Change your eating habits

STEP 0 - REALIZATION

The first step for everything is realizing you have a problem and that you want to do something about it.
Before you start, try to find an accountability partner — this will increase your chances of actually sticking to the plan.

An accountability partner is a person who helps you stay committed to achieving a goal by checking in on your progress, providing motivation, and holding you accountable for your actions.

WEEK 1

Write down everything you eat or drink.
That’s it.

WEEK 2

1. Split everything into two categories:
• Healthy
• Unhealthy

Don’t overthink it — just use common sense.
Healthy foods are whole or minimally processed foods.
Unhealthy foods are everything else. If you are really unsure about a specific item, Google it.

A whole food is a food that is unprocessed and unrefined, having the least change from its natural state, and contains diverse nutrients.

2. Take both lists and order them in order from most to least favourite

3. Take the unhealthy list, and apply the rule
Top 30% → Keep
Middle 30% → Swap
Bottom 30% → Drop

This entire process happens during Week 2.

Why?
A single week of writing things down tells us:
• what you truly eat most of the time
• what’s easy for you to buy
• what you’ve built habits around
The biggest mistake people make is trying to change everything at once.
Here we’re doing the opposite:
We keep the foods that matter most, adjust the middle, and remove the stuff you barely enjoy anyway.

WEEK 3

Use this week to see if the changes you made actually work for you. If something feels off or you forgot to include a food, adjust the list. This week is about settling into your new baseline.

WEEK 4

1. Weigh everything you eat.

Your eyes guess — the scale tells the truth.

2. Put it all into a calorie-tracking app

Use something simple like Macrofactor, Cronometer, or MyFitnessPal.
This will show you how much you actually eat — not what you think you eat.

A calorie is the amount of energy required to heat 1 g of water to 1°C; however, because this is a small energy quantity, it is more common to use the kilocalorie or Calorie – equivalent to 1000 calories.

Why?
This week is important because you finally see:
• Which foods are “heavy” in calories and which aren’t
• Where your weak points are — the meals or snacks that quietly add a lot
• How your daily intake actually looks, not how you assume it looks

WEEK 5

If you don’t want to calculate everything by hand, use an online TDEE calculator (e.g. simple, detailed).

1. Estimate Your BMR

Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the rate of energy expenditure per unit time by endothermic animals at rest.

OR, calories your body burns doing absolutely nothing.Use the Mifflin–St Jeor equation:
Men:
10 × weight(kg) + 6.25 × height(cm) – 5 × age + 5
Women:
10 × weight(kg) + 6.25 × height(cm) – 5 × age – 161

2. Estimate Your TDEE

TDEE stands for total daily energy expenditure. It is the total energy that a person uses in a day.

Multiply BMR by an Activity Factor:
• Sedentary (little/no exercise): × 1.2
• Lightly active (1–3 days/wk exercise): × 1.375
• Moderately active (3–5 days/wk): × 1.55
• Very active (6–7 days/wk): × 1.725
• Extra active (hard training, physical job): × 1.9

3. Set a goal

A caloric deficit means you eat less than your TDEE — this is how you lose weight.
A caloric surplus means you eat more than your TDEE — this is how you gain weight.
Maintenance is when you eat around your TDEE — you stay where you are.

Decide how much you want to lose/gain, and how long you want it to take.
You may need to reassess the duration if your goals can't be achieved as quickly as you'd like (in a healthy way), but let's leave that for the next step.

4. Calculate your daily average

If you want to lose fat, a good rule of thumb is to use the 7,700 kcal rule. It basically means that you need 7,700 kcal of deficit to lose 1kg of fat.
To not complicate things too much, let's give an example. Your TDEE is 2,900 kcal, and you want to lose 2 kgs in 8 weeks. First, we calculate how much deficit you need, and that is 15,400 kcal (2*7,700). Then we calculate how much deficit you need per day, which lands at 275 kcal (15,400 divided by 56 days).
At this point, if you have a number above 500 kcal, you should probably think of prolonging the deficit or splitting it into smaller goals. If you landed somewhere between 200 and 500 calories, you just need to calculate your new daily calorie target, which in our case is ~ 2,600 kcal (2,900-275).If you want to gain weight (I'm not really familiar with this one, lol, always on a deficit), the math is a bit simpler. It is because I assume you want to gain muscle mass, and for that, it's not recommended to be in a bigger surplus than 100 to 300 kcal. The reason for this is that gaining muscle mass is a slow process itself, so it doesn't make too much sense to work very hard with the surplus. If, for any reason, you still want to gain weight at a faster pace, you can go higher, but just keep in mind that the extra calories will most likely go towards fat. Once you have decided on a number, just add it to your TDEE.If you want to keep your current weight, you just need to align your daily intake to be around your TDEE.

4. Adjust your calories

The easiest way to align your daily calories with the specific goal you have from the previous step is to use the calorie tracking app we already discussed.
You could do it by hand, but it will take some time.
This is where the Week 2 lists come in handy again. If you need to raise calories, just add a bit more of the foods that sit higher on your healthy list. If you need to lower calories, scale down the foods from your unhealthy list, or simply reduce some of the higher-calorie healthy foods that are deeper down the list.

5. Track your weight

From here on, you should be tracking your weight consistently to get the data that will tell you if you are closer to your goals.
Weighing yourself at random times of the day, or only once a week, won't do the job. Your body weight fluctuates a lot due to factors such as water retention, glycogen levels, digestion, hydration, sodium levels, sleep, stress, and more.
My advice is to track your weight every morning right after you wake up (maybe after going to the toilet), before you eat or drink anything. Once you track the whole week, calculate the week's average, and use those averages as your measure of progress.
A bonus advice is to print out a table or set up a board right above your scale. It will make the tracking easier, but more importantly, it will remind you when you see it and help you create a habit.
Personally, when I want to create a new habit, I always try to stick something on a wall to consistently remind me.

WEEK 6

Adjust your macros

There are three main types of macronutrients (macros): proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. They are essential nutrients the body needs in large quantities to remain healthy.

Each gram of protein and carbs gives you about 4 calories, while a gram of fat gives you about 9.

Calories decide how much you weigh, but your macros decide how your body feels and performs.
How many carbs, protein, and fats you need is a very complex topic which is debated among the biggest health authorities in the world (and is also super-individual), so I, just a random calisthenics enthusiast, can't give you an exact answer for sure! :)
BUT, I can still help you. I did a bit of research, and I found this really cool article, which can for sure work really well as a base.
Athletes’ nutritional demands: a narrative review of nutritional requirements
If you are not an athlete/active person (which I hope you will become), you can also read this short article and figure out the P/C/F ratio from there.
Macronutrients and Human Health for the 21st CenturyIf you decided to adjust your calories in the previous step manually, and you had a hard time with it, adjusting macros will be a nightmare, so here, an app is really recommended.
I know some of these apps have a paid subscription, but you can always take a free trial, or pay for a month or two, at least until you are happy with your diet.

WEEK 7

The next logical step would be to think about micronutrients and supplements.

Micronutrients are essential chemicals required by organisms in trace amounts for biochemical processes such as gene transcription, enzymatic reactions, and protection against oxidative stress.

A dietary supplement is a manufactured product intended to supplement a person's diet in the form of a pill, capsule, tablet, powder, or liquid. A supplement can provide nutrients either extracted from food sources, or that are synthetic (to increase the quantity of their consumption).

This is the point where I’m no longer qualified to give any guidance, so I’m leaving the rest to your own research, and I strongly recommend consulting a licensed nutritionist or medical doctor for proper advice.