How To Lose Weight Without Diet or Exercise (It Can Be Done)

I had a frustrating conversation with my roommate’s girlfriend last week.

Like so many people coming out of several months of lockdown, she found that she had put on a few extra kilograms (pounds, for all of you non-metric readers) of unwanted weight. It wasn’t anything noticeable in my eyes, but the way that she spoke, one might think that she’d ingested a baby elephant that was now refusing to pass.

The first piece of advice I offered seemed the most obvious. ‘Why don’t you go on a diet?’ I asked haughtily, assuming this the clearest path to her achieving her body goals. She told me she didn’t want to, that she didn’t have time to think about that. And what was more, she didn’t want to be one of ‘those people,’ that spent their days counting calories and eating celery sticks dipped in hummus.

My second piece of advice felt equally as redundant. ‘Why don’t you just exercise some more?’ I threw it out there, thinking this to be the end of the conversation. But alas, this wasn’t an option either. With a full-time job, a relationship she was trying to make work, friends she needed to see on weekends, and hobbies she was balancing, she couldn’t fathom how she’d fit an hour of exercise a day into a schedule that was already threatening to burst apart, much like her favorite ill-fitting top. The situation was hopeless.

Now, I’ve been going to the gym consistently for over ten years. I have a workout program that is suited to my lifestyle. I also have an eating program that allows me to eat pretty much whatever I want, without fear of unwanted kilos hitting my belt. If I stray from either of these programs, it’s simple for me to readjust, moderate and get myself back on track. I don’t tell you this to brag, but to point out that when it comes to all things weight gain (and loss) I consider myself a bit of an expert.

But the conversation got me thinking. Is there a way to lose weight without having to count calories like an Instagram model prepping for a new shoot? Or to do so without lifting weights and running every day like a single twenty-something getting ready for a summer at the beach, oiled up and squished into a pair of Speedos?

This article isn’t going to help you lose mass amounts of weight. That’s not its purpose. Instead, it’s going to walk you through the basics of weight gain and weight loss, so you know why it occurs and how best to counteract it. You won’t need to change your diet. You won’t need to exercise. All you will need to do is be aware of your goal, and then follow the steps provided.

Losing weight without diet or exercise is easy. You’re about to find out why.

DOES BODY WEIGHT EVEN MATTER?

I want to be clear here. This article isn’t designed to fat shame. Nor is its intent to suggest that losing weight is healthy. In fact, the steps that I will provide can be reverse engineered, and be applied to anyone looking to gain weight (although if your goal is to gain weight, you probably don’t need a Medium article to tell you how. Just an Ubereats account).

Once upon a time, there was a supposed correlation between being overweight and being unhealthy. This was a false equivalency which we would all do better to ignore. I have friends who are ‘fat’ by modern measurable standards, who are also far and away healthier than I am, they simply like to eat. I also have friends who are rakes, but are some of the least healthy people I know.

The amount of fat you have on your body, and how healthy you are, are irrespective of personal health. This article is purely written from a superficial standard, the idea that you might want to lose a little belly fat so you can fit into your jeans. Don’t misconstrue it and think that losing weight will make you healthy. Ironically enough, the opposite is more often than not the case.

GAINING WEIGHT (IT’S A NUMBERS GAME)

Calories in versus calories out. It really is that simple.

If you want to lose weight without going on a diet or exercising, this is the one thing that you need to remember. The amount of calories that you eat needs to be less than what your body burns during the day. There is no secret formula. No special trick. The Illuminati doesn’t hold the key. It really is as simple as eating less calories than what your body burns.

The traditional way to ensure that you expel more calories than you eat is through exercise, no one is going to deny that. The other method is to diet hard, eat less and hope for the best. But we don’t want you doing that either, otherwise this article would serve no purpose.

THE ‘HEALTHY CALORIE’ MYTH

One point I do want to make is that the type of calories you eat DO NOT MATTER. And by that I mean that when it comes to weight gain, ‘healthy calories’ don’t exist.

