Tyler McFarland on May 16, 2020
Updated on November 8, 2023 Reviewed and fact-checked Found a mistake? Let us know!
Weight loss is one of the many benefits often listed for vegan diets. But in reality, a vegan diet doesn’t spur weight loss for everyone. It really comes down to the details of the diet.ac
In this post, I’m going to share 18 specific ways you can adjust your vegan diet to ensure that it leads to weight loss—even without counting calories.
But first, I’ll cover the pros and cons of counting calories, along with the overall logic behind why these tips work!
Pros and Cons of Counting Calories
For me personally, I’ve actually had some success with calorie counting.
I lost 13 pounds of fat and got six-pack abs by tracking my calories. I wrote about that in my post on “How to Get Six-Pack Abs on a Vegan Diet.”
What I do like about calorie counting is that it’s more precise than any other weight-loss strategy. I’m working off of specific numbers. I have precise goals.
For a data-driven nerd like me, I prefer that over something like Intuitive Eating.
But calorie counting is not for everyone. For many people, it feels unhealthy—in terms of mental health! It can make you feel kinda obsessed with food.
For many people, calorie counting is also not something you want to do every day for the rest of your life. I think most people who count calories do it as a temporary diet.
But for healthy long-term weight management, you don’t want to be ballooning up and then crash dieting back down. So-called “yo-yo dieting” is unhealthy in a bunch of ways. (source)
So personally I think adopting a few of the more sustainable tips below is a good idea for anyone.
Heck, even if you are counting calories to lose weight, the tips below will help you feel more full and satisfied while hitting those calorie targets!
Side Note: This is the best free video introduction I’ve found on adopting a plant-based diet—the right way. You’ll learn how to lower your risk of cancer, heart disease, type-2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and obesity—all with plants. Watch the free Masterclass here.
How to Lose Weight as a Vegan Without Counting Calories
Ok, so here are the overall principles to feel full while naturally losing weight:
• Eat whole foods, not processed foods. Whole foods contain more bulk to fill you up—fiber and water. Your body absorbs them more slowly. All these factors help you eat an appropriate amount, even without tracking.
• Limit high-calorie-density foods. Even among healthy foods, there are some fatty ones that contain a lot of calories even in just one serving (nuts!). In contrast, it’s probably not even physically possible to fit enough green vegetables in your body to gain weight from them.
• Give yourself the time to feel full. When you rush your meals, you end up eating more than you intended. There are several specific tips below that will help you implement this principle in pretty smart ways.
So, without further ado, here are the 18 specifc ways to lose weight on a vegan diet—even without counting calories.
Note: Most people won’t need to do all of these! Pick a few to try. If those aren’t working, then you can add a few more.
1. Fill Up on High-Fiber Foods.
Fiber does a lot of good stuff for your body. It helps move things along, cleans you out, and keeps you regular. Fiber helps you feel full without actually eating more calories. And that’s key for weight loss.
Fiber is just a word for the components in our food that can’t be fully broken down by our digestive enzymes. That means they end up undigested in our intestines. They help push everything through, and they feed our gut bacteria.
The main way to ensure that you’re eating high-fiber is just to focus on whole foods, not processed foods. Because fiber is one of the biggest components you lose in most kinds of processing! But you may want to include a few specifically high-fiber foods, too.
High-fiber vegan foods include:
- Beans: Black beans, pinto beans, kidney beans, lentils, chickpeas, etc.
- Whole grains: Brown rice, quinoa, oats, whole grain pasta, whole-grain cereal, etc.
- Vegetables: Artichoke, kale, broccoli, beets, spinach, brussel sprouts, etc.
- Fruits: Raspberries, avocado, pears, apples, bananas, oranges, etc.
- Nuts and seeds: Almonds, chia seeds, pistachios, pumpkin seeds, etc.
You’ll notice the biggest impact with beans and whole grains—but eating whole plant foods in general will increase your fiber intake.
A word of caution! Only increase your fiber intake gradually. Adding too much too quickly is the biggest cause of vegan gas. Be especially careful as you add beans. I have a full post on 17 tips to reduce vegan farting—mind the advice in there as you increase fiber!
2. Fill Up on High-Water-Content Foods.
Besides fiber, the other major food component that fills your stomach without adding calories is water. (In fact, there are a couple more tips coming below that use this fact to your advantage, too!)
Fruits and vegetables are the foods that naturally contain the most water. Many fruits and vegetables are more than 80% or even 90% water!
But this principle also applies to how other foods are prepared:
- Boiled potatoes contain more water than baked potatoes.
