How I lost 70 pounds (and what I'd do differently)

I've told the short version of this story a thousand times: I lost 70 pounds eating more food, not less. It's true, and it fits on a thumbnail. But if you found me on YouTube and you're deciding whether to trust any of this, you deserve the long version. Including the parts I got wrong.

So here it is. Where I started, what changed, what the food looked like, the mistakes I made, and what I'd do differently today.

Where I started

I started dieting at 12. That's not a typo. By the time I turned 20, I was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day and drinking one to two bottles of wine a night.

That's not a confession I make easily. But if you're reading this, you've probably tried more diets than you can count, and I want you to know I've been where you are. I'm not going to describe my old body in a way meant to make you wince. I was a person who was hungry all the time, who thought that was just what discipline felt like, and who kept failing at it anyway.

For 15 years I yo-yo'd. Up 20, down 30, up 40. Low-fat. Low-carb. Points. Shakes. Skipping breakfast. Every one worked for a few weeks, and every one ended the same way: hungry, miserable, and heavier than when I started.

At 27 I went raw vegan. Three thousand calories a day of fruit and smoothies, convinced this was finally the answer. It changed everything in the wrong direction. I gained 30 pounds. I was depressed, lethargic, broke out in acne, and hungry constantly. I thought plant-based eating was a cruel joke.

The turn

Summer 2014. I found Dr. McDougall's Starch Solution almost by accident. A doctor telling me to eat more potatoes, more rice, more bread: the exact foods every diet I'd ever tried had banned.

I was skeptical. But I was out of options, and there's a certain freedom in that. I decided to try it for a month.

The potato moment came about a week in. I'd made a huge plate of boiled potatoes with salsa and hot sauce, because that's what the book said to do, and I ate until I genuinely didn't want any more. Then I sat there waiting for the guilt. It didn't come. And two hours later, I still wasn't hungry.

That had never happened to me. Not once, on any plan, in 15 years.

Six months later I'd lost 40 pounds. Without exercise. Eating until I was full. It was the first time in my entire life I'd lost weight without being hungry, and it's why everything I've written since comes back to one idea: calorie density. A cup of boiled potatoes is around 130 calories. A cup of peanut butter is around 1,500. I'd spent 15 years eating tiny portions of dense food and calling it discipline. The full explanation is in why eating more food helped me lose 70 lbs, but that plate of potatoes is where I learned it.

What the food looked like

People imagine it was complicated. The food was big, plain, cheap, and repetitive.

Breakfast was a huge bowl of oats with banana, or a mountain of fruit. Lunch was almost always potatoes: boiled, baked, or roasted without oil, with salsa, mustard, or soy sauce. Dinner rotated between the same four or five things. A big pot of chili over rice. Pasta with oil-free marinara. A burrito bowl. A tofu stir-fry over rice. Lentil soup and toast.

Half the plate potatoes or rice. A third vegetables. A fist of beans or tofu. A little sauce. I ate seconds when I wanted them, and I never once weighed a portion.

I didn't give up going out to eat. I ordered the potato thing or the bean thing, asked for no oil, and ate a big salad first. I still had dessert. I just shared it.

It wasn't a special diet with special foods. It was normal food, in big amounts, with the oil and cheese taken out.

What I got wrong the first time

The first 40 came off in six months. The last 30 took much longer, and most of the reason was me.

I chased the scale. I weighed myself every morning and let a two-pound bounce ruin a day. Water, salt, a big dinner, where I was in my cycle: none of it was fat, and all of it sent me into a spiral. I'd "fix" a bad number by eating less, which made me hungry, which is how every diet before had ended.

I skipped strength training. The food did the fat loss, so I figured I didn't need to lift. For the first year I didn't. I lost weight, but as a smaller version of the same soft shape, and I didn't feel strong. Nobody had told me training was for the body I'd keep, not for working off dinner.

I had all-or-nothing weeks. A birthday dinner or a rough Tuesday would turn into "this week is ruined, I'll start again Monday." Monday became next Monday. I lost months this way. Not to the pizza. To the quitting after the pizza.

I re-decided every meal. Even with a small rotation of dinners, I'd stand in the kitchen at 6pm working out what to make. Tired and hungry is the worst time to plan, and takeout won more often than I'd like to admit.

What I'd do differently now

If I were starting today, with what I know from my own 70 pounds and from the more than 36,000 people who have cooked from my books since, here's what would change.

Lift from day one. Two or three short sessions a week. Squat, push, pull, hinge, carry. Not to speed up the fat loss, but so every pound that comes off leaves behind a body that's stronger, not just smaller. The shift is in why I strength train. It's the thing I most wish I'd done sooner.

Decide meals once a week. One planning session on Sunday, one grocery list, one batch-cooking hour. Then the week just runs. This alone would have saved most of the takeout nights.

Lower the bar instead of quitting. Bad day? Microwave potatoes and a can of beans. Ten minutes of squats instead of thirty. Then a normal breakfast the next morning, and back to the default. A bad day is a data point, not a verdict.

Look at the weekly trend, not the daily number. Weigh in if you want to, but average it. The daily bounce is noise. The weekly direction is the truth.

Eat enough protein and then stop thinking about it. Beans, lentils, tofu, tempeh, a couple of those a day. Enough to keep muscle while lifting, without every meal becoming a protein quest.

The seven principles it turned into

Somewhere in the second year I realized that everything that had worked, and every mistake I'd made, came down to seven ideas. They became the cheat sheet.

1. Eat more food, not less. Calorie density does the work. Fill the plate with potatoes, fruit, beans, and vegetables.
2. Carbs aren't the problem. A potato and french fries are not the same food. Keep the carbs; watch the extras.
3. Eat enough protein. A requirement, not your diet's entire personality.
4. I don't exercise to burn calories. I train for the body I'll live in. Not to work off what you ate.
5. Make it easy. Cook once, eat four times. Repeat meals. Decide once a week.
6. Consistency beats perfection. Lower the bar. Don't remove it.
7. Build a lifestyle you'll keep. If you can't wait to stop, it didn't work.

Where I am now

Long-term, the number is 70 pounds. But the weight isn't the part I want to tell you about.

I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't count calories or stand on a scale every Sunday bracing for the number. I just eat. Abundantly, plant-based, the way I'll eat next year and ten years from now. I go to restaurants every week. I travel. I have dessert. Life gets messy for a few weeks sometimes, and then I go back to the boring default, and nothing bad happens.

Maintenance turned out to be the real test, and the quiet part nobody films. What it looks like day to day is in what keeping the weight off actually looks like.

I started a YouTube channel to share what worked. more than 800,000 subscribers later, I'd heard the same story over and over: the same desperation, the same diets that don't stick. So I wrote the books and meal plans I wished I'd had at 20, and more than 36,000 people have cooked from them since. The longer version, years and all, is on my story page.

If you take one thing from this: you've probably never failed at losing weight. You've failed at being hungry, which nobody can do forever. Eat more of the foods that get you where you're going. Start there.

This is what worked for me and isn't medical advice. Check with your doctor before changing your diet or exercise, especially if you have a health condition.