It still baffles me to this day that people who want to lose weight spend an insane amount of time worrying about carbs and/or fat and/or protein. Or worrying about eating whole wheat bread instead of white bread, or brown rice instead of white rice, or doing any of the other millions of things that are great ideas for improving your overall health and the quality of your diet, but will usually do nothing whatsoever to help you actually lose weight.

Now, don't misunderstand me here. Making sure you get your carbs, fat and protein from high quality sources is a fantastic idea and I completely recommend it. And, paying attention to how many grams of carbs, fat and protein you eat each day is also a good idea for a variety of reasons. However, none of this causes weight loss.

Once again, there is only 1 thing that causes weight loss, and that is creating a caloric deficit. This means that whatever calories are needed to maintain your current weight, you just need to be a few hundred calories below that number on a consistent basis. So, if you maintain your current weight eating 3000 calories per day, you will lose weight by eating 2500 calories per day. That's it. That's weight loss. Make a small, gradual reduction to your calorie intake, and watch the weight come off. Simple.

Yet, it's a concept people can't seem to grasp. They continue to worry about eating less carbs, or less fat, or more protein, or healthy foods instead of unhealthy foods, good carbs instead of bad carbs, and so on and so on and so on. This is all well and good, but if you want to lose weight, all that matters is calories.

If eating 3000 calories per day causes you to gain weight, it won't matter if those calories come from nothing but cheeseburgers and cookies or salmon and brown rice... if you are consuming too many calories, you will gain weight no matter where those calories are coming from. The same happens in reverse, too. If eating 2500 calories per day causes you to lose weight, it really won't matter much whether those calories come from healthy foods or unhealthy foods, good carbs or bad carbs, high fat or low fat... if you are eating the amount of calories that causes your body to lose weight... you will lose weight. Period.

Yes, you should definitely try to eat as healthy as possible and pay attention to getting all of the little details right. It's important. However, in terms of just weight loss, all that matters is calories. So, before focusing on anything else, focus on calories. They are the one and only key to weight loss, thus obviously making this one of the best ways to lose weight.