Doctors hate this one weird “medieval” trick skinny-fat guys can use to eat Twinkies, Doritos, and other junk foods and still lose weight.

You can eat Twinkies and Doritos and still lose fat.

A nutrition professor at Kansas State University named Mark Haub ate mostly junk food, the stuff that makes nutritionists clutch their pearls and pray to Wikipedia, for ten weeks.

He lost 27 pounds.

You can eat whatever you want and still lose weight as long as you use this one weird “medieval” trick (doctors hate, of course) that blasts your belly fat faster than you can say pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (a real word, by the way):

Create an energy deficit.

In other words, don’t put butter in your coffee.

Creating an energy deficit is the heartbeat of ALL successful fat-loss diets, regardless of the advertised mechanism.

that has ever existed, regardless of what it’s wearing or what it calls itself or what handsome Instagram influencer is currently hawking it from a beach in Tulum. Back in 2006, when I went on my first official diet (capital O, capital D, very serious), I was convinced — convinced! — that I absolutely had to:

For instance, back in 2006, when I went on my first *official* diet, I thought I HAD to

eat six small meals every day and
eat fewer than 100g of non-white carbs.

, like a Victorian child being fed by a nanny on a strict schedule

carbs and those carbs absolutely positively couldn’t be colored white. no white bread. no white rice. no white sugar.

And so I did. This diet took me from skinny-fat to shredded in less than six months. It worked. But not because I ate six small meals and fewer than 100g of non-white carbs. It worked because I created a chronic energy deficit.

. It worked because, underneath all that noise, I had accidentally built myself a chronic energy deficit.

These days? I eat two meals per day (sometimes only one). I eat white potatoes. I eat white rice. I even drink hipster hoppy beer.

hoppy, smug little craft beer that costs $9 and tastes like a pinecone got into a fight with a grapefruit.

Guess what?

I lose fat so easily it should be illegal.

There’s nothing magic about my current two-meal setup (which I have lovingly, egotistically named Two Meal Muscle) except that it lets me create — and sustain — an energy deficit without having to think about it every six minutes of my waking life.

If you’re the type of person who likes first principles, who likes knowing why something works instead of just nodding along and handing over your credit card, stick with me while I deconstruct the energetic aspect of our existence down to its raw, gristly bones.

PART 1

Energy demand

Existing is a full-time, unpaid, extremely physical job that requires energy. Your heart needs energy to thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, forever (no lunch breaks, no union). Your intestines need energy to process the slice of chocolate-covered bacon you ordered at the state fair and pretended to enjoy because it was $7. Your brain needs energy to think even the dumbest thoughts, even the one you’re having right now: Wait is this article about dieting or am I being seduced? (Both. The answer is both.)

If you think you’re only “burning” energy when you’re huffing and sweating on a treadmill, you’re home-run wrong. You are, in the most unsexy and unglamorous sense, always exercising. Exercise, in the gym-bro sense, is just a manmade construct we slapped on top of something your body was already doing.

When you’re sitting on your couch doing absolutely nothing of note, you’re like a car idling in a parking lot. You’re still “on,” still burning fuel, just doing it at a slower rate than if you pushed the gas pedal to the pavement. Deliberate exercise increases the amount of energy your body would otherwise use, but not as much as the robots suggest. (Your WHOOP is a liar. A charming, well-funded liar.)

The bare minimum amount of energy your body needs just to keep existing — heart beating, brain thinking, organs doing their quiet thankless little jobs — is called your basal metabolic rate (BMR).

That’s you, theoretically in a coma. You are (I hope, deeply, sincerely) not in a coma. Even at your laziest, you’re still walking to the bathroom, walking to the fridge, flipping off the guy in the oversized pickup truck who merges four car-lengths past where merging is socially acceptable. All of that bumps your real number above BMR.

