You can lose weight eating pizza and ice cream with your kids - it's understanding how much you can get away with and still lose weight.
Traditional diets like paleo, carnivore, and keto demand massive willpower and focus.
Willpower and focus that is needed for juggling our ND family life.
Let's run these diets through the Adaption Engine (from chapter 4) and test their fit for ND life.
Philosophy: Does this align with my values? For me, family connection and meals together were non-negotiable.
ND kids have sensory issues with certain foods
So naturally you will be following the diet and eating the meals separately from the family.
Principles: What are my non-negotiables? I still needed a calorie deficit to get lean - that's just science.
While it will help you get leaner, long term sustainability relies on willpower and discipline.
Which we know we need to save for more important things.
Environment: What's actually happening in my life? ND dad, spicy kids, building a business, family meal traditions that I choose to protect above all else.
Diets tend to be strict and rigid. Follow this path to achieve the goal.
Meals with ND kids are a game of creativity and adjustments.
You will use too much willpower trying to stay on track.
To make these diets work, we have to F.O.R.C.E. them in to our lives with willpower and discipline.
You need to save your willpower and energy for what matters most.
Being a calming, present support for your ND family.
We need to let results F.L.O.W. to use.
We need to fuel for fat loss by eating what we normally eat, but eating 'this much.'
Why Fuelling for Fat Loss Works for ND Parents
Fuelling for Fat Loss allows you to eat pizza and ice cream with the kids while still losing weight.
You can change your breakfast and lunch - most people eat the same things for those meals anyway.
But dinner becomes a family thing. You eat together as a family. Your kids eat what works for their sensory needs. You can eat the same meals.
You eat what's there, making small tweaks. The foundation: normal family meals that still get you to your goal.
When meltdowns happen and life turns chaotic, you can emotionally eat.
I believe in accepting emotional eating.
Just emotionally eat. Eat to feel good.
People eat birthday cake for joy, not nutrition. Most eating is for pleasure anyway.
We should enjoy food - we just need to eat 'this much' of it.
Pizza isn't 'bad.' Salad isn't 'good.' All foods are fair game.
This approach preserves your willpower battery, which is crucial for ND parents.
You're just eating and tracking - it's simple to do.
It removes decisions. You eat what the family eats and track it.
Over time, you'll learn exactly how much pizza you can eat Friday night and still lose weight by Sunday.
You might notice that vegetables and protein fill you up with fewer calories than pasta and bread. You'll start choosing more filling foods.
This is your foundation - the system that works even on your worst days.
It's the foundation that lets you save your willpower and discipline for the important things - like being present for your spicy family.
The Colour Code Approach to Tracking
Just like everything else in Stealth Health, Fuelling for Fat Loss follows the Colour Code system.
Red Light:
Log all your food at the end of the day from memory
Set a timer for 5 mins and do as best as you can.
You will forget things which is ok. (I'll explain that shortly)
Yellow Light:
Log after each meal throughout the day.
This gives you more accuracy and shows patterns without overwhelming you.
Green Light:
Log after each meal AND plan ahead for the next day
That way you know exactly what you're going to do tomorrow.
You can prepare snacks, meals, and plan portions ahead of time.
The system scales with your capacity, so you're always making progress regardless of how chaotic your day gets.
For apps, I recommend MacroFactor - it's the one that helped me lose 12 kg over a year while training hard and juggling family life.
MacroFactor costs money, but it takes care of everything for you.
It smooths out daily fluctuations and adjusts your calorie targets to keep you on track to your goals.
It also gives you q rolling average over 7, 14, 21, and 30 days.
Allowing you to zoom out and make changes based on long term trends rather than daily fluctuations.
It felt effortless, and I could eat anything I wanted. The app ignores daily weight swings and gives you weekly updates.
All you have to think about is putting in your data and aiming to meet your calorie ceiling.
It removes guilt about food choices. You input data. The app guides adjustments.
For free alternatives, several apps work almost as well.
MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, plus many more apps are coming to the market every week.
Find the one that works for you and focuses on the important things.
Focus on energy expenditure vs calorie intake.
The 30-Day View and Manual Adjustments
Daily weight fluctuations are normal.
