Weight loss is tough. It takes commitment, dedication, and plenty of time, but it can be easier! One of the best ways to follow an effective weight-loss plan is to use strategies that make it easy!
And there are some that make it feel like you’re barely even trying! One of these weight loss strategies is the elimination strategy. While many diets focus on what you should eat, this dieting strategy simply lets you pick foods not to eat.
Doing this helps put you in a caloric deficit without requiring you to change your entire diet. While this may not be your final destination, using the elimination strategy can be a great way to kick off your weight loss journey. Here’s how.
Key Points You Need To Know!
Starting a weight loss journey doesn’t need to be complicated.
Instead of focusing on what you should be eating, sometimes it’s easier to focus on what to cut out.
Over time, your diet will slowly morph as you cut out the bad stuff and then add the good stuff.
The Elimination Strategy for Losing Weight
When you first start your weight loss journey, the one thing you don’t want to do is change your entire diet all at once. Doing this brings several issues:
You have to learn how to make or prepare all your meals.
Cutting everything at once can be a shock to your daily routine.
When you have to be 100% all the time, “slipping up” can feel like failure
And here’s the thing: when you first start to lose weight, you don’t need all these drastic changes.
We want to be clear, your long-term goal should be to revamp your diet and lifestyle.
But does anyone suggest you immediately run a marathon when you decide to run a marathon?
Of course not! So why do we always assume we need to for our diet?
How Do You Use The Elimination Strategy?
The elimination strategy is simple.
You just choose one food to remove from your diet. This might be.
Stop eating rice or cut your portion in half.
No more soda
No more cereal
No more dairy milk
This doesn’t mean you can never have these later or even that it’s necessarily unhealthy, such as rice or milk. The idea is to just keep it simple rather than revamp your entire diet.
With that said, the obvious choices to begin with are;
Sweets
Fried food
Fast food
Use With Food Swaps
The elimination strategy is a bit similar to food swaps and can definitely make the process easier.
Food swaps are simply replacing “unhealthy” foods with healthier options.
80/20% ground beef → 90/10% ground beef or ground turkey
Cheddar cheese – Low-fat cheese
Flour dough → Cauliflower crust (it’s good!)
Pepperoni → grilled chicken breast
Mozzarella cheese → Low-fat mozzarella
Whole milk → Low-fat milk or 50/50 split with almond milk
Again, this isn’t getting into the debate about whether “whole milk is actually healthier’. We actually like whole milk.
However, if you make a 50/50 mix with plain almond milk, which is 30 calories per serving, you instantly eliminate 60 calories with minimal effort!
Add A Weight Loss Workout Program
Adding a workout program to your diet is one of the best ways to make losing weight easier.
When done right, a fat loss training plan can:
Optimize body composition
Improve hunger control (Blundell et al, 2015).
Improve adherence to your weight loss plan (Wu et al., 2009)
Yep, lifting weights can actually decrease appetite and improve your hunger.
We know some people claim it makes you hungrier, but this isn’t so. When a workout plan is followed, it can regulate your hormones and make fighting cravings easier (Blundell et al, 2015).
What Are The Best Foods To Eliminate For Weight Loss?
The elimination strategy is easy, but this doesn’t mean you should eliminate any food you want. You want to keep your healthy foods while cutting out foods that offer little nutritional value or are easy to overeat.
1. Rice – We have nothing against rice, so this isn’t an anti-carb thing. However, apart from carbs, rice provides minimal nutritional value. However, it can be easy to eat too much.
Therefore, cutting it out or at least halving your serving is easy and doesn’t require you to change your diet.
2. Soda – This is an obvious pick. Soda provides no nutritional value and doesn’t even hydrate you, even though it’s your “drink”. In our opinion, drinking soda should be treated as a special treat rather than a daily drink choice.
Unlike food elimination, you need to replace your hydration. We think a 50/50 sports drink and water mix is a great choice.