Just to give you an example. A large portion of my diet is dedicated to carbohydrates. Most of this comes from potatoes and rice (that’s just the harsh reality of a gym diet). But I always save a little bit for junk food. Maybe its chocolate. Often, it’s alcohol. Last week I was really craving full strength Coke, which is nearly all sugar. Was it healthy? God no. Was it fine to drink? For me, it was. And even better, for you it can be too.

THE TAKEAWAY

Before I launch into the simple steps that you need to take to lose weight without diet or exercise, I do want to make one more thing clear. As you are trying to lose weight here, you will be eating less food than you did last week. Again, that’s just the reality of the situation and there’s no way around it. So, get that into your head.

But that doesn’t mean you’re going on a diet. Not even close.

To me, a diet has always been a designed way of eating with a specific purpose. It’s something that you are beholden to, that restricts what you can and can’t put in your mouth. I’m not about that life, and neither should you be. It is restrictive, stressful, and often leads to you missing out on activities and outings simply because you can’t bear to stray from your eating plan. That’s no way to live.

This is about teaching you how to lose weight without worrying about the whole diet fad.

Yes, you are going to be eating less. But you’re not going to realize it, and soon enough it will become a way of life so engrained in your psyche it will be like breathing. Or rather, it will be as second nature as chewing.

HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT WITHOUT DIET OR EXERCISE

STEP ONE: TRACK YOUR FOOD

This has nothing to do with scales or measurements.

What I’ve found is that the average person goes about their daily eating routine in a pretty consistent way, even if they don’t realize it. Most people have three meals a day, and even more people than that have a snack or two thrown in for good measure. Along with that there are the liquids they consume, and the alcohol that they drink. This is all fine.

What I want you to do is be aware of what you eat. Take a week or two and pay attention to each meal, and find a theme among them. I bet that your breakfast is almost always the same thing. Your lunch? I’m sure that you have 3–4 regular meals that are your ‘go to’ standards. Your dinners too might seem wild and unpredictable, but I bet that after two weeks of paying attention, you’ll find that they all consist of similar proportions and ingredients.

Write these down, become aware of them, know what you’re putting into your body. By the end of the one to two-week period, you will have a good idea of what your diet consists of. Broad strokes here. Nothing too challenging yet.

STEP TWO: ADDED CALORIES

Now that you know what you eat, it’s time to take a look at the added calories.

An added calorie is a food group that is usually added for flavor or texture, but rarely for filling. In your coffee, this might be the milk you always add. On your salad, this might be the dressing or something as simple as croutons added for crunch. Do you use tomato sauce (ketchup) regularly? Is there a curry paste that you add to everything? Do you butter your bread, use oil when you cook, or maybe sprinkle in sugar to everything you eat?

Again, don’t do anything about it yet. But when you are looking at your weekly eating patterns, keep an eye out for these little additives. I don’t even want you to count or measure how much of each you add. Just know that they exist and are the number one reason that you can’t lose weight.

STEP THREE: REPLACING ADDED CALORIES

The number one thing that I did when I first started ‘cutting’ for summer was to drop the milk out of my coffee. I was drinking two lattes a day, both with full cream milk. This equated to a little under 2 cups of milk a day, which contained roughly 20grams of carbohydrates and another 12 grams of fat. That’s almost 190 calories just from coffee! Cutting that milk out was an obvious choice. But I didn’t do it all at once

First, I started drinking light-milk. The difference was somewhere in the range of 100 calories a day, which was minute. After a few weeks of this, I had one of those coffees black, the other with light-milk. Two weeks later I was having two black coffees a day, no milk and saving myself 190 calories without even trying.

Now, it’s up to you.

