best way to cook for fat loss

I thought about it for a little while how I wanted to write this letter today, and I think it’s gonna end up like a mini cooking guide for losing weight. Not in the sense of a recipe guide or anything, but just a fundamental guide to the differences in cooking methods and how they affect calories.

So let’s get started.

—Cooking mini guide—

I get all kinds of cooking questions regularly from stuff like “is deep frying ok?” to “what about air fryer” to “do I have to boil my foods if I want to lose weight?” to “is grilling bad?” etc etc. We’ll try to cover all those here today.

First thing I wanna get out of the way is that it is absolutely not a necessity to cook your own meals to lose weight. There are advantages and disadvantages to cooking yourself. Advantages include being in control of every ingredient of the food that you eat which in turn means you’re more in control of the calories and macros you’re consuming. Main disadvantage of cooking yourself is the time it takes. Cooking isn’t merely just following a recipe and counting the cooking time. You gotta count the time it takes to buy the ingredients, the time it takes to clean and prep them, cook them, then finally consume them.

Cooking your own meals doesn’t guarantee weight loss. Eating out regularly doesn’t guarantee weight gain. It all still comes down to planning and portions.

With out of the way let’s go through some of the common ways of preparing food:

-Boiling-

It’s a huge misconception that to lose weight you gotta eat only boiled foods and they gotta taste super bland and be the opposite of delicious. It’s almost like if it’s delicious it means you’re doing it wrong. Huge huge misconception. You don’t have to eat boiled foods to lose weight, and boiled foods also doesn’t mean it’s gotta taste nasty. Boiled foods can taste good too if you season it right.

Remember most dry seasoning adds basically no calories at all. Dry seasoning such as salt, pepper, chili powder, cinnamon powder, paprika powder etc. With the right mix with boiled foods it can be absolute delicious. Or with boiled foods you could add soy sauce or miso to make it a delicious soup.

Boiled foods is usually recommended by mainstream media cos it’s basically the easy & lazy way to prepare food where anyone can do it, and it doesn’t add any additional calories like fried or grilled where oil/butter is often involved. The thing is if you control portions you can still eat the same amount of calories regardless of the way you prepare it. Sure a portion of boiled foods will be larger than a portion of fried foods for the same amount of calories, but doesn’t mean either or is better or worse (for weight loss)

Summary: Boiled foods are totally fine for fat loss, but not a necessity and doesn’t have to taste like rubber.

-Oven & Airfryer-

I’ll put these two in the same category cos they’re basically the same thing, to me at least. Airfryer is basically a portable oven. I know I know there are slight differences between the two but more or less same functions. I find it funny that many that want to lose weight turn to boiled foods where oven/airfryer is basically the same thing, just the dry version. Whatever they’re boiling they could bake it too and the calories will turn out exactly the same.

Personally I prefer baked over boiled for two simple reasons. 1) I think it tastes better, I like my foods more dry than wet. 2) Baking saves time. I like to be able to set a timer, go away then wait for the “ding” to come back and have all my food ready. Boiling takes a little more babysitting.

I think a misconception for those that haven’t really baked before is that you gotta oil your foods before baking it. That’s not true at all, I don’t oil most of the foods I bake unless I’m trying to create some kind of extra texture, and a simple single layer of parchment paper will make whatever you’re cooking not stick to the pan already.

Summary: Oven & airfryer is basically the same calories when compared to boiled foods cos they also don’t require additional ingredients like oil/butter to cook your food. They’re alternatives to get different tastes and textures in your foods.

-Stir fry-

I like to see stirfry as like the middle ground between cooking methods that don’t need oil/butter (boil/oven/airfryer), and cooking methods that do (grill/fry). If you have a non-stick pan it’s very possible to stir-fry stuff with zero oil, or use a bit of water to double as oil. Obviously it’s gonna taste different than using oil but that’s where you gotta play the balancing act of how much oil you wanna use so that it fits your goals.

