Simple Strategies to Manage Your Diet Without Tracking Calories

If you don’t want to track, what else can you do to help manage your energy intake?

When it comes to managing energy intake, there are countless strategies one may use to help with this goal. Some of which, are even beyond tracking. 

Wild, right?

Although I am a fan of tracking calories in certain contexts, I will never say it doesn’t come without it’s downsides and potential risks. First of all, it can be quite tedious. Secondly, it can be problematic for some folks. If you have a history of disordered eating related issues, and tracking seems to do you net harm on that front, then I’d say it’s not worth it for you individually. While for some folks, the sheer annoyance of it may be enough to deter them away from tracking all together. 

Now, is that a death sentence to being able to successfully manage energy intake? Of course not. There are numerous strategies you can apply to your diet/habits around food than can also help with this goal. Also, even if you track, these are strategies you can also add onto tracking too. It doesn’t have to be “either-or”.

So let’s talk about some of these strategies. This will not be the definitive list, but these are some that are backed by research and ones I use often when coaching clients and think they’re worth talking about. 

1. Slowing Down Eating Pace. 

I’ve talked about this strategy before and am generally a fan of this strategy. Mainly because it’s portable, free and can be quite helpful. Even with it’s simplicity, it can also be deceivingly hard. I personally struggle a whole lot witht his one and is one that I’ve found very helpful in the past.

How much of an effect can it have?

One meta-analysis from Robinson et al. 2014 showed slower eating to make a “small” to “medium” effect on reducing energy intake when compared to eating at a faster pace. 

The strategies looked at to reduce eating pace were:

• Being verbally instructed to “chew slowly and take your time.”

• Eating harder & softer versions of the same food. Where harder would typically be slower and softer would be faster.

• Being cued from a computer screen to modify eating pace

• Adjusting eating delivery. One was comparing eating from a spoon(slow) to a straw (fast). The other one was eating from a container that refilled slowly vs. fast.

In general, the slower eating conditions led to eating less than the faster conditions. The magnitude was not huge, but it was a consistent small or medium effect size. The computerized cuing saw the largest effect as well. 

Simply put, while this strategy won’t be transformative, it will likely only do net good. Eating slower can help you be more mindful and aware of your appetite cues and is only associated with eating less as opposed to more. 

2. Put Friction Between You & Mindless Snacking

Oh the old “nibble, nibble.” One of my favourite past times. My partner and I have a running gag around our home about “fridge grapes”. Which exactly what they sound like: grapes you eat directly out of the fridge. Personally, I think they make grapes extra delicious, but unfortunately they do still count towards your daily energy intake. This is not an inherent issue. The only problem is if you’re aiming to manage your energy intake and you completely forget about these occurrences. 

Now this example is potentially a positive one above. As it’s likely better to snack on grapes than candy. So if you find yourself succumbing to “pantry candies”, then “fridge grapes” could be a win. Now, if you wanted to minimize both, a little bit of friction can go a long way. 

One study from Poelman et al. 2014 looked at how common 32 identified evidence based behaviours for managing energy consumption were among 3 different cohorts. 

This study used a five-point Likert scale to assess how commonly the behaviours were used. 5 would be the most, 1 would be the least. 

Two of the most used behaviours that were mid 4s across the board were revolved around this topic:

• “Store tempting foods (such as sweets and candies) well packaged, out of sight and out of reach.”

• “Don’t store (tempting) foods in several places such as in the glove compartment of the car or the desk drawer at work. Keep these places snack-free!”

Both of these examples would have your most tempted foods being highly convenient and easily accessible. Again there is nothing inherently wrong with this, but if you struggle with managing your food intake, this could become a potential issue. 

You might think you can just will-power your way through it. But it’s really not that worth it. Considering one study showed we can make up to over 200 food related decisions in a day, adding more decisions, especially ones involving saying “no” to delicious foods within our reach is simply a waste of energy in my opinion. 

3. Prioritizing Minimally Processed Foods — Especially Lean Proteins & Fiber

I know what you’re thinking: “No shit, Sherlock.” And to that I say, “that’s fair.”But this is still an important strategy to focus on. Especially if you’re not tracking calories. Since we know managing energy balance is going to be the key here, it goes without saying that you can eat anything you want without gaining weight as long as you’re at energy balance. With that in mind, the question of “should you eat a lot of calorie dense, ultra-processed foods while trying to manage energy intake?” is still going to be answered with a “No” in most cases. 

One study from Hall et al. 2019 had 20 subjects in a metabolic ward (where they stay the entire time and are fed/monitored) for 28 days. They were essentially able to eat as much as they like during the entire time as food was prepared and made available to them. Each subject spent two weeks with access to an “unprocessed diet” and then two weeks with access to “ultra-processed diet”. 

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to find they ate significantly more during the “ultra-processed” diet period than in the “unprocessed” period. A difference of about 500 calories on average, in fact. 

What made things worse, was that even though the ultra-processed group ate significantly more they didn’t have higher fullness and satisfaction scores. They also had similar hunger scores as the unprocessed diet group. Lastly, they did eat significantly faster than the unprocessed group — which ties back into the first behaviour we discussed. 

Even though I suggest adopting a flexible approach to dieting where you do make room for your favourite foods, this does not mean I recommend filling up a meaningful amount of your daily energy intake from ultra-processed, highly palatable foods that are higher in energy density than their minimally processed counter parts. 

Prioritizing the bulk of your diet around minimally processed foods will be very helpful in managing energy intake. Especially for lean protein and fibrous plant foods. As these foods will be lower in energy density, helpful in the process of feeling full/satisfied and although this is a small component, will generally have a higher thermic effect of feeding. 