During hormonal cycles, women's bodies retain and release water.
My wife can fluctuate 2-3 kg just from water retention.
Pizza, Chinese takeout, processed foods, and stress contribute to water retention.
Men experience similar monthly fluctuations.
Some days I can put on 3 kg overnight and be back down the next day.
ND life includes meltdowns, stress, and irregular schedules.
Zooming out and looking at 7-14-30 day averages gives a better understanding of what is really going on.
People struggle with daily weighing and tracking because they focus on trees instead of the forest.
They look at daily fluctuations and think they're failures when they're actually making progress.
This is why the 7-day average gives you immediate direction changes, but the 30-day rolling average shows you the real trend.
If you're using free tools instead of MacroFactor, let’s explore how to adjust your targets manually.
Week 1:
Download a free tracking app.
Track everything you eat. (we want to find out how much you currently eat before we make changes)
Weigh yourself every morning after using the bathroom.
At the end of the week, calculate your 7-day average weight and your 7-day average calories.
The Decision:
Did you lose weight from your first weigh-in to your 7-day average?
If yes: Keep doing exactly what you're doing.
If no: Drop your average calorie number by 200 and make that your goal for the next 7 days.
Rinse, wash, repeat this approach until you reach your goal.
Some weeks you'll be crushing it and everything works. Other weeks progress slows.
Stick to the plan. Keep tracking. Calculate weekly averages. Make small tweaks.
Once you have 30 days of data, you can start using 30-day rolling averages, which are even more powerful and accurate.
If you are losing weight with the 30-day rolling average, it's working.
For free alternatives, use Happy Scale (Apple) or Libra (Android) for weight averaging, plus any calorie tracking app you prefer.
These apps handle rolling averages, showing you what really matters.
Keeping you in the 'feel good zone' so you can stay on track long enough to achieve your goals.
You can use MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, or any other free calorie tracker alongside them.
The key is consistency. Log weight daily. Track food using the Colour Code approach. Make adjustments based on 7-day averages.
The tools need consistency, not perfection or high cost.
The power lies in the approach: remove judgment, allow flexibility, focus on long-term trends over daily perfection.
How accurate should my tracking be?
Parents ask me: 'How accurate should my tracking be?'
The key to making anything work is to remove friction.
So we focus on making it so easy it feels effortless.
We just track with eyesight and by using the labels.
MacroFactor also has a built-in AI tool that analyses your food photos and estimates calories.
But the key thing is to be consistent with how you track. Whatever that looks like for you.
Remember Stu the train driver. He told me he was eating 700 calories and his progress started slowing down. Something was wrong.
So we got him to send through photos of what he was eating.
Turns out he was tracking a slice of pizza instead of the whole pizza he ate. Chips and gravy were tracked as air fried, and the beers were conveniently left off the list.
Being a busy parent with a busy household. Rather them teaching him how to track accurately.
I told him to keep tracking how he is already doing it, and we would make adjustments based on his data.
We used a biofeedback tool (available in the reference section) to ensure he was eating enough fuel to support his ND spicy family.
We helped him lose 80 kg over 18 months. His tracking improved with practice.
The important thing is to focus on the trends.
If you stay consistent and your biofeedback looks good, the exact numbers matter less.
This is Stealth Health nutrition - it sits completely under the radar while delivering real results.
Your family sees you eating meals together, enjoying food, and being present at the dinner table - not 'on a diet.'
But behind the scenes, you're systematically creating the calorie deficit needed for fat loss while maintaining your sanity and family relationships.
You eat the same meals as your kids.
You save willpower for parenting.
You reduce stress in your ND household.
And that's the power of Fuelling for Fat Loss - it gives you results while serving your family life.
The best part: this approach gets easier over time.
As you track consistently, you learn to eyeball portion sizes and calorie amounts.
You learn which foods fill you up with fewer calories. You discover combinations that satisfy you longer. You master family meal navigation.
Tracking becomes automatic. Decisions get simpler. Results become predictable.
You work with your environment instead of against it.
This is sustainable fat loss for ND parents: a flexible system you use for life, not a temporary diet you suffer through.