A little oil goes a long way, I think a lot of people that cook themselves are way too generous with the amount of oil they use and in turn unnecessarily adds a lot of calories to their cooking. They likely could get a very similar taste halving or quartering the amount of oil they use. I use around 1tsp of oil to fry my sunny side up eggs. Before measuring I was pouring roughly 1-2 tbsp worth. I honestly can’t tell the difference taste wise.

Stir-fry I feel is where you can get a lot more creative with flavors and takes very little effort to make foods not taste like “diet” food. Main difference is with some foods you still might need a little bit of oil or butter or not you’d be scrubbing the pan a lot.

Summary: Stir-fry could be in the same category as boiled/oven/airfrying in terms of cooking method that doesn’t add additional calories, but there are some foods that just doesn’t make sense without a tad bit of oil when stir frying which would make it slightly higher calories than the boiled methods.

-Grill-

Grilling tends to be higher calories than other cooking methods cos the butter/oil required in the grilling process. You couldn’t possibly grill a completely dry piece of food say chicken breast, you’d lose half the chicken sticking to the grill. Now remember this isn’t a good or bad thing. Yes grilling tends to be mean more calories but doesn’t mean you gotta completely avoid it or anything, just means if you’re having grilled foods you gotta be a bit more mindful of the portions you’re eating as compared to say baked or boiled.

The plus part about grilling? Tastes so ughh delicious.

Summary: Grilling tends to be higher calories to the previous methods, but doesn’t mean you should avoid it, just means gotta take a bit more time to plan for your portions.

-Deep fry-

Finally we come to the end, which is technically the cooking method that costs the most calories. Why? Cos deep frying involves breading (basically a layer of carbs) and a lot of oil. 1 tbsp of oil is 120kcal. Now obviously one piece of fried food doesn’t mean it carries 1 tbsp of oil, but you can see how that can add up quickly if you eat multiple pieces of it. Again though like grilled it’s not something you have to avoid at all cost to lose weight, you can absolutely have fried foods regularly and lose weight, but you gotta be careful, gotta be aware of how much you’re having.

The thing with fried foods is cos it’s higher in calories compared to say baked or stir-fried, it’s easy to feel dissatisfied from cos it's a lot less volume in food for the same amount of calories. Two piece chicken from KFC is absolutely delicious, but if I were to bake it at home I could likely get maybe 3-4 pieces for the same amount of calories.

Again not good or bad, but it comes down to portions. If you really love fried foods and want a method to lower the calories where possible I’d recommend using the air-fryer. The air-fryer does a good job mimicking the texture of fried foods but has zero of the oil involved. The breading is still involved, but that’s a lot less calories when compared to the oils involved.

Summary: Deep frying foods is one of the methods that costs the most calories. Again no need to avoid it, but absolutely do need to be meticulous with your portions. It’s delicious and easy to overeat.

So which is the best way to cook for fat loss?

There isn’t one.

Cook in whatever methods you prefer the most, cook the foods you enjoy the most, and be mindful of the ingredients & portions you’re eating. One cooking method isn’t superior than another. Just cos boiled foods mean zero added calories doesn’t mean it’s a good thing especially if it makes you dread your meals and creates urges to to binge cos of how much you hate it.

Stick to what you’re comfortable with even if that means not cooking at home and eating out but being calculative of your portions. There’s no right or wrong way to lose weight, losing weight is merely eating less than your body expends consistently over a long period of time. There’s many many roads to the same destination.

I hope this mini guide shows you some of the possible roads and gives you a clearer idea of which road you want to go down.

Remember even if you picked a road to go down and decided it’s not for you, it’s never too late to change. It’s absolutely fine to change. Admitting you made a mistake and making a change is a strength.

Change is growth.

Hope this helps, any additional questions you have on cooking for fat loss reply to this email or shoot your question to my daily Q&As on IG~

Be well, stay safe!

—Po