The approach of addition by subtraction is one that I like in this context. Where instead of just saying “I’m going to avoid all ultra-processed foods!” you simply add in more lean proteins, fruits, veggies etc. The aim is to crowd out the foods you’re aiming to eat less of by eating more of the highly nutritious, fillings foods I mentioned. 

Another strategy that can be helpful here is using the old 80/20 rule. In this context, it make look like setting up your diet with roughly 80% of the food from minimally processed sources and having roughly 20% from less nutritious, but tastier sources. This way you’re quite literally prioritizing minimally processed foods while not being rigid in and dichotomizing certain foods as being “off limits”.

4. Following a Consistent Meal Rhythm

One undervalued habit I think when it comes to eating, is having a consistent meal rhythm. I think we can all agree that having chaotic eating patterns generally doesn’t bode well. It also touches on all the other habits we’ve discussed. It’s going to be hard to work on mindful eating if your eating patterns are all scattered. It’s also unlikely that you’ll find yourself deviating from your typical eating patterns to gorge on some broccoli. It’s often the more fun foods that can the lead to the deviation from your typical eating behaviours. 

This makes meal regularity and rhythm a helpful strategy. This doesn’t have to mean eating three square meals per day either. It may look like eating two meals with a planned snack or two. It can also mean eating four meals per day. I think lifestyle and preference are two things you need to respect when trying to establish more regular eating patterns. 

Considering there is research supporting the idea you should aim to eat more of your calories earlier in the day in order to maximize weight loss while intentionally dieting, this always has to be implemented within the context of your lifestyle and what you can sustain. If that is simply unfeasible for you, that’s totally okay. That paper I mentioned did show greater weight loss over the 20 week period for the early eaters, but the difference was 4.8 lbs. Which is meaningful, but the late eating group still lost about 17 lbs in 20 weeks. 

I only bring this up because I see a lot of folks get trapped with shooting for optimization when their basics aren’t down. In this example, if you have erratic an eating schedule, I suggest you focus on achieving some regularity first before trying to make it the optimal eating schedule. 

If front loading your calories (meaning eating more in the early half of the day) is just not feasible, that’s totally okay. You can still backload with intention and planing while not being totally screwed. In all honesty, shooting for whatever eating schedule you can most sustain is the best practical strategy here. 

It’s also something that has been observed in folks who maintain their weight loss, which as I’ve written about before, is often more challenging than losing the weight in the first place. 

The lean habits study, looked at behaviours that were correlated with maintaining 5% of initial bodyweight lost for 3 years. The two habits that had the biggest impact on increasing odds to have maintained weight loss at 3 years were food choice and meal rhythm — definitions of both below. 

• Food choice: These questions assess the avoidance of fatty foods or sweets and preference of vegetables and fruit.

• Meal rhythm: These items assess regular meal rhythm and the avoidance of snacking and nibbling.

As you’ll see above, the habit of food choice increased the odds of sustained weight loss by 81%, and the habit of meal rhythm increase the odds of sustained weight loss by 71%. 

Since this article has already discussed food choice, I think focusing on the meal rhythm component is more valuable here. The definition in this study ties in quite nicely to my suggestion. Now I think “mindlessly snacking” should be caveated in this context, as that’s likely more of a problem than planned, accounted for snacking. Regardless, having regular meals seems to not only be helpful for achieving weight loss, but also for maintaining it. 

If you have a more sporadic eating schedule, this habit could be low hanging fruit with long lasting benefits. Don’t get bogged down with optimization. Instead, aim to organize eating regularity however you can. That may have to look like skipping breakfast due to a hectic early morning and having two big meals between lunch and dinner planned. Alternatively with this option, making a high protein easy breakfast (like 1–2 scoops of protein powder mixed with water) can be quite helpful here too. Regardless, if you can schedule certain eating times and aim to follow it with relative predictability, it will often allow you to have a much better sense of your overall diet and then also more agency to control and tweak it if your goals aren’t being met. 

I think we’ve all experienced the daunting attempt to try and remember everything you ate on a day where you nibbled, grazed and picked at food sporadically throughout the day. If you had a predictable amount of meals at relatively predictable time, making dietary adjustments becomes significantly easier. This is a large reason why I think this habit can be quite helpful. 

Summary & Takeaways

• Tracking calories is only one strategy you can use to help manage your overall diet.

• You don’t have to track. There are several other strategies you can use that can also help with managing your diet and energy intake.

• Things such as slowing down your eating pace, priming your environment to make mindless snacking more difficult, regulating and eating at consistent meal times and prioritizing less calorie dense & satiating foods are all great examples.

• If one strategy works the best for you, then start with that one and master it. From there you can add more with the goal of having it become a consistent part of your eating behaviours.

• It doesn’t have to be complicated! All that matters is that it’s effective and works for you.

Cheers, 
Coach Dylan 🍻

References:

1. Eat Slow, Eat Less?
https://www.five-elements.ca/blog-2/eat-slow-eat-less

2. A systematic review and meta-analysis examining the effect of eating rate on energy intake and hunger
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24847856/

3. Behavioural strategies to control the amount of food selected and consumed
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666313003978?via%3Dihub

4. Mindless Eating: The 200 Daily Food Decisions We Overlook
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0013916506295573

5. Ultra-processed diets cause excess calorie intake and weight gain: An inpatient randomized controlled trial of ad libitum food intake
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7946062/

6. Thermic effect of food and sympathetic nervous system activity in humans
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8878356/

7. Timing of food intake predicts weight loss effectiveness
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3756673/

8. Forget Weight Loss, Let’s Talk About Weight Loss Maintenance
https://www.five-elements.ca/blog-2/forget-weight-loss-lets-talk-about-weight-loss-maintenance

9. Behavioural correlates of successful weight reduction over 3 y. Results from the Lean Habits Study
https://www.nature.com/articles/0802530