How to eat less calories to lose weight I How to get into a calorie deficit

YouTube, what is going on? Welcome back to the channel. In this video, we're gonna be talking about the top 9— I don't know why I didn't do 10, whatever— the top 9 best ways to cut your calories. And what I mean by that is you've probably heard me or somebody else mention, hey, to lose weight, you got to be in a calorie deficit. That's great, and I am absolutely right if I say that, and somebody else is absolutely right when they say that, but That really doesn't give you much context into how to apply it into your everyday life, because just being in a calorie deficit is pretty much as useful as just saying, just eat less and move more. Like, great, we know that. How do we actually do that? So in this video, I'm going to give you my top 9 best tips that you can input into your own life in order to cut your calories, decrease your calories, and help you Get into this calorie deficit, which means you are going to end up losing body fat. So, and by the way, a lot of these tips that I'm going to tell you, I'm currently doing right now because I am currently in a calorie deficit as well, looking to lose body fat. If you want to learn more about my journey and what I'm doing, I did an entire podcast on it. So I'll link that podcast here below in the description of this video. If you want to check it out, feel free to check it out. So The very first thing that we are going to touch on is liquid calories, and that is going to be anything like milk or potentially alcohol or coconut water or, you know, um, diets are— so I'm sorry, regular soda. We'll talk about diet soda here in a second, but any liquid calories. And this is by far the easiest way to decrease your calories And help you get into a calorie deficit. I want to give you 2 examples really quickly. First, I'm going to talk about myself and what I'm doing right now. So currently, while I'm going into a calorie deficit, I was doing 1 coconut water for my workouts. I work out 5 times a week right now, roughly in this thing of coconut water, it's roughly 200 calories. So I'm doing that. That's 200 calories where I'm not really— there's no food. That's just me drinking it, right? Which is kind of like a luxury, but when you're going into a calorie deficit, You might wanna look at changing that. And also on top of that, what I was doing at my post-workout meal is I was having roughly, again, 1 cup of milk, roughly 1 cup of milk depending on what kind of milk you get, anywhere from 130 to 160 calories. Let's call it that. So let's just say it's 150 calories plus 200 calories. What I did was I took out the coconut water and I took out the milk and put it for almond milk, which is significantly Lower in calories and/or I'll probably just do water as my post-workout kinda shake as well. I put my protein powder in it. I actually put it on top of Rice Krispies, which is awesome. We'll talk about Rice Krispies here in a second as well. But those 2 changes right there saved me 350 calories without eating anything less, without doing anything different. I just cut my calories by 350. I guarantee you That is going to kickstart my weight loss right there. And I don't personally, I don't drink alcohol, but again, alcohol, alcohol has calories. And so if you cut out liquid calories, that right there is going to decrease your calorie intake as well. And if you do enjoy some alcohol here and there, I'm not saying you have to cut it out, but if you're looking to lose weight, it is probably going to be advantageous for you to at least decrease the amount of alcohol you are consuming because again, it has calories. And the reason liquid calories can be such a kicker sometimes, you've probably heard something to the effect of like, oh, they're, they're empty Empty calories. And yeah, I mean, the milk or the coconut water or the alcohol or the soda, it doesn't really fill you up. It doesn't really give you any nutrients. Milk gives you nutrients and so does coconut water, but not like from a satiating standpoint to keep yourself full. Whereas let's say, you know, for example, a big-ass salad, that's gonna give you a lot more satiety. It's gonna keep you a lot more full than say just drinking coconut water or drinking soda, right? So liquid calories, they, you know, they, they are empty calories. Because of that reason. And so when you cut them out you don't really change anything else, you just save yourself a shit ton of calories. And so that's the one example I wanna give you very quickly is what I'm doing and I can show you I saved 350 calories roughly myself by just cutting out what I was drinking during my workout and now I'm just gonna go to water instead. And then I was doing regular, I think it was 1% milk post-workout, now I'm just gonna go to either almond milk or once again water. So Zero calorie drinks. And, you know, sometimes I'll have water a lot, but I'll also have, like, for example, like Powerade Zero where, like, there's no— it's no sugar, right? Or Gatorade Zero or whatever, you know, any of those kind of like zero sugar drinks. I don't do a ton of them because sometimes it can mess with digestion, but zero calorie drinks. Cut out liquid calories, zero calorie drinks. You will automatically help yourself when it comes to being in a calorie deficit. The second thing really quickly I wanna tell you is I had a client who we went from drinking regular soda, so that's what he was drinking, to diet soda. And right there, that cut out