Can I Eat Pizza Once a Week and Still Lose Weight?

Written by Megan Ayala. Last Updated: February 22, 2021

There is a significant misconception about losing weight. One of the reasons a lot of people struggle to achieve their desired weight loss is because they blindly accept these misconceptions as truths.

Believe it or not, but you can lose weight without eating completely healthy foods all the time. While it would be more difficult, it can be done.

Likewise, there are ways to get your favorite foods into your diet in healthier ways. Contrary to popular belief, you can eat something like pizza once a week and still lose weight.

Below, you will learn about how this can be done.

How to Lose Weight While Eating Pizza

To understand why you can eat pizza once per week and still lose weight, you must understand how weight loss works. The truth is, losing weight can be as simple as burning more calories than you are taking in.

If you are consuming more calories daily than you are burning, you won’t lose weight. Whereas, if you are consuming fewer calories than you are burning, you will lose weight.

RELATED READING: Noom Food List

Once you understand this, you will be able to easily see how you can eat bad foods like pizza and still achieve your desired weight loss objectives.

Pro Tip: Opting For Healthier Pizza Options

One of the main ways you are going to be able to achieve your weight-loss objectives would be to substitute your traditional pizza for pizza alternatives or healthier options.

1. Cauliflower Pizza

One of the best and easiest ways to continue eating pizza once per week without ruining your weight loss goals is by substituting your traditional pizza with pizza that has a cauliflower crust. This is a very common tactic among pizza lovers following the Keto diet [1].

Cauliflower is a much better alternative to flour because it contains fewer calories and virtually no fat. While you will find some pizzas made with a cauliflower crust that do add these things, they are generally going to be a much healthier alternative to traditional pizza.

By substituting your pizza once per week with cauliflower pizza, you can find it very easy to get a pizza into your diet once per week without ruining your weight loss goals. After all, you aren’t going to be consuming a lot of calories nor carbohydrates which are two things that can be counterproductive to weight loss.

Because low carbohydrate diets like the Keto diet have become so popular recently, you will find a lot of brands offering cauliflower pizza’s on grocery store shelves.

2. Look For Low-Calorie Pizza

One of the easy tricks to getting pizza into your diet once per week is by simply looking for the pizza that contains the least amount of calories. It could be a pizza that has less cheese, a pizza that doesn’t have as much butter, or anything else.

As mentioned previously, the main thing you need to be concerned with would be your calorie intake.

Therefore, if you aren’t getting a lot of calories from your pizza every week, you don’t need to worry about it derailing your weight loss efforts.

3. Eat In Moderation

When you are looking to keep your favorite pizza in your diet while continuing to lose weight, one of the key things you should be focused on is moderation. Moderation is key whenever you are looking to achieve your weight-loss objectives.

RELATED: Nutrisystem for Men Review

It’s important to eat foods in moderation whenever you are aiming to lose weight because you will find calories quickly adding up if you don’t.

One of the main reasons a lot of people will tell you to avoid certain foods like pizza when dieting has to do with how difficult it can be to eat it in moderation. Likewise, a couple of slices can add up to a significant amount of calories.

Therefore, you need to be careful when getting something like pizza in your diet because the calories can stack up relatively quickly.

4. Fill Yourself Up With Other Foods

If you want to get pizza into your diet once per week, you could always treat the pizza as an appetizer.

That way, you can enjoy a slice of pizza and fill yourself up with other things like a healthy bowl of fruit or something else.

This can help you experience eating your favorite food without causing you to overeat and consume too many calories that would be counter-productive to your weight loss goals.

How Can Pizza Help You Lose Weight?

1. You Will Have To Deal With Fewer Restrictions

One of the main reasons a lot of people fail with their diets is because diets are inherently designed to end. The fact is, a lot of diets aren’t designed to be sustainable. They are meant to end at some point.

If you want to achieve the kind of weight loss goals that you are after and you want to be able to keep that weight off, you have to stop thinking with this mentality. Instead of thinking of it as a diet, you should be looking to make changes to your lifestyle. This means you need to find something that you can stick with.

The key to getting long-term results from any weight loss effort comes with consistency and sustainability.

If your diet is far too restrictive, you will find it very easy to lose motivation to continue. After all, who wants to live a life where you are shunned from eating your favorite foods? Instead, you should welcome these foods into your life.

The best way to do this is by giving yourself 1 cheat day every week. That day, you will be able to eat all of your favorite foods that you have been depriving yourself of throughout the week.

This will not only give you something to look forward to, but it can help you get rid of the cravings that you would normally get throughout the week that could get you into trouble.

Having fewer restrictions will give you increased motivation to continue with your weight loss journey.

2. It Can Shock Your System

One of the things that you don’t want to do is allow your body to become complacent. If you do so, your body is going to get used to living with the restrictions you are giving it. Your body is highly adaptable.

Therefore, if you are consuming fewer calories, it may do things like reduce bodily processes or slow down your metabolism to compensate.

This is why a lot of people in a study ended up losing more weight when they alternated between diet weeks and cheat weeks [2]. You need to give both your body and your mind a break from a diet.

This will keep your body from slowing down your metabolism to compensate for the lessened intake of calories. Your body is constantly looking to help you survive. If you are feeding it fewer calories, it will do less to ensure you aren’t starving.

By giving yourself the ability to have a cheat day with your favorite pizza, you can avoid this entirely.

Summary

There are plenty of reasons why you don’t have to give up pizza if you are looking to lose weight. The easiest way would be incorporating a cheat day into your weight loss efforts. However, with low carbohydrate diets growing in popularity, it’s easier than ever to find healthier pizza alternatives that you can get into your diet guilt-free.

Not being able to enjoy pizza shouldn’t be an excuse for being unable to lose weight. There are plenty of things you can do to ensure that you can experience and enjoy your favorite foods every single week.

References

1. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/2017072712089
2. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/cheat-days-dieters-lose-weight-study-finds/story?id=49990643