3. Sauces & Condiments – Most condiments taste great. But that’s because they’re backed with various fats and sugars.
Ranch, mayonnaise, dressings, and BBQ sauces can add hundreds of calories without people realizing it. Cutting these out or reducing portions is one of the easiest ways to lower calories without changing meals.
Or, opt for a nice balsamic vinegar!
4. Cheese – Cheese is nutritious and tastes great, but calories add up fast because portions are usually underestimated.
However, we ourselves love cheese, so instead of cutting it completely out, just reduce cheese portions. Or using a 50/50 mix with low-fat cheese can significantly lower calorie intake.
5. Cooking Oils & Butter – A lot of people forget that liquid calories count during cooking. Just 1 tablespoon of oil or butter adds around 100-120 calories. Using less oil, non-stick sprays, or measuring portions instead of “eyeballing” can create an easy caloric deficit.
6. “Coffee Drinks” – We say “coffee drinks” because what most people are drinking these days isn’t coffee; they’re coffee-flavored shakes with syrups.
These fancy coffee drinks and creamers can quickly add 300-500 calories and leave you with a massive crash. Switching to lower-calorie versions, such as a latte (an actual coffee), can create a huge calorie deficit with minimal effort.
We even think a nice ice cream is a better pick.
7. Snack Foods – Foods like chips, crackers, cookies, pastries, and trail mix are designed to be hyper-palatable and easy to overeat.
They also tend to provide poor satiety relative to calories, making them one of the easiest foods to eliminate when starting a weight loss phase.
FAQ About the Elimination Strategy for Weight Loss
1. What is the elimination strategy for weight loss?
The elimination strategy is a simple dieting method where you remove one high-calorie or easy-to-overeat food from your diet instead of completely changing everything you eat. This helps create a caloric deficit with minimal disruption to your daily routine.
2. Does eliminating one food actually help you lose weight?
Yes. Even small dietary changes can reduce calorie intake enough to support weight loss over time. Eliminating foods like soda, fried food, sugary cereal, or oversized rice portions can easily remove hundreds of calories from your daily diet.
3. What foods should you eliminate first to lose weight?
The best foods to eliminate are usually foods that:
Provide little nutritional value
Are easy to overeat
Add a lot of calories quickly
Common examples include:
Soda
Candy
Fried foods
Fast food
Sugary coffee drinks
Large rice portions
4. Is the elimination strategy better than strict dieting?
For many beginners, yes. Strict diets often fail because people try to change everything at once. The elimination strategy is easier to stick to because it simplifies the process and helps build sustainable habits without feeling overly restrictive.
5. Can you combine the elimination strategy with food swaps?
Absolutely. In fact, combining elimination with food swaps can make dieting even easier. Instead of completely removing a food, you can replace it with a lower-calorie option, such as:
Whole milk → Almond milk
Soda → 50/50 sports drink mix
Regular ground beef → Lean ground beef
Pizza dough → Cauliflower crust
This allows you to keep eating similar meals while lowering calories.
Final Say On The Elimination Strategy
At SET FOR SET, we like to make losing weight as simple as possible. In fact, we like to make building muscle (or whatever your goal is) simple! Overcomplicated diets and training programs make the whole process more complicated than it needs to be. There’s a time for technical aspects and times to do things the easy way, and that’s the elimination strategy.
If you need help with losing weight, contact us, and we’ll help get you started right. Or, pick up one of our fat loss programs!
References
Blundell, J. E., Gibbons, C., Caudwell, P., Finlayson, G., & Hopkins, M. (2015). Appetite control and energy balance: impact of exercise. Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, 16 Suppl 1, 67–76. https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.12257
Wu, T., Gao, X., Chen, M., & van Dam, R. M. (2009). Long-term effectiveness of diet-plus-exercise interventions vs. diet-only interventions for weight loss: a meta-analysis. Obesity reviews: an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, 10(3), 313–323. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2008.00547.x
