You can have nutritious, filling meals that taste really good without excessive calories, you just need to learn to cook. It's also a hell of a lot cheaper than eating fast food all the time.
Yeah, the best bread I've ever had was the one I made last week. I use a focaccia recipe season with rosemary, sage, dried onion, dried garlic, and parsley. I sometimes stuff it with mozzerella with a touch of asiago and parmesian cheeses and Jalapenos, but alternatively I can make it into 2 slender loaves rolled in the cheese and jalapeno for sandwich bread. For soft crust it's a wash made of egg and water applied every 11 minutes until the cheese on the outside starts to darken, but for hard crust it's water or oil applied at the start and halfway through. It's important to make sure every ingredient is room temperature at the start, including the egg.
That aside, we're discussing anon getting to eat McDonalds by only adjusting the amount, so please try your best to remain on topic.
Yes, switching to water can drastically reduce the calories in my example.
Daily Calorie use starts at around 2100 for a male 35 y/o at 5'9" and only goes up with physical activity. The number I cited for a big mac meal, 1350, is basically a consumption limit for dieting. Extreme diets go as low as 850 or even fasting. You can in theory still lose weight by consuming any number less than 2100 but the effectiveness will be hard to see and there will be a margin of error in nutritional labeling for calories.
I've personally found lower deficits to be more maintainable over time, with a big deficit you can see the effects really fast but I also find that my weight was more prone to rubberband very quickly after stopping the diet.
If you can maintain a super low deficit and then keep the weight that way after that's great, I just don't think it's really universally applicable.
Lower deficits and exercising are much more effective to lose weight long term instead of doing the yo-yo like the majority of people who believe in diets.
I didn't have much money, and my doctor told me I was eating twice as much as I should so I figured I'd cut my grocery bills in half. One trick I learned was that if I was hungry I'd drink a big glass of water and wait fifteen minutes. If I was still hungry I'd have more water and wait another fifteen minutes. If I was still hungry I'd have a small bowl of pasta or rice with vegetables.
Got down to my ideal weight in about six months, alongside a lot of manual labor getting and keeping a house ready for sale. It also helped that I didn't have a significant other, so mealtimes weren't social.
1 pound of body fat = 3500 calories, so if your normal caloric requirement is 2500 calories a day and you instead eat 2000 calories a day, you will lose one pound a week. Which doesn't sound like a lot but if you keep that up for one year you can lose 52 pounds - which is a lot.
Alright, but the daily expenditure will go down alongside your current weight. The average* 35 y/o 5'9" man, who exercises at least 30min a day 5 days a week, who weighs 217 will maintain weight at 2,871 while at 165 lbs will maintain at 2,452.
*average is emphasized to help explain why the calorie number is larger than in previous comments, which were a minimum estimate.
A 420 calorie drop from a 52-pound weight loss implies a resting metabolic requirement for body fat tissue of about 8 calories per pound, which I think is a serious overestimate but I'm not sure. I've seen some sources claim 2 calories per pound for fat and 6 calories per pound for muscle, but other sources have claimed significantly higher amounts.
If anything you've highlighted the discrepancy between maintaining 300lbs at both 2200 and 4200, but more importantly my comment was about how calorie requirements go down pretty moderately as your weight decreases and your response to that was "at 300 very big number of calorie".
According to THIS calculator your estimate is 900 calories too high.
Part of the reason for my condescending reply was you linking that garbage tier magazine article to me.
Yeah, that is why vegetables especially are good for dieting. Low on calories, but full of fibre, which makes you feel full for a much longer time. A burger meal is full of carbohydrates and fat, and you will soon feel hungry again a short while after eating it, regardless of its high caloric content, simply because it lacks fibre.
It's sort of a scientific grey area. Lots of studies say there is evidence both ways, and magazines take those and run with it to say whatever they want. Another factor is heat creation, particular with cold food and drink. Measurements have shown a varied diet could have a Daytime DIT anywhere between 5% and 50% of energy expenditure, not to mention energy expended on ATP production and various stages of digestion.
Another big factor is nutrient content, such as protein vs carbohydrates.
If you think about it, getting up and walking to the fridge is like 2 calories right there so if celery has 14 then it's not hard to imagine a deficit.
In the past I've been able to lose weight by limiting myself to 1 meal a day + exercising but its really terrible that all is what it takes to stop gaining weight. The human body is too goddamn efficient to the point it's fucking everyone over.