Food Choices That Make Dieting Easier

Concerns about oxalates and phytates in vegetables are vastly overstated relative to the nutritional benefit, and vegetables are one of the easier ways to hit your micronutrient targets while dieting. There's no real reason to avoid them on a cut, and plenty of reason to lean into them.

Potatoes are arguably the single most satiating common food, consistently ranking at the top of satiety-index research — ahead of rice, pasta, and most other carb sources. Boiled potatoes specifically tend to be the standout. If you're struggling with hunger on a cut, swapping some carb sources for potatoes is a simple, low-effort change that can make a real difference in how full you feel. Rice and pasta are still perfectly fine — this isn't an exclusion, just a reason to include more potatoes where it makes sense.

Hyper-palatable foods — heavily processed items engineered to be easy to overconsume (chips, candy, processed snacks and desserts) — are a major reason diets fail even when the macros look fine on paper. These foods provide minimal nutrition but are specifically formulated to bypass normal satiety signals, so a small serving does almost nothing to satisfy hunger and instead increases cravings for more. Reducing hyper-palatable food intake tends to reduce overall hunger and improve diet adherence, independent of total calories.

• Use smaller utensils — it slows down how fast you eat, which gives satiety signals time to catch up
• Chew more deliberately — research on chewing suggests it can reduce self-reported hunger and food intake
• Drink water with meals — it naturally spaces out eating and adds volume
• Control your food environment — removing easy, hyper-palatable options removes a lot of the daily willpower tax
• Build in something to look forward to — a small, planned indulgence that fits your calories can make the rest of the diet far easier to sustain
• Plan meals ahead of time rather than improvising around your remaining calories each day

None of this is about eating "perfectly." It's about making choices that work with your hunger instead of against it, so the deficit feels sustainable rather than like a constant fight.