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❌ “Eat everything in moderation”

❌ “Life is all about balance”

…Or any of that BS which hasn’t exactly helped you lose weight so far.

Instead I’m going to give you the exact calculations to make, which would allow you to lose 1 lb of fat this week, even whilst eating 1 lb of Haribo on Halloween.

Step One: Create your deficit.

First you just need to work out your maintenance calories. That’s the amount of food you would eat that would roughly maintain your weight.

There’s plenty of ways to go about this.

The best is to track everything you eat and weigh yourself for 2-4 weeks then use the difference to estimate your maintenance.

But I know you want something simple.

So instead:

That’s your maintenance calories.

Let’s say you’re a 200 lbs school teacher. Your maintenance is roughly 2800 calories.

To lose 1 lb of fat in a week you need to be in a 3500 calorie deficit across the entire week.

(That’s because body fat is just stored energy and there are roughly 3500 calories in 1 lb of fat)

So that could look like 500 calories per day.

Our 200 lb friend is eating 2300 calories per day, in order to lose 1 lb of fat per week.

If you’re a smaller individual, you probably want to lose less than 1 lb a week. If you’re 100 lbs you want to aim for more like half a pound per week. If you’re 300 lbs you can get away with closer to 2 lbs of fat loss per week.

Step Two: Calculate Your Candy

This pack of Haribo is 400g or just under 1 lb.

There are 85 calories per serve, and the bag contains 16 serves.

So there are roughly 1400 calories in this entire packet.

That means if you wanted you could simply eat your 2300 calories every single day.

But on the day you’re going to smash this entire pack you’ve only got 900 calories left, for the entire rest of the day.

It’s doable. But it’s not very enjoyable!

We probably want more like 1500 calories to work with outside of our pack of Haribo that day. That way we can at least get 3 meals of around 500 calories each.

Here’s where the magic comes in:

Rather than having just 900 calories and starving throughout the day, all for a measly pack of Haribo…

Instead we’re going to Macro-Cycle.

This means we’re going to eat a little less on the days where we don’t really need all the food…

To create more room for flexibility (aka Haribo) on the day we want it.

So we’re simply going to pull 100 calories from the other 6 days of the week.

This means our 200 lb friend will be eating 2200 calories 6 days of the week, then 2900 calories on Halloween. 


Now they can get away with the whole pack of Haribo, AND they’ve still got 1500 calories to get 3 meals out of!

The best part of all?

They’ll still lose 1 lb of fat this week!

For sure, on the day after the Haribo massacre, the scale will be higher. That’s mostly water weight from an acute increase in carbohydrates. 


But across the week as a whole, they’ve been in a 3500 calorie deficit, and are on track to lose 1 lb!

Bear in mind there are many other factors at play. For some people, eating less causes them to burn fewer calories - that’s pretty normal.

But energy balance is still energy balance and losing fat is simply a case of ensuring you’re in a sufficient deficit over time.

We’ve created a guide called the “How To Eat REALLY Big Meals Without Blowing Your Macros” Cheat Sheet which will do all of the mathwork for you. This will allow you to set up your own macro cycle and create an environment to enjoy all of the foods you love whilst losing fat, too.

If you want your own copy of the guide, simply comment the word HARIBO on this post, and I’ll send it right over to you!

Enjoy!