roughly 200 to 500 calories per day depending on how many sodas he had per day. And everyone's gonna tell you diet soda is so bad. No, it's not that big of a deal, especially if you are, you know, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 pounds overweight and you need to lose weight in order to improve your health. Diet soda is actually gonna help you lose weight, which is going to then, when you lose weight, that's going to improve your blood markers, your cholesterol, all those kind of things. And so diet soda is not bad, zero calories, better than 300 calories per bottle of soda. So those are my 2 examples for you, can make a big difference. Second thing is going to be leaner cuts of meat. And again, I'll give you 2 examples. So let's say right now beforehand I was doing, I was eating steak, right? Let's say I, you know, I wasn't in a calorie deficit. I was more just kind of like maintenance or a calorie surplus. And so I was getting the fattier version of a steak, right? What I'm going to do and what I have been doing when I go into a calorie deficit is I'm going to go from getting, let's say for every 4 ounces of this steak that I was getting, it was 12 grams of fat and 25 grams of protein, right? That was beforehand. Let's say now I want to make sure that I am getting a leaner version. So I'm going to go to something that has like, for example, Excuse me, 5 grams of fat and 22 grams of protein. So when you decrease the grams of fat, you automatically decrease the overall calories that you're going to consume from that meat. Now another example is let's say you go from chicken thighs to chicken breasts. You've probably seen like, why does everybody eat chicken breasts on a diet? Well, chicken thighs have a higher fat content, and the higher the fat content, the higher the calories are going to be. So what you can do is just simply go from a chicken thigh to a chicken breast. It's going to have essentially no fat and all protein. So it drastically decreases calories right there. Again, anywhere from, I would say roughly, obviously depending on how much you eat of it, roughly anywhere from 100 to 300 calories just from switching to a leaner version of meat. Let's say for example, you're getting right now, you're getting, you know, um, 90/10 ground beef. Okay? You can go to 97/3 or 96/4 ground beef, where again, it's gonna have a lower fat content, which means there's gonna be lower calories associated with that particular meat you are eating. Let's take eggs, for example. Let's say right now in the morning you're doing, you know, 3 whole eggs, right? And that has, call it roughly 18 grams of fat. What you can do is say, all right, I'm gonna have, let's just say I'm gonna have 1 whole egg and I'm gonna have 3 egg whites. This way, those 3 egg whites, there's no fat in those. It's just protein. So now you've decreased the fat intake, which is going to decrease the overall calories. You're not really changing anything though. You're still eating eggs. It's just you're going from 3 to 4 eggs to 3 to 4 whole eggs to maybe say 1 to 2 whole eggs and the rest egg whites. And so from there you decrease calories again, saving yourself anywhere from 80 to 160 calories. And let's just think about a day's worth of eating, for example. Let's say you save 100 calories at breakfast from switching to egg whites. Let's say, and by the way, there's nothing wrong with eating whole eggs. I'm just saying for the point of this video, you could potentially decrease calories and you still should include some whole eggs. It's just you can swap out for some egg whites. Let's say you save 100 calories there. Let's say you save 100 calories at lunchtime if you go from a steak, a fattier steak versus a leaner steak. And let's say you save 200 calories from going to chicken thighs to chicken breasts, right? 200 plus 100 plus 100, that's 400 calories right there that you could potentially save just by switching to a leaner cut of meat. So when you go to the grocery store and you buy these foods, take some time and look at the nutrition label to see what is inside these foods. How many grams of fat does it have? How many grams of protein does it have? What is the ratio? Because you'll find out there's probably a leaner version that you can incorporate into your day and it's Probably gonna be the same exact thing. And again, you don't have to do anything different or, like, cut anything out. It's just simply switching from fattier version to a leaner version. Number 3 is going to be, it's such a broad statement, but simply decreasing your portion size. So, for example, let's say right now you're having a bowl of cereal and that bowl of cereal, when you fill it up, it pretty much fills up the entire bowl, right? That's your portion size. You're filling up this bowl of cereal. to the entire bowl. Literally what you can do is just, let's say you're filling it up to almost the whole bowl, fill it up to halfway. And I know it seems so simple, but that right there will probably save you, again, depending on the brand of cereal, anywhere from 100 to 250 calories just from making a slight portion size shift. You're not doing anything differently. You're not cutting out foods. It's literally just having a portion size discrepancy. which is going to decrease calories and gonna help you get into that calorie deficit. Let's say, for example, again, you are having oatmeal. Let's say you're having a half a cup of oatmeal, right? You could have a fourth cup of oatmeal. That's literally