'd have to do is live in a homeless box, only eat ramen and drink water. And save every penny that you have. You would save money quicker, but the quality of your life would decrease. On the flip side, if you spent every penny that you earned, you would save no money. So as opposed to living in either one of the extremes, if you make $2,000 a paycheck, let's say your bills cost $1,000 to live, you want to save $400 a month so you can have $600 to spend every month. This way you're still enjoying your life while still moving closer to your goals. Could you do it faster? Sure, but the quality of your life would decrease and it wouldn't be worth it. Think about your calorie deficit the same way. You'd rather lose weight in a slower, more sustainable way to still have and enjoy a high quality of life without having to overwork restrict yourself, which segues into our next lesson, how to make a calorie deficit as easy as possible. Lesson 11, the best calorie deficit foods. Have you ever been trying to track your calories, but everything just feels so complicated? You're constantly scanning barcodes and trying to figure out recipes. You're making these big grand meals and it's just hard to track the calories them. So you get overwhelmed, you start to get inconsistent with your calorie tracking, and most frustratingly, you're not making fat loss progress. This in turn makes you want to give up even though you feel like you're doing the best you can. So here's what I want you to try to focus on. Along with the 80/20 rule that we just talked about, I want you to make 80% of the foods that you eat simple one-ingredient foods like this banana. You just track a banana. Or if you're eating chicken breast or oatmeal or eggs, all of these foods are simple one-ingredient foods which make it incredibly easy to track. And these foods keep you more full and satisfied. They usually have more nutrients, vitamins, minerals and they remove all the guesswork and overwhelm of tracking calories. And I'm not even saying you have to have boring foods. You could make chicken breasts with different sauces or seasonings and have it taste amazing. Or you could put bananas in your oatmeal and maybe even add Greek yogurt or different kinds of berries and fruits. So I'm not saying hate your food, but the more one-ingredient foods you have, the easier it will be to track and the less stressful and less mentally exhausting calorie tracking will be for you, which will allow you to stay more consistent with it, which will allow you to see more fat loss progress. And if you're somebody who hates logging your food, this next lesson is for you. Lesson 12: How to get around not wanting to log your food. You might start tracking your calories with good intentions, And either by that night or later in that week, it feels annoying. You don't want to take the time to do it and you start to think this is too much. And before you know it, you're completely off track. Not because calorie tracking doesn't work, but because you thought you had to be perfect with it or it was too time-consuming. So let me help you with those 2 things. What helps a lot of our clients is number one, don't track your veggies. Nobody got fat from eating too much spinach. And number 2, I'm actually going to go through right now in my calorie counting app how long it takes me to track my food for the day. So I'm gonna put a timer up here and I'm gonna run through everything I ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And you'll see this pop up on the screen right here. So right now I'm adding in what I had for breakfast. Bam! Right now my breakfast is done, and that took me maybe 30 seconds. Now let's move on to my pre-workout snack, which by the way, if you haven't tried this yet, you absolutely should. I think it is the best pre-workout snack out there. So my snack is done. That took me maybe 30 seconds, less than that. Now head to lunch. I had some tortillas for lunch with some ground beef, and as you can see, I'm also changing everything to grams to make sure I am tracking correctly. And last, I'm gonna finish up with dinner where I have those sweet potato fries every night, and I have to scan the barcode for— oh, for the ice cream that I ate. And that is basically my day's worth of food. I don't know what the exact timer was, but that was under 5 minutes. And yes, I've been doing this maybe longer than you have, but it's not gonna take you longer than 5 to 10 minutes per day to track your food. If I told you all you had to do was spend 10 minutes max to lose the 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds you're looking to lose, would that be worth it to you? I think so as well. Well. And now that you're convinced you can do it, I want to talk about a mistake that holds most people back. Lesson 13, you're eating healthy but not losing weight. And this one is incredibly frustrating because you've cleaned up your diet, you've cut out fast food, stopped drinking sodas, you're doing all of the right things, but yet you're not seeing the scale go down. But this is a mistake that most people make, so don't worry. I'm gonna fix it for you right now. This is some granola, and typically granola is a very healthy food. But let's take a look at how many calories is in this granola. One serving size is 35 grams. Remember, we're not going by cups. So 35 grams Is about this much granola right here. This is 160 calories for this much granola. And I know you know most people aren't eating this much granola. Most people are eating this much granola. Which, by the way, this is 116 grams of granola, which would come out to like 500 calories. Calories. Or let's take trail mix as an example, because trail mix is pretty healthy, even if it does have the M&M's in there. And most people just kind of go about their day grabbing a handful of trail mix and eating it. But if, let's say, you were to grab 2 to 3 handfuls of trail mix— a serving size is 30 grams for 150 calories— 3 handfuls is 80 grams, which means this is about 400-ish calories. Or last but not least, olive oil, which is very healthy for you, but every time you cook with this, it's 120 calories. So you need to understand, just because you're eating healthy does not mean you are eating in a calorie deficit. And if you want to lose fat, you have to make sure you're tracking your calories and eating in the calorie deficit. But how many calories should you be eating? Let's talk about that in the next lesson. Lesson 14: Don't go too low in calories or you'll risk yo-yo dieting. Now I get it, you're frustrated with the way you look and feel, and you might even be frustrated with lack of progress, and you just want to see the scale go down. So you decide to cut your calories to 1,000 a day, maybe 1,200 a day. And at first, the weight might drop fast, but there's no way you can sustain that. You're starving, you end up binging and overeating, and you either end up just starting and stopping and starting and stopping, or even if you do lose the weight, you end up gaining it all back and then some. I've seen this cycle so many times with the clients that we have worked with, and that's why I would encourage you to pick a realistic, sustainable calorie goal where you won't end up starving yourself, you won't end up binge eating, and you will be able to stick with it over the long run. And even though the progress might not be as fast right now, it will be sustainable, and you can know every pound that you lose, you will be keeping that weight off forever. So what should that number be for you? Well, I have a totally free calorie calculator in the description of this video. Just click the description there, fill out the information, and it'll send right over to you. Remember, if you're eating too little, it's only going to backfire on your goals in the long run. And now, before you jump into the calorie deficit, you should probably know what's normal and what to expect when you're on the journey, because it's not all fat loss progress every day. So watch this video here and I will break down everything that you should be prepared for on your calorie deficit journey.
