How to manage your weight without thinking too hard

How I stay in shape year round

Albert Bierstadt - “Sunset Light” (1861)

Most weight management strategies suck because they aren’t built for you.

You are a unique, 1 of 1 specimen with your own biology, schedule, circumstances, and history. You have your own pitfalls, strengths, preferences, and levels of activity.

You are trying to force a hotdog into an auxiliary jack, which is surprisingly useless.

As you go down the self-improvement rabbit hole, you’ll hear the same thing over and over. “You need to find what works for you.” Which is true (although not particularly helpful).

Think about it like this. Yes, you need to build your own plan, do your own research, and find something you can personally sustain. But I’d almost guarantee that this roadmap won’t come from one single source, which is exactly what everyone wants. Unfortunately, one person’s (complete) playbook cannot be another’s.

But that doesn’t mean pieces of their plan won’t work for you, which is exactly why I’m writing this.

Fear not, all of these little things you’re doing to learn and educate yourself are not useless. You simply need to stop treating the podcast, the YouTube video, the book, the article, as scripture. It won’t be. Individually, in the short term, each of these does nothing.

But over time, something interesting happens. These little nuggets of information compound. They combine to form something meaningful. A piece here, a piece there. Get rid of this, add that. Over and over and over, like a little thief.

You try a weight loss strategy, it doesn’t quite work, but you keep one thing you liked. You try something new, it fails, but again, you keep a piece. You keep pulling rubber bands from the metaphorical self-help bag and adding them to your personalized rubber band ball.

And eventually, all those little nuggets form a beautiful amalgamation that’s yours. Your system. Your protocol. Your “what works for you.”

This essay is my rubber band ball. Simply what works for me. My hope is that somewhere in here is a rubber band that belongs in yours.

This is how I manage my weight. How I gain weight (muscle), maintain it, and lose it.

Shall we, lads?

Maintaining Weight

Please don’t skip this section because you want to lose weight. This is the foundation of my process, and without it the other techniques aren’t possible.

Maintenance should probably be our default state as humans, hence the name.

This is how I do it.

The core of my process is the dreaded body weight scale. Not a little food scale. A big scale, one for my weight. This is the puppet master. It manages everything. How I track my progress, how I keep myself in check, how I make adjustments.

Every single morning, first thing, ass naked, I get on the scale.

I write it down in my journal. 2/3/2026, 145.4 pounds. And the next day I do the same thing. And the next. And the next. Every single day, real-time feedback on how I am progressing.

With maintenance, my goal is for that weight to stay as close to my target as possible. For me, 145 lbs. If the scale looks like this across a week: 145, 145.3, 145.5, 145.8, 146, 146.2, 146.2, it’s very clear what’s happening. I’m gaining weight, and vice versa.

By tracking daily, I’m not figuring this out at my annual physical when I’m already 15 pounds up with 3 months of work ahead of me. Much easier to correct day to day.

How I manage this is primarily through diet. The body weight scale is coupled with intuitive/structured eating.

I absolutely hate weighing my food. I think it sucks. I’ve tried it and it was certainly effective, but for me, not sustainable. Not something I could do forever. Needed a new plan.

I realized that if I just eat roughly the same thing every day, I can get a good idea of my baseline. My maintenance.

So, I eat the foods I love, in roughly the same quantities, every day. Half a pound of some meat. A quarter cup of rice or sweet potato. The same bowl of vegetables. The same number of eggs. The same number of meals, at the same time. The same number of chips. The same number of pieces of fruit.

Not perfect, but all roughly the same. I rotate what I eat but keep roughly the same macros and breakdown. Can’t mess up too bad when I train the same way and eat the same things. Three eggs and an apple every morning is hard to mess up from a quantity perspective.

And to be clear, this is not perfect. I don’t expect my weight to be 145.0, 145.0, 145.0 day after day. It moves, and that’s okay. I make micro adjustments that keep me close to 145.

Maybe I switch to hard boiled eggs instead of eggs cooked in coconut oil, or cut the apple in half. That’s it.

If I eat the same thing every day and the scale isn’t moving, I know I’m eating the right amount.

This is very, very important for the gaining and losing weight sections to come. This level of consistency is the entire foundation.

I find that psychologically, just seeing the number on the scale every day is enough of a guiding light. Moving up or moving down?

And if you think this is restrictive, it is. The problem is that in our modern world, you simply cannot do nothing. You must do something. We live in a world of abundance and overeating is easy. You still need some need guardrails.

To maintain my weight, I weigh myself daily, couple it with a consistent diet, and voila, locked at my goal weight. The processes for losing and gaining weight that follow are simply this same approach, accentuated.

Losing Weight

Like I said, I eat basically the same thing every day. When it’s time to lose weight the strategy is very, very simple. I remove things I usually eat.

For example, I eat a banana and a date every day before I work out. When cutting, I might remove the date and eat half the banana. I usually put olive oil on my eggs, well, not anymore. Instead of a cup of rice at dinner, I might cut that in half. That’s it. Boom, I’m cutting weight.

Almost effortlessly, I’ve removed 300-400 calories without needing to weigh a single thing or do anything weird.

Of course, I continue weighing myself daily to track that the scale is going down. And critically, nothing else changes.

Same training, same foods, just less of them. If I want progress to go faster, I skip the square of chocolate after dinner, have less fruit at breakfast, or steam my vegetables instead of cooking them in coconut oil. The diet never changes. The only question is how much of what I usually eat do I remove.