it. Let's say right now you're having, you know, 2 slices of bread or 3 slices of bread. Let's say you go to 2 slices or 1 slice. That is going to decrease calories right there. Whatever you are having, you can make a difference in the portion size. And this is where even if you can't track calories perfectly, you can decrease the portion sizes that you are eating just by looking at how much you used to do and looking at what you do now. Literally something as simple— and it's not always easy— but literally something as simple as that is going to inherently decrease the calories because you're intaking less calories because the portion size is smaller. So if you decrease the portion size, you're going to automatically cut calories again without having to You can eat the same thing today, you can eat the same thing you ate yesterday, just a decrease in portion size, that's gonna get you in a calorie deficit. This is where people overcomplicate a lot of things and they get very overwhelmed 'cause they think they have to do all these things differently. If you literally just ate exactly what you've been eating but a little bit less, and again, I know it almost sounds like too simple to be true, but it is true, you would decrease the calories you are consuming. Look at your overall portion sizes of, again, whether it's cereal or whether it's milk or whether it's a piece of steak or whether it's rice or whether it's potatoes or whether it's the chips you snack on. If you normally have 3 handfuls of chips, go to 2 handfuls. Like, I know it seems super simple, but I promise you, like, it's just science. Like, you're going to eat less calories by decreasing your portion size. So keep that in mind as well. It's a super simple hack that no matter where you are, what you're eating, what you're doing, where you're at in your journey, Decreasing portion size helps with overall weight loss. All right, number 4, cooking oils. So roughly a tablespoon of olive oil is roughly 120 calories, right? Let's say you use that to cook your eggs, to cook your steak, and to cook your chicken. All right, now you're getting up there in overall calories, right? So now you have 2 options, you have 3 options here. Number 1, you could decrease the portion size like we just talked about. If you're using a tablespoon of olive oil, When you cook, when you put it in the pan or whatever, use a half tablespoon. So you're going from 120 calories to 60 calories. So now instead of having 300+ calories per day from oil, you're having 180 calories per day from oil. That's again gonna decrease the overall calories. So that's your first option. Your second option is using those sprays, which by the way, I know the label says it's 0 calories, it's not actually 0 calories because When you spray, like the serving size is like 1/4 second of a spray. So who goes and does like, and like they're done? Like nobody does that. They're like, shh, like 3 or 4 seconds worth, right? So those sprays, they still have calories, but they are significantly lower in calories. And so if you're doing like 3 seconds of spraying that pan and kind of covering it, that's roughly 30 to 50 calories. And again, those calories do add up because if you have it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, let's say it's 50 calories each time, you're still getting 150 calories from that spray. So just be mindful of that as well. But potentially that could decrease the amount of calories you're intaking by using some sort of spray as well. But just keep in mind it does have calories. So be conscious of, again, the serving size, the portion size, so to speak. If you're spraying the entire pan for 5 seconds, do a little spray and be done. 1 second, right? So decreasing that time, which is decreasing portion size. So that's the second one. And then number 3, you could find ways to potentially not need to use cooking oils. Like for example, I cook a lot of my food in the pressure cooker, I cook a lot of my food in the air fryer, and I cook a lot of my food on my indoor grill. I talk all about those 3 things in my video on how to meal prep, so feel free to check that video out. I talk all about it in there. But those 3 things, I don't need any oil for it. So it's very easy for me not to use oil and not to add extra calories because I don't need to add them because the cooking device that I'm using does not require them. And so, you know, you could potentially find things out like that. I know a lot of people have like that Ninja Foodi thing where it's like a pressure cooker, air fryer, all that stuff all in one. That's awesome, so definitely use that. But finding modalities to where you don't need to use cooking oil, that could be a potential change as well. So those So those 3 things when it comes to cooking oil, again, can save yourself literally hundreds of calories per day. And by the way, like, if you've done all these things, these 4 things thus far, like, you're gonna be dropping like 1,000 calories per day, which is just nuts to think about, but literally it can be that simple. So that's number 4. Number 5 is going to be protein. And if you know anything about me or my channel, I'm very big on protein, so I'll touch on this very quickly. Protein is the most satiating nutrient. It is going to fill you up the most. I say this all the time, but to this day I have people who message me from watching YouTube videos and they're like, Eric, I always hear you talk about protein, but I finally started eating more and I was, you