Look back over your weekly diet and go on the hunt for anything calorie dense. I mentioned milk being a big one, but there are plenty of others. If you have a Subway sandwich for lunch once a week, don’t worry about the bread. Instead, look to the sauce you smother all over that footlong. If you make bolognaise every Thursday (which I do) be aware of the brand you are using for the sauce base, check the label, look to the calories and try and find one that has less sugar and fat. Even the meat you cook with! When you are making that delicious spag bol, buy lean beef mince instead of the standard. Or better, buy extra lean!

What you’re trying to do is slowly remove calories from your diet that you didn’t even realize you were eating. The proportions here are going to be the exact same but, if you modify and substitute correctly, the calories will drop and the weight will fall off.

STEP FOUR: EAT LESS

It almost seems so obvious that it shouldn’t need to be mentioned, right? Unfortunately, if you want to lose weight and then keep on losing it, you will have to eat less. But the good news is, it doesn’t have to be that hard. I don’t want you skipping meals. That actually is bad for you. What I want instead is for you to simply exercise a little portion control.

Now that you know how much you eat each day, keep ordering or making those same size meals. Weight loss is about consistency, and trying to modify things too quickly can only hinder your journey. But, once you have your favorite dinner plated and ready to eat, take a spoon and unload a single large spoonful. That’s it. Don’t skip the meal. Don’t cut it in half. Don’t even try and fit it on a smaller plate. Simply eradicate that final mouthful that you know you’re going to be struggling to fit in anyway.

One dirty little secret about weight loss is that the slower you do it, the better it is in the long run. Sure, you can take an entire weekend off eating and lose a few quick kilos. But that won’t last and when you do have a bad day, they’ll pile back on faster than you can think. Slow and steady actually does win the race here, so take it at your own pace.

And remember, eating a little less here and there (even a single mouthful per meal) can make a huge difference in the long run.

STEP FIVE: DON’T STRESS (WHEN YOU SLIP)

This is a point that needs to be made as it effects the casual weight loss enthusiasts just as much as it effects the die-hard fans. When you have a bad day or a bad week, don’t stress about it. Don’t worry about it. Don’t even think about it. Simply pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on.

I’m currently cutting my calories to try and lose a few extra percentiles of body fat. I’m already at about 9%, which means that when I go over my calorie limit, I can feel it. I wake up the next morning looking bloated, I jump on the scale and see the difference. For me, these slips usually come in the form of drinking. A night out on the vodka lime sodas still equates to hundreds of calories that aren’t a part of my diet.

But when I do have these bad days, I simply put them in the rear-view mirror and move on. The key here is to try and have more good days than bad. If you are consistent (which we’ve already established most people are, even when they don’t realize) than these bad days will be a mere blip on the radar.

This is a long-term goal, not a short one. So, stop thinking about it as such.

STEP SIX: ENJOY THE PROCESS

Congratulations, guys and gals, you did it! You made it through the steps! You’re eating the same, but you’re somehow losing weight. It’s a miracle! But wait, there’s more. Just the final step to really round the whole thing out.

The heading of this article claimed that you won’t have to diet or exercise in order to lose weight, and I stand by that. If you follow these steps above, then what you are doing isn’t dieting, it is simply modification. But what happens next?

This shouldn’t be a chore for you, and if you keep at it, it won’t be. The beauty of losing weight, or really seeing any change in your body, is that eventually you’re going to want to keep at it. When you try those jeans on that used to barely fit up your leg but now glide over it like butter on a hot plate, you’ll want to push yourself further. Not too hard, not too extreme, but you will want to see more. That’s just human nature.

So, I encourage you to start small here and get the hang of it. If you slip up, don’t panic, just take a deep breath and keep going. And sooner rather than later you’re going to be so hooked on losing weight that you might even consider exercising or dieting harder. Not that you need to, of course. By now you should well and truly be aware of that.

And there you have it, how to lose weight without diet or exercise. It might have sounded impossible ten minutes ago, but by now I’m sure you’re shaking your head at how easy it is. And so you should be.