So here’s a quick and dirty napkin-math way to estimate a much more realistic amount of energy your body burns on a daily basis, something known as total daily energy expenditure (TDEE):

BODY WEIGHT (in pounds) × 13–15 = Average TDEE (in calories)

This equation tells you how many calories your body “burns” on a daily basis, and we have to pause here real quick because calories have a reputation problem. They’ve been cast as the villain in basically every diet horror story ever told: “fattening,” “sugar,” “the root of all evil since the Garden of Eden ate the apple.” But that’s just bad PR. Calories aren’t cruel. They’re simply a unit of measurement. Just like temperature can be measured in “degrees,” energy can be measured in “calories.” And, similarly, there’s no such thing as a “good” calorie or “bad” calorie just as there’s no such thing as a “good” degree or a “bad” degree (although I’m sure plenty of liberal arts majors would love to write a thinkpiece arguing otherwise).

Anyway…

If you weigh 180 pounds, your body’s burning somewhere between 2,340 and 2,700 calories a day, give or take. That’s an average. Your body doesn’t torch the exact same number every single day, and the formula is an estimate, not gospel. Plenty of fancier calculators try to factor in your body fat percentage, your activity level, how often you sneeze (kidding, mostly), but here’s the catch: stacking more variables on top of an already-fuzzy guess doesn’t make the guess more accurate, it just gives you more places for the error to hide.

You don’t actually know your exact body fat percentage. You don’t actually know your exact activity level, no matter how loudly you insist you “lift vigorously, not moderately.” Errors pile on top of errors, and pretty soon your fancy calculator has convinced you that you have the metabolism of a Tour de France cyclist when really you have the metabolism of a man who sits in a Honda Civic for nine hours a day.

The only truly accurate way to know your TDEE is to get a research lab to lock you inside a special vacuum-sealed chamber that measures every last wave of heat radiating off your body like you’re a loaf of bread in some scientist’s oven.

You do not have access to one of these chambers.

So you use BW × 13–15. That’s it. That’s the whole secret. Pour one out for nuance.

PART 2

Energy supply

 Your body gets its energy through a biochemical process I learned in undergrad exercise physiology in 2008 and forgot approximately four minutes after passing the final exam. I do not have wrinkles under my eyes. I am not coming to terms with the fact that I graduated college over a decade ago. Stop projecting onto me. You’re the one getting defensive here.

Here’s the simplified, glitter-lunged version: imagine a finite number of tiny red firecrackers floating around inside of you. Whenever your body needs energy — which, again, is constantly, every nanosecond, forever — it lights one of these little guys up. It explodes. The energy from that explosion gets used for everything: thinking, walking, blinking, producing the kind of flatulence that clears a room, building boulder-sized boogers in your sinuses, all of it.

Once a firecracker’s gone off, it’s spent. Done. Dead weight. And here’s the unsettling part: your supply of them is finite, yet your demand for energy never, ever stops — not for one split second of one split second of one split second.

Lucky for you, your body can rebuild these firecrackers using raw material harvested from food. Your intestines wring the nutritional guts out of that barbacoa burrito you devoured for lunch, and the resulting biochemical soup gets shipped off to recharge the firecracker supply, so the whole cycle can start again.

You can actually estimate how much of this raw material you’re shoveling in on any given day.

A long time ago, some enterprising soul shoved food into a metal box called a bomb calorimeter, lit it on fire (essentially), and measured how much energy came out. That little experiment is the reason your cereal box has a nutrition facts label on the side.

Track how much food you eat, dig into nutrition facts, and you can ballpark how much fuel you’re tossing at your digestive system. And if there’s no label — say, you bought a hunk of salmon wrapped in plain white butcher paper, no barcode, no nutritional confession of any kind — you can always go digging. Three ounces of salmon clocks in around 177 calories. There are 12.8 ounces in 0.8 pounds. Do the math, and that lonely, labelless hunk of fish is hiding roughly 700 calories inside it the whole time, smug and silent.

Nutrition fact labels are required on most packaged foods and they tell you how many calories are in one serving of the food in question (among other things). This is assumed to equal the amount of energy your body extracts and uses (even though it’s not). If you track how many servings you eat, you can estimate how much energetic material you’re tossing at your intestines.

If there’s no nutrition facts label on the package, you can usually find a food’s nutrition facts on the internet. The salmon I bought yesterday is wrapped in white butcher paper. Says there are 0.8 pounds of salmon inside, but there are no nutrition facts. Alas, after lobbing “salmon nutrition facts” at Google, I can see three ounces of salmon contains roughly 177 calories. There are 12.8 ounces in 0.8 pounds. Therefore, the hunk of salmon I have contains roughly 700 calories.