know, I heard you for the longest time, but I just never really put it into action and I put it into action. Now I'm so full. I'm not hungry. Da da da. Protein's really important. So having protein every single time you eat, ideally at the very least at every single meal, If you, if you can incorporate it into your snacks as well, you're going to be living large and you're going to be full and you are going to be not hungry, which is if you're more full and you're more satisfied, you're more satiated. This means you're less hungry. If you're less hungry, you are going to eat less calories. So when talking about ways to cut calories, making sure you get enough protein into your diet is going to make sure you're not hungry and craving things later on. Like, for example, if you have a meal where you have, again, let's just call it steak, rice, and spinach, whatever the case may be, just 3 random foods, that meal's gonna fill you up so much. Whereas opposed to, let's say for example, your meal was, you know, 2 slices of bread and some peanut butter and like some chips. It's like, okay, well, you're gonna be hungry an hour later. So, I mean, you're probably gonna be eating an hour later 'cause you're getting hungry an hour later. Whereas opposed to the steak, The rice and the spinach, for example, that's gonna keep you full, keep you satisfied for a longer duration of time. So you won't feel that need, feel that urge to just like go eat more carbs, more carbs, more carbs, more carbs. And it's funny 'cause people are like, oh, when I eat carbs, I get really hungry. And I'm like, well, you gotta eat protein. Like, your body's actually wanting protein because what happens is like people say, oh, when I— especially when I eat sugar, I just wanna keep eating. You don't actually wanna keep eating sugar. The thing is you're not giving your body protein. So your body is saying, I'm hungry, but the way your brain processes that is, I'm hungry, I need a quick source of energy. What is a quick source of energy? Sugar. So you go and eat sugar and you never give your body protein, so it just keeps this cycle of like, I need sugar, I actually need protein, but I need sugar. So you eat more sugar, you never give protein, eat more sugar, never give protein, that cycle goes on and on. So to fix that, please eat some protein. I have an entire video on this channel on how to eat more protein, alright? Number 6, one of my faves and what I'm doing right now, and that is replace 1 meal per day with a big-ass salad. And I'm doing this right now. So currently, roughly, I'm eating 5 to 6 meals per day, and I mean like legit meals, not like little snacks, like meals. So what I'm doing is, I'll give you a quick example. One of my meals used to be, let's say I had chicken breasts, let's say I had some rice, and let's say I had some spinach, right? What I'm now doing is instead of eating chicken, rice, spinach, I am now doing chicken, big-ass salad. That's my meal. So, I'm essentially taking out the carbohydrates from that one meal and I'm inputting a big-ass salad into that meal. The salad actually has some like little— they're not croutons, but I don't know what they are, but there's some. There's like maybe 5 grams of carbs. But either way, I'm essentially replacing one meal that I was going to have carbohydrates with and I'm putting in— A big-ass salad in place of that meal. And again, this is not to say carbs are bad, and I hope if you know who I am, like, you know that. But carbs are not bad. You can eat carbs. You should eat carbs. Carbs are really, really great for so many things: energy, workout performance, sex drive, all this kind of stuff. So you should be having carbohydrates. But again, when looking to cut calories, if you replace— if you were having, again, let's just say you were having, I don't know, at lunch or at dinner, You were having this big serving of rice with steak and all this kind of stuff. Cool. Just swap that, swap that, swap that out for a big-ass salad. Still have the protein. If you want to throw in some other carbs, go ahead, but you can swap that out and it's automatically going to decrease the calories you're intaking. It's literally a staple in what I do whenever I go into a calorie deficit. I did this last year and this is how, this is what helped me lose 23 pounds in 8 weeks. So please, One big-ass salad per day. You're gonna ask me dressing and what should I have in it. Don't overcomplicate it. Get a big bowl. I just buy pre-made salad bags. Again, if you wanna go to that YouTube video, I talk about the salad bags I buy and what I do with them. It's all in that video. I think it's the meal prepping video, so check it out. But I literally just buy a pre-made salad bag, put it into a bowl, add some protein, and that's it. It's not complicated, not sexy, but it works. Number 7 is gonna be pickles. And so what I mean by this is like, I snack on pickles if I want something because they're like 0 calories. And so basically what the pickle concept is, is just find something you enjoy that is going to be really, really, really low calorie, either 0 calorie or relatively low calorie. Something like, sometimes people will like say they chew gum. Gum doesn't really do it for me. I need to like actually eat something. So I don't really enjoy gum. That's why I like pickles, 'cause I can actually, I've always liked pickles just from the taste. I like the taste of it. If you like pickles, let me know below. But I enjoy pickles because of the taste of it, but