Dear Kayla,

I really like to drink my coffee with Trader Joe’s instant coffee packets that have cream and sugar already in them. I noticed you switched to just half and half pretty early on. Each cup is definitely 100 calories and I have at least 2 in my fasting window. Coffee sweet is really what has held me back from doing IF because I don’t want to until afternoon to have my special coffee. Do you think I can still go throughout the year with steady weight loss, like a pound a week, while still having sweet coffee in my fasting window?

Signed,

AC

Dear AC,

I was in precisely your position many years ago. Intermittent fasting felt so easy, except for the part where I had to start pushing my coffee later and later and later in the day. You see, having coffee was a joyful part of my morning routine. Denying myself that little pleasure while I pushed my window further out started to feel like a punishment. I knew in my heart of hearts that it wasn’t sustainable. I loved intermittent fasting otherwise. I was at a crossroads.

9 Words That Changed Everything

Around that time, I heard some advice from Tim Ferriss that changed my life: if you are faced with a complicated problem, ask yourself, “What would this look like if it were easy?” Since I had struggled with my weight for my entire life, I posed that question to myself.

Here’s what that mental discussion looked like:

Q: What would weight loss look like if it were easy?

A: It would be easy if I could eat whatever I wanted. If I could eat cake, bread, pasta, potatoes, mayonnaise, and deep-fried foods, I wouldn’t feel miserable. It was the food restrictions that made me miserable.

Q: What would intermittent fasting look like if it were easy?

A: If I could eat whatever I wanted at my meal, and if I could just have my coffee whenever I wanted it, that would be easy.

Based on those answers, I wrote my simple, enjoyable, and very easy-to-stick-to plan. I knew I could do it on those days when I was overwhelmed, exhausted, and pulled in a thousand different directions. I didn’t fully appreciate at the time just how important this little exercise was. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t work. The plan seemed so easy that I figured it would make me blow up like a balloon. I even gave myself an out. The deal was, I had to stay consistent with this plan for 6 weeks. If I gained 10 pounds before the 6 weeks were up, I could quit, guilt-free.

Being consistent with my plan gave me a daily victory, which helped me stay in a good place mentally. I did that simple and easy plan for six weeks, and at the end of it, I was down about six pounds.

You asked if I thought you could lose 1 pound a week throughout the year if you had your sweet coffee.

Here is my answer:

It will absolutely happen if you stay in a consistent deficit of 3,500 calories per week.

How We Lose 1 Pound of Fat

A quick refresher for the uninitiated: your body needs energy in order to function. Your beating heart, your inhaling and exhaling lungs, and that leg you’re bouncing up and down as you sit at your desk all take energy. Your body gets energy from two places: from the food you’ve most recently eaten, or from the energy it has stored. If you do not eat enough food, your body will tap its stored fat to get that energy.

We measure energy in calories. One pound of fat contains 3,500 calories. If you want to lose one pound in one week, your body needs to be in a 3,500 calorie deficit.

Let’s say your body is burning 2,000 calories a day. (You can use an online calculator to estimate your caloric burn and thus how much you need to eat to maintain or lose.)

If you want to be in a 500 calorie deficit, you would need to consume 1,500 calories that day. Let’s say you have your two coffees just like you like them. That means you can still eat 1,300 calories in your window and still lose weight. The only problem will be if you can’t keep your consumption to 1,300 calories during your eating window. But, I’m willing to bet that you can.

BUT…as your body weight decreases, so do your caloric needs. You have to eat fewer and fewer calories to keep going at that same clip. I’ll take myself as an example:

Case Study: My Deficit

My coffee with half and half has 80+ calories per cup. I don’t measure. I usually have 3 a day. Sometimes it’s 4. Sometimes it’s 2. In other words, you and I would be consuming about the same amount, calorically speaking, if you had your 2 cups of Trader Joe’s.

Back when I was 222 pounds, I needed to eat 2,092 calories a day to maintain that weight. That meant I needed to eat about 1,500 calories a day to lose a pound a week. And that was my rate of loss in 2016 when I got myself down to a healthy weight of 158.

At that new healthy weight, my caloric needs were about 1,700 a day. This meant that if I ate 1,500 calories a day, my rate of weight loss would slow down to about four-tenths of a pound per week. And though I don’t count calories, I do know that when I went from 158 down to 142 my rate was about three-tenths of a pound per week, so I was probably eating in a slightly smaller deficit. But the reason I could hang with that was because it felt so easy and so enjoyable. And really, 1,500 calories is as few as I care to eat in a day. Any less than that feels like too little. I love to eat.

I say all that to say this: if you’re currently obese, 1 pound a week is a reasonable goal. If you’re near a normal BMI, fractions of a pound are a good goal to set. Make an easy plan, stick to it consistently, and be patient.

Most people find eating in a deficit greater than 500 calories per day to be too difficult. And, most people find eating fewer than 1,200 to be misery-inducing. If you’re at a normal BMI and trying to lose weight, you could find yourself in a place where your only non-miserable option is a tiny deficit and very slow weight loss. I’m a big advocate for stopping when you feel comfortable in your own skin, and for not being miserable.

Intermittent Fasting’s Magic

Intermittent fasting helps you lose weight because it helps you eliminate or at least decrease bad food habits. Feeling stressed in the fasting window? You can’t reach for that donut. You have to actually deal with the problem. Normally grab a snack while you zone out in front of the TV? Not an option while you’re fasting. Plus, the very act of saying no to yourself builds discipline, which means that when your eating window is open, you’ll have fewer instances of overeating and mindless eating. (N.B.: Fewer, not zero. No one is perfect, and you’re no exception.)

The beauty of intermittent fasting is how flexible it is. I wholeheartedly recommend that you have your coffee however you want it. Design your plan so that it fits perfectly in your life. I encourage you to write down your plan, and then be consistent with it for 6 weeks. Weigh daily, keep track of your 7-day average, and then compare your starting 7-day average to your ending 7-day average. If you’ve lost a few pounds, I say you’ve got a winner. Keep going until you hit your goal weight!

Sincerely,

Kayla