 

PART 3

Internal energetic material

 

Occasionally, my pessimistic brain inserts itself into my consciousness (like Jack Nicholson’s “Here’s Johnny!” scene in The Shining) and reminds me that, at any moment, Earth can murder us. If oxygen pulled a Houdini and vanished from the air for five consecutive minutes tomorrow, 93.75% of humans (myself included) would die.

Fortunately, we can survive longer than five minutes without eating food despite needing energy 24/7. This is because we have the ability to store energetic material, similar to how a car has the ability to store fuel. Your car doesn’t need to be permanently plugged into an electrical outlet in order to function (like your vacuum cleaner). Your car is able to store fuel inside its shell and use it for energy when needed.

Humans are similar. The food you eat gets broken into energetic material and is tucked away inside of you until it’s needed. Your liver houses energetic material. Your muscles house energetic material. Your fat cells house energetic material (don’t pretend like you didn’t see that one coming).

Your fat cells are arguably the king of storing energetic material.

You have a lot of them and they can stretch and expand like a balloon to hold a gross amount of energetic material. Other storage facilities aren’t as spacious, but the body isn’t wasteful. If a smaller storage facility reaches capacity, any further excess will get rerouted to your fat cells.

Finding a home for every last drop of energetic material is a useful quirk to have when food is scarce. More energetic material trapped inside of you widens the gap between “I can’t find food” and “I’m dead.” In general, you have enough energetic material inside of you to survive without food for at least three weeks.

 

PART 4

Energy Balance Equation

The relationship between energy demand, energy supply, and internal energetic material gives rise to the Energy Balance Equation. The Energy Balance Equation is a mathematical formula stating the relationship between energy demand and energy supply leads to changes in the amount of internal energetic material you have.

The Energy Balance Equation functions in a pattern more predictable than Flash Man’s. Within a discrete window of time, there are three potential outcomes:

Positive energy balance (energy surplus)

This is when supply is greater than > demand. You have a surplus of incoming energetic material, which results in an increase in internal energetic material. This increases your body weight.

Example: Your body demands 2000 calories on Monday and you supply 2147 calories. The leftover 147 calories are put into storage. (Things don’t happen this precisely, but you get the idea.)

Negative energy balance (energy deficit)

This is when demand is greater than > supply. You have a deficit of incoming energetic material, which results in a decrease in internal energetic material. This decreases your body weight.

Example: Your body demands 2000 calories on Monday and you supply 1900 calories. The missing 100 calories will be taken from storage to cover the demand. (Things don’t happen this precisely, but you get the idea.)

Neutral energy balance

This is when demand is similar to supply, which keeps levels of internal energetic material stable. This doesn’t impact your body weight.

Example: Your body demands 2000 calories on Monday and you supply 2000 calories. There’s no change. (Things don’t happen this precisely, but you get the idea.)

Considering body fat is a form of internal energetic material, the old-world fat-loss trick (that’s been around since humans evolved from fish, or whatever) is standing in the buff before us:

Create an energy deficit.

Figure out how much energy your body demands on a daily basis, then supply less. Your body will be forced to use internal energetic material (of which body fat is included) to cover the cost of living, which will lead to weight loss.

Neither Twinkies nor Doritos will prevent you from creating an energy deficit, which is why you can eat them and still lose fat… even though you shouldn’t. 

Energy isn’t the only substance we extract from food that’s essential to our survival. Food also gives us nutrients. Even pants-pooping preschoolers know pirates died of scurvy, not starvation.

Creating an energy deficit is king for fat loss, but you can’t forget to nourish yourself (lest you want to grow a goiter).

Want to know the BEST foods to eat for fat loss?

(I know you do.)

Check out ANTHONYECTOMY.

Or keep these 3 things in mind.

You should eat mostly nutrient-dense foods that give body what needs to function (hate to break, but not T or D).

Eating enough to facilitate fat loss, but not so little you can’t get the nutrients needs. (in some sense, losing fat is at odds w/ optimal)

Eating foods w/ nutrients will nudge the body to burn fat as opposed to (b/c ebe says …)

Eating foods w/ nutrients for health