How to Lose Weight Safely: Why Mainstream Advice Keeps You Stuck
When people want to lose weight, they're often told to eat less, move more, and to eat frequent small meals to "keep blood sugar stable," a strategy that backfires for many with insulin resistance. It seems to make sense, but if you've ever tried it, you know how frustrating it can be. Struggling with willpower, tiny plates, and forcing down water only to find the scale barely moves. Or worse, it moves, but the weight comes right back. All the while being hungry and feeling miserable.
As much as they want to blame you, the problem isn't you. The problem is the advice.
First off, we do not eat calories. There is no process in the body that uses calories. Or, in other words, calories are just a unit of heat. We eat food. Our body extracts energy from food, not calories.
Even if we accept the concept of calories, the calories in/calories out model still fails because it assumes the human body is a simple math problem. Burn more than you eat and you'll lose weight … or so the theory goes. But humans are not closed systems, fuel is partitioned, hormones come into play. While we want it to be easy, it just isn't. Think of 500 calories of steak versus 500 calories of cookies: they produce vastly different metabolic effects, and the response varies even more between metabolically healthy people and those with insulin resistance. In fact, an estimated 93% of American adults suffer from at least one marker of metabolic dysfunction.
Your body does not rely on calories. It is an adaptive system designed to keep you alive through scarcity. When you cut food intake, your body does what it has been wired to do for millennia: it slows down. Energy conservation kicks in, hormones shift, and hunger ramps up.
Some of the hormones at play are leptin, ghrelin, and insulin. Leptin levels drop, reducing satiety signals. Ghrelin levels rise, increasing hunger. Insulin, already elevated in many people with weight struggles, continues keeping stored fat locked and inaccessible as fuel. The more you push against your biology with calorie restriction, the harder your biology pushes back. It is a survival mechanism.
But with all the wrong messaging, many people blame themselves for "failing" a diet when the truth is the diet failed them. It was built on a false premise.
Dietitians love to show pictures of what a “real” portion looks like: deck-of-cards-sized piece of meat, half a cup of rice, a tablespoon of peanut butter. It's supposed to teach moderation. But here's the problem: if you are metabolically unhealthy, shrinking the serving size of the foods that caused the problem in the first place doesn't fix anything.
A half-cup of rice still spikes insulin. A smaller slice of bread still keeps you on the blood sugar rollercoaster. Eating less of the same inflammatory foods accomplishes nothing but making you hungry.
Portion control is a distraction. It keeps people focused on the wrong lever, quantity, while ignoring quality. When you eat nutrient-dense foods that regulate insulin, portion control takes care of itself. You don't need to weigh lettuce leaves or count meatballs when your body's hunger signals are easy to hear.
You've probably heard the advice: “Drink a glass of water before meals so you feel full.” While hydration is important, using water to suppress hunger is another misleading recommendation. Hunger is not a nuisance to be drowned out. It's a signal.
If you are hungry, your body is asking for fuel. The answer isn't to try to trick it with water, gum, or air-popped snacks. The answer is to feed it in a way that doesn't spike insulin too much and too often. Drinking too much water can upset the electrolyte balance and, in severe cases, even cause death.
When you eat real food like meat, eggs, fish, dairy, vegetables, healthy fats, hunger quiets down on its own because the body is nourished. You don't need to fight cravings. You don't need tricks. You need to change what's on the plate.
For most people, the core problem is not eating too much. It's insulin resistance.
When insulin stays elevated from years of excessive carbohydrate consumption, your fat stores become inaccessible. You can eat six times a day, and still feel like you're starving. Even when we carry plenty of fat, when insulin is too high, the body is locked into sugar burning mode. This keeps all the stored fat unavailable for fuel.
This is why weight loss feels impossible when you follow mainstream advice. The elusive calorie deficit cannot outsmart your hormones. Once insulin resistance improves, weight loss no longer feels like a battle. Hunger subsides, cravings fade, and fat becomes available as fuel.
Losing weight safely doesn't mean portion control, logging every bite, or buying “lite” products. It means healing the metabolism so your body is willing to switch to fat burning mode again.
What this looks like:
- Prioritizing protein and nutrient-dense animal foods. Preferably ruminant meat.
- Eliminating sugar and grains.
- Restricting carbs.
- Choosing fats for energy and to support satiety.
- Sleeping well so your hormones reset each night.
Notice what's missing: portion control, calorie math, and water tricks. On a proper human diet, you don't need them.
Exercise is intentionally left out here, too. While exercise supports health and helps maintain weight loss, by itself, it is not a useful weight loss tool. We cannot outrun a bad diet.
Experts often define safe weight loss as one to two pounds per week. But if you correct insulin resistance, weight loss can sometimes be faster without being unsafe. And yes, some of it is water weight.
The danger is not losing too quickly. It's following advice that leaves you nutrient-deficient, hormonally dysregulated, and more metabolically impaired than when you started. Safe weight loss is not defined by speed. It's defined by sustainability and health.
The mainstream approach to weight loss is built on myths that keep people trapped: calories in, calories out; portion control; and drinking water to suppress hunger. They don't address the root cause, and leave people feeling guilty and ashamed.
The safe way forward is not harder math or more willpower. It's healing the metabolism, improving insulin sensitivity, and feeding the body properly. This makes hunger and cravings fade on their own, and weight loss becomes the natural side effect of health restored.
Eat like it matters
–Coach Roxana
Written by Roxana Soetebeer, MPHC, NNP, MHP, PFC
Published September 27th, 2025
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