I actually enjoy eating something. I can't just chew gum. I actually need to eat something. So for me, I like pickles. Again, this isn't always the sexiest thing, but celery, for example. I actually enjoy celery as well, but I know some people are like, oh, celery sucks. Whatever. Find your calorie— either zero calorie or very, very, very, very, very low calorie snack. Snack that you can have kind of to go to if you just like— sometimes you just like want to eat something. Like sometimes I get it, sometimes you want to eat something, but when you do that, make sure it's, you know, on the lower calorie side as opposed to, oh, I want to eat something, let me grab 6 Oreos. It's like, all right, well, like, you know, that's 1,000 calories versus like 20 calories of celery or whatever the food is that you want to have. So pick— again, this might take some time from you, but find out what like low, very, very low calorie snack Snacks you enjoy having and then throw those in instead of having the higher calorie snacks, chips, cookies, candy, donuts, those kind of things. And again, you can have those foods, but when we're looking— when we're talking about cutting calories, that is something you can do as well. 8th thing is going to be eating out. So I just actually just did a video on eating out and losing weight. So if you want help with like how to go out to eat and kind of stick to your diet still, check that video out. But I would say limiting your going out to eat To 1 to 2 times per week. And honestly, I just think that most successful people who lose weight and keep it off and maintain a healthy body fat percentage, I think a lot of them do this anyway. I've just seen it from myself and also just from clients over the years. Trying to limit your eating out to 1 to 2 times a week, especially if you are earlier in your journey and you're really trying to make a change, I would try to limit your going out to eat because when you go out to eat, you truly don't know how many calories you're consuming. And that's okay. You don't need to be exact. You don't need to be perfect. It's not anything to freak out about. But just like, you don't know. You don't know how many calories you're consuming. And, you know, let's say for example, even if you go to a fast food chain restaurant, like, they probably have the calories where you can look up the calories, which is great. It's a wonderful thing. But even then, like, do you really know exactly how many calories it is? And like, for example, if you're going out to eat at a restaurant, Like 99.9% of the time, they're going to cook in olive oil. We just talked about cooking oils are very high calorie, right? They don't care how many calories the meal is. They want the meal to taste as good as possible so you like it, so you enjoy it, so you talk good about them, so you refer them to your friends. That's what their goal is. They don't care about how many calories is in that food. So maybe the recipe calls for a tablespoon of olive oil, But they put 3 tablespoons because they're like, all right, I know it's going to taste way better with 3 tablespoons. And that right there would add an extra, you know, 250 calories to your meal. You don't know that though. It's really, really hard to tell that. And even if like you're going to Chipotle, for example, one person might have a heavier scooping hand and somebody might have a lighter scooping hand. You just don't truly know. So if you're looking to decrease calories and cut calories as much as possible, limiting your eating out, going out to eat 1 to 2 times per week. In my opinion, again, 3 times a week, whatever, but 1 to 2 times a week, in my opinion, is gonna be what is most beneficial for you. Last but not least, the last thing on this list is fiber. I think something that gets underrated and under-talked about from, you know, I'm guilty of this as well, I think a lot of people talk so much about protein and we forget about fiber. So I'm guilty of this as well, but fiber is going to help because when you have a diet that's Moderately, you know, that is giving you adequate fiber. Fiber keeps you full. So again, going back to the protein, if you have enough fiber in your diet, you're gonna be less hungry. If you're less hungry, you're going to eat less calories overall because you're not craving things. And so when you're picking your carbohydrates, try to choose things that are a bit higher on the fiber side. So like oatmeal, for example, apples, for example, all kinds of fruits have tons of fiber in them. So picking those things. You know, you can do a quick Google search on what foods are high in fiber, but making sure you get enough fiber in your diet. Roughly speaking, for every 1,000 calories that you eat, you're wanting to get anywhere between 10 to 15 grams of fiber. So if you're eating 1,500 calories, you know, try to get 15 to 25-ish grams of fiber. That would be a great fiber amount to have during your day. And if you're not tracking your fiber, start tracking your fiber because again, it is going to— it's one of the most underutilized things when it comes to dieting and losing weight. It's going to help keep you full for a longer duration of time, so you're going to eat less calories, right? So that is the 9 top best things in my opinion when it comes to cutting calories. Hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please feel free to give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and leave a comment below so I can say what's up. All right.