The calorie density list: 50 foods you can eat a lot of

People ask me for a list. Not a philosophy, not a story, just a list they can stick on the fridge. So here it is: fifty foods, sorted by how many calories they pack into each bite. It's the list I have in my head at the grocery store, and it's the reason I lost 70 lbs while eating bigger plates than I ever ate on a diet.

If you want the idea behind it first, why eating more food helped me lose 70 lbs is the long version. This post is the short version you can print.

How to read this list

Calorie density is how much energy a food carries per bite. The cleanest way to compare foods is calories per pound, because a pound is roughly what a big meal weighs in your stomach. Water and fiber push the number down. Fat and processing push it up.

I sort everything into four bands:

• Under 300 calories per pound. Vegetables and fruit. Eat freely.
• 300 to 600 per pound. Potatoes, grains, beans, soups. Eat generously: a big serving, not the whole pot.
• 600 to 1,400 per pound. Breads, dried fruit, avocado, hummus. Eat mindfully: still good food, smaller portion.
• Over 1,400 per pound. Oils, nuts, seeds, cheese, sweets. Eat small: a spoon, not a scoop.

The tables below show calories per cup, because a cup is what you actually see on your plate. All numbers are standard, rounded figures. A few foods sit right on a line between bands, and that's fine. This is a map, not a rulebook. Nobody needs the exact number on a cup of grapes. You need to know which shelf it lives on.

Eat freely: vegetables and fruit

This is the band that changed everything for me. You can eat these until you're full and the math still works, because most of what you're eating is water and fiber.

Notice the gap between the top and bottom of that table. A cup of grapes is ten cups of lettuce. Both are in the free band, and I eat both without thinking. But if you're wondering why a salad doesn't hold you, that's why: it weighs almost nothing. Put potatoes on it.

Eat generously: potatoes, grains, beans, soups

This is the backbone of my plate. These foods are filling in a way vegetables alone never are, and they're still cheap in calories for how much they weigh. Half of every dinner I eat comes from this table.

Rice, pasta, and beans sit near the top of this band. That's why the word is generously, not freely. A big bowl of rice and beans is a great dinner. A third helping of pasta every night is how the numbers stop working. The fix isn't to skip the pasta. It's to put a mountain of vegetables in it, which is exactly what big-pot soups do on autopilot.

Potatoes are the star of this band. At about 130 calories a cup, they're the lowest-calorie food here and the most filling food ever tested. I wrote a whole post on potatoes for weight loss because they deserve one.

Eat mindfully: breads, dried fruit, avocado, hummus

None of these are bad foods. Several of them are on my plate every day. But the water has been taken out, or the fat is naturally high, so the same volume costs two to four times as much.

The dried fruit line surprises people. A cup of grapes is about 100 calories. Dry those grapes and the same cup is 430. Nothing was added. The water left, and with it went the part that fills you up. Eat the grapes.

Tempeh is here because it's my protein, not because I limit it. A fist of tempeh in a stir-fry is a normal serving for me. I just don't build the whole plate out of it.

Eat small: oils, nuts, seeds, cheese, sweets

These are the foods that turn 130 calories into 500. No villains. I use most of them. But a spoon, not a scoop.

Look at olive oil next to boiled potatoes. Same cup. Fifteen times the calories. That's the whole reason a plain potato and a plate of fries are different foods, and it's why I cook without oil at home. Not because oil is evil. Because a tablespoon of it is a whole potato's worth of calories, and I'd rather have the potato.

How I use the list at the store and on the plate

At the store, I shop the top two bands first. Produce, potatoes, rice, oats, canned beans, frozen vegetables. That's most of the cart, and it's the cheap part of the cart too. Then I pick up a few things from the third band (bread, tortillas, an avocado) and a couple from the fourth (peanut butter, a bag of chocolate chips for the freezer). If the cart is mostly bands one and two, the week is going to go well. I don't have to think harder than that.

On the plate, I fill from the top down. Half the plate from band two: potatoes, rice, or another grain. A third from band one: cooked or raw vegetables, any kind. A fist of beans, lentils, or tofu. Then a little something from the bottom bands for flavor: a spoon of hummus, a drizzle of tahini sauce, a sprinkle of nuts. The dense stuff goes on last and goes on small, because by then there's no room left for it to take over.

Here's the part I want you to hear: I don't measure any of this. I don't weigh food. I don't log it. I know which band things live on, and I build the plate in that order, and the calories sort themselves out. That's what "eat more food, not less" actually looks like at 6pm on a Tuesday.

Two rules of thumb that cover almost everything

• If it's mostly water, eat a lot of it. Fruit, vegetables, potatoes, soup.
• If the water's been taken out or the fat's been added, eat less of it. Dried fruit, crackers, chips, oil, nut butter.

Those two lines explain ninety percent of this list. The other ten percent is just knowing where beans and bread sit, and now you do.

Printable version

This list is one page of a bigger thing. The free Weight Loss Cheat Sheet has the calorie density chart on one page and, facing it, exactly how I build a plate from it. Then six more principles with the same treatment, plus a starter week and its grocery list. It's the guide I send everyone first, and it's what I'd hand you if you sat down at my kitchen table.

And if you'd rather start cooking than reading, there are 130+ free recipes on the site, nearly all of them built from the top two bands of this list.