How to create a calorie deficit without starving

Every diet that works — low-carb, low-fat, intermittent fasting, “clean eating” — works the same way underneath: for a while you eat less energy than you burn. That gap is the calorie deficit. The diets differ only in how they help you keep it. So the useful questions are how big the gap should be and how to make it comfortable enough to last.

Step 1: know roughly what you burn

Start from an estimate of your daily energy expenditure — our TDEE calculator does it from age, height, weight and activity. Treat it as a first guess: for one person in three the formula is off by 10% or more. The real number comes from your own diary and weigh-ins over a few weeks.

Step 2: choose a gap you can live with

A deficit of about 300–500 kcal a day — roughly 0.25–0.5 kg a week at first — is what most people can hold for months. The calorie deficit calculator shows the daily target for each pace and roughly how long your goal will take. Bigger deficits look faster on paper but cost more muscle, more hunger and, usually, an earlier stop. Stay above about 1,200 kcal a day for women and 1,500 for men without a doctor.

Step 3: make the deficit easy

• Protein at every meal. It keeps you full longest and protects muscle while you lose fat; 1.6–2.2 g per kg a day is a good range when cutting (the protein calculator gives yours).
• Volume for few calories. Vegetables, soups, fruit, beans and whole grains fill the stomach for little energy.
• Cut what you won’t miss. Sugary drinks, alcohol, cooking oil poured freely, the third biscuit. Small, boring changes beat heroic ones.
• Keep moving. Walking and strength training help more through keeping muscle and mood than through the calories on the watch.
• Sleep. Short nights raise hunger the next day.

Step 4: watch the trend, not the scale

Body weight swings by a kilo or more from day to day with water, salt and the food in your gut. Weigh yourself a few times a week and look at the average over two or three weeks. If it falls about as planned, keep going. If it has been flat for a fortnight while you logged honestly, lower the target by 100–150 kcal — the body burns less as it gets lighter, so the target has to follow.

How foodoo keeps the target honest

foodoo starts from the same formula, then reads the last four weeks: what you ate on fully logged days and what your weigh-ins say happened. From that it works out what you really burn and moves your daily target towards it — in small steps, at most 150 kcal every few days, never below a safe floor, never when you set your targets by hand. Without enough weigh-ins it does not guess; it asks you to weigh in. Logging takes a photo or a sentence, and if numbers stress you, a “no numbers” mode shows your food by plants, colours and how it makes you feel instead.