- Wheat pasta contains more water than wheat bread.
- Grapes contain more water than raisins (raisins are just dehydrated grapes).
Eat more of the foods that contain more water, and you’ll naturally get full on fewer calories.
3. Eat Soup.
Starting a meal with soup has been shown by research to lead people to eat fewer calories at that meal. Without even trying!
Why? How can adding something to a meal lead to eating fewer calories? It could be for a few reasons:
1. Soup is mostly water. Water, in all its forms, helps fill you up without adding calories. And that includes broth.
2. Soup is usually hot, so you eat it slowly. This slow eating allows more time for you to realize you’re getting full and stop before you over-eat.
3. Soup is usually packed with vegetables. Vegetables are low in calories, high in fiber, and high in water.
So, soup is great for weight-loss. And it’s a great addition to the beginning of a meal specifically!
4. Limit Oil.
A lot of the tips on this list are focused on eating low-calorie-density foods. But oil is the polar opposite of that. Oil is the most calorie-dense food present in a typical diet. Just one tablespoon is around 120 calories. That can add up fast.
If you learn to cook without oil, you can eat larger portions for fewer calories. Cooking and baking without oil could be a whole separate post. But this video will get you started:
The same goes for vegan butter (it’s mostly made from oil): If you make mashed potatoes without the vegan butter, you can eat more without consuming as many calories. And so on.
Popcorn without oil can be a challenge: How do you get the salt and seasonings to stick? But if you buy extra fine salt, it will stick more easily. Some people spray on a little water with a spray bottle to help it stick. Or you can mix the seasonings with water, then drip them on.
5. Limit Nuts, Seeds, and Nut Butters.
My personal weakness when it comes to weight loss is peanut butter. My most rapid period of weight gain in my adult life was when I started adding peanut butter to everything. I put it in my cereal, on my pancakes, on my apples, on my carrots… I was obsessed.
Don’t get me wrong: Nuts are healthy. Seeds are healthy. But they’re also very calorie-dense.
In nature, nuts come packaged in hard shells that take effort to break open. But in the store, you can buy a big bag of oily, salty nuts that are easy to gobble by the handful.
An open bag or bowl of nuts is an invitation to over-eat. It’s tempting. And it’s best to stay away pretty much entirely if you’re trying to lose weight without counting calories.
6. Eat More High-Protein Foods.
When I’m cutting down to get a six-pack, one of the foods I like to eat almost every day is scrambled tofu. All the protein really helps me feel full. And that’s backed by science, too: Protein is filling!
Eating more protein also helps you keep muscle while burning fat, especially if you’re strength training. Many people can even build new muscle while burning fat if their protein intake is high. This is called body recomposition, and it’s the holy grail of fitness transformations.
But if your goal is weight loss, I recommend high-protein foods, not necessarily protein shakes.
Liquid meals like shakes and smoothies are typically less filling than solid meals. You drink them faster than you eat meals, and they don’t take as long for your body to break down. (It’s already broken down to liquid form!)
So eat some of these high-protein foods:
- Tempeh
- Tofu
- Seitan
- Beans
- Peas
- Quinoa
- Other high-protein grains: Spelt, kamut, amaranth, teff, sorghum
I wrote more about protein and how much to get for muscle-building in my post on how to get six-pack abs on a vegan diet.
7. Eat Potatoes.
Potatoes get a bad wrap… Maybe because of their association with french fries and potato chips. But when they’re not fried or covered in fat or sugar, they’re actually a great food for weight-loss.
Why? Satiety.
Boiled potatoes rank higher than any other food on the satiety index. 38 foods were tested for how full they make you feel. Boiled potatoes rank #1.
Why boiled potatoes, not baked? The extra water in the boiling may have something to do with it. Boiled potatoes are also known to have a significantly lower glycemic load than baked potatoes. So that’s good, too.
But even baked potatoes can help you achieve your weight-loss goals.
High-Carb Hannah and Will Kriski are two vegan YouTubers who have lost lots of weight eating potatoes in all forms—including home-made baked fries (without oil). Yum!
8. Drink Water Before Meals.
Research has shown that drinking about 16 ounces of water 30 minutes before meals helped obese people lose weight. In fact, the participants who did this before all 3 meals each day lost an average of 9.5 pounds in 12 weeks. (source)
Those are incredible results for just drinking water at 3 specific times throughout the day!
If you’re trying to lose weight without the hassle of counting calories, I would recommend taking advantage of this simple strategy. One easy way to do this: Get in the habit of drinking a big glass of water (or two) right before you start preparing your food.
9. Eat Mindfully.