That’s all there is to it.

Sometimes I don’t want to remove food at all, so I increase my activity instead. An extra walk or two. A mile or two added to my runs.

That’s it. All intuitive.

Gaining Weight

Inverse of the above, basically. I grew up a scrawny little rodent of a child. Could never gain weight, never went to the gym either. I ate mountains of pasta and lasagna to compensate for how much I was moving. Lacrosse, soccer, football, hockey, basketball, baseball, wrestling, tennis, golf, I did it all and I loved it.

Still a little dweeb.

As I aged I started to yap about how I couldn’t put on any weight. True, but I wasn’t even trying. By default I had a ravenous appetite and a ripping metabolism. That was high school. Now at 26, I’ve simply realized I was just being lazy. Gaining weight is obnoxiously easy if that’s actually what you want.

For most of us, “gaining weight” actually means putting on muscle. If you’re chalking your inability to get stronger up to genetics, you’re just lying to yourself.

Your course of action is simple. Lift more weight. More volume. More sets. More reps. Do more. That’s it. Then feed those muscles. More food. More! More than you want.

If you still find yourself stuck, here’s my simple trick. Eat ice cream.

Eat your normal day of food, and then eat ice cream.

I really like “Ice Cream for Bears,” a healthy, delicious alternative to the iconic Benny and J’s. You won’t be able to put it down.

Slam ice cream, lift weights, get your protein in. The caloric surplus is really quite simple. Scale goes up, good. Scale goes down, no good.

What I Eat

When I started my health journey it was all about calories. I restricted like a madman. I tried every trendy diet. Animal based, low carb, high carb, fruit till noon.

I did intermittent fasting of all kinds. One meal a day, 16:8, 18:6. I cut foods out, added them back in, had cheat days. Imploded on weekends because I was so strict during the week. Destroyed my gut getting rid of fiber. Built it back up. Learned what I liked, what I didn’t, what made me feel good, what made my training better. It was a long journey.

And now, I don’t follow any of them lol.

How I eat is just how I live. I don’t have to think too hard anymore. It’s effortless. This is the ultimate goal, and it’s what you should aim for. I’ve reached the point where I don’t eat well to look good. I eat well because it makes me feel good, and as a result, I look good.

Mostly whole foods, with a focus on animal products.

I aim for roughly my body weight in grams of protein but don’t care that much about it. Lots of carbs because I train a lot and they make my training better. I enjoy unhealthy food from time to time knowing it will make me feel like garbage, but that’s okay, good for the soul.

When I fall off the wagon, I get back on immediately, no guilt, because one bad day or one bad week means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I don’t really drink alcohol. I limit empty liquid calories like coffee creamer and soda. I rarely snack. I use caffeine to manage appetite.

For fun, because I know you’re interested, here’s a long boring list of what I eat most days:

• Meat/game

• Fish/sea creatures

• Poultry, eggs

• Greek yogurt

• Fruits

• Vegetables

• Honey, bee pollen

• White rice

• Potatoes

• Cheese (Parmesan, raw cheddar, etc.)

• Fermented foods (sauerkraut, pickles, etc.)

• Sourdough

• Extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil

• Salt/pepper/herbs

• Dark chocolate

• Healthy ice cream (Ice Cream for Bears)

• Healthy snacks (Popcorn, Healthy chips - MASA, Vandy)

• Protein Supplements (Equip, Jacob, Promix)

GG’s.

How I Train

I do everything. I like doing everything. Endurance activities, sprints, sports. I lift, I do calisthenics. I stretch, I walk. I move, every day, always something. I believe there is always something I can be doing. I have specific goals of course, right now I am trying to run a sub-3-hour marathon, so I’m running a lot. I like biking. Rock climbing. I golf, play tennis, pickleball. I have my routine, my regiment, but I train to be athletic. I want to be well-rounded like Mario. Strong, fast, fit. The goal is holistic health. I want it all. I am great at nothing, but I am good at everything.

Being a free soul has its pros. Training is never stale, always fun. I do what I want, what I feel I can handle, what I need. Sometimes I’m deep in the weeds tracking heart rate, weight progression, split times, but the bottom line is I’m always moving. I make movement fun, always, so it’s easy to stay consistent because it never feels like a compromise. I think as humans we are meant to move. It’s less about what we do and more about that we do it at all. I am unbelievably consistent, and in my opinion, that is everything.

The Final Ingredient

This process is as close as I’ve gotten to doing things 100% intuitively. If you can’t see yourself doing what you’re doing forever, it’s not the right strategy.

I enjoy every single day. I don’t feel restricted. I don’t feel overstrained. This is just how I’ve learned to live, and I love it. It’s not about some fad diet or a new promising exercise modality. It’s really about finding what you love and combining it with what works for you. That’s all that really matters.

And one other thing…

When I was younger I told myself I would get into good shape one day. I was not the biggest, strongest, or fastest, and I didn’t know much.

But I told myself I would be more consistent than the people I admired. I signed a contract with myself to start and never stop. That was all I could control. I was okay if the results never came, if I never caught up, but I was going to try. So that’s what I did. That’s all I did. And guess what? Of course the results came.

I outran all my peers and I think I continue to do so. The point isn’t to gloat, just to remind you that it’s not about where you are, but where you’re going. Trajectory is significantly more important than current position. Start and never stop.

Just keep pushing forward. Keep showing up. Find a way to be consistent, and no matter what, I’m confident that for you, just like me, the results will come.

Thanks for reading,

Dante