Alex Marks | Online & F2F PT

This is what eating “healthier” can look like.
But this alone isn’t going to fix your diet.

“Eat less crap. Eat more food.” Sounds sensible. And generally, it is.

But there’s one fairly important word missing:

CALORIES.

You can eat burgers, chocolate, crisps and still lose body fat if you’re consistently consuming fewer calories than your body uses.

And you can eat avocado, nuts, olive oil, salmon and beautifully prepared “whole foods” and still gain weight if you consistently consume more calories than you need.

That doesn’t mean food quality doesn’t matter. It absolutely does — for protein, fibre, vitamins, minerals, fullness, energy, digestion and general health.

But healthy food and fat-loss food aren’t automatically the same thing.

There’s another reality that Instagram nutrition advice often ignores:

Not everyone has the time, money, facilities or inclination to prepare fresh meals three times a day.

Sometimes dinner is something from a packet.
Sometimes lunch comes from Pret.
Sometimes you eat the bloody burger.

That’s called having a life.

And this is where understanding calories becomes far more useful than labelling foods GOOD or CRAP.

Protein = 4 calories per gram
Carbohydrate = 4 calories per gram
Fat = 9 calories per gram

So foods that contain a lot of fat — including plenty of highly processed foods — can become calorie-dense very quickly. That doesn’t make dietary fat bad; we need it. It simply means a relatively small amount can contain a lot of calories.

Meanwhile, meals built around lean protein, fruit, vegetables and sensible portions of carbohydrates will often give you a much larger volume of food for the same calories — while generally keeping you fuller and giving your body more of what it needs.

So yes…

Eat less CRAP.
Eat more FOOD.

But don’t pretend that’s the whole lesson.

Understand how much you’re eating.
Prioritise protein and plants.
Make the better choice when you can.
Make the convenient choice when you need to.
And stop expecting your diet to be perfect before it can work.

Calories determine whether fat loss can happen.
Food quality determines a hell of a lot about how good you feel while doing it.