This is a chapter from my book, The Personal Health Tracking Blueprint. You can view the table of contents with links to the rest here.

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John Cisna, a science teacher from Iowa, once ate nothing but McDonald’s for six months.

By the end of the six months, Cisna had lost 56 pounds.

How was this possible? Isn’t eating fast food every day supposed to make you fat?

Not necessarily.

During his stint at the Golden Arches, Cisna ate 2,000 calories per day and walked for 45 minutes per day. At a height of 6 feet and starting weight of 280 pounds, these numbers were enough to enable him to lose over 2 pounds per week, on average.

Was there a catch? A secret sauce to his success?

There was, indeed. But it wasn’t Big Mac sauce.

John Cisna was simply in a calorie deficit for six months.

The point of this story isn’t that you should eat McDonald’s every day to lose weight.

The reasons for not doing this should be obvious.

The point is that you can lose weight eating fast food every day because being in a calorie deficit is the only thing that matters for weight loss.

When you lose weight on any diet, it’s because that diet helped you achieve a calorie deficit.

Not because you stopped eating carbs. Not because you stopped eating after 6:00 p.m.

You. Just. Ate. Fewer. Calories.

How many calories should you eat to lose weight?