If you have a child's palate, losing weight will cost you more

I'll be honest with you: if you have a child's palate, it is very hard to stick with a weight loss process.

Calories count

Let me make this clear. Without a calorie deficit there is no fat loss. That doesn't change.

But if a plan were only about numbers, a nutritionist wouldn't need to study for years. Knowing how to add would be enough.

If what you want is to keep eating the same things that got you here, only now counted in an app, you don't need me. There is a free calculator on my website and you can do that on your own.

It might even work for a while. You might even lose a few kilos.

But if nothing changes in the way you eat, in the choices you make and in your relationship with food, sooner or later you end up back where you started.

What a child's palate is

I call a child's palate the taste of someone who only likes food that is very sweet, very salty or fried. Protein bars and protein puddings several times a day, chocolate, cereal, sauces, snacks, cakes. Hyperpalatable food, made to always taste good.

Vegetables, fish or any food they have never tried are left out straight away, often without being tasted.

And there is another sign: every meal has to be a reward. If it doesn't taste like dessert, it feels like punishment.

At 5 years old, eating only nuggets and chocolate cereal, it would be understandable. In an adult, it is a habit that can be changed.

Why this gets in the way

First, the food this palate goes for doesn't fill you up much for the calories it has. You eat, you're hungry again soon after and the deficit costs more.

There is a study that shows this well. In 2019, Kevin Hall had 20 adults staying at a research centre eat ultra-processed food for two weeks and minimally processed food for two weeks. They could eat as much as they wanted. On the ultra-processed food they ate, on average, around 500 kcal more per day and gained weight. It is a small study, but it shows the difference.

Second, when the list of foods you accept is short, the plan is short too. You eat the same four or five things and after a few weeks you're fed up. The chance of giving up goes up.

Not every meal has to taste like dessert

If every meal has to be a reward, the plan will always cost you.

You look at the plate and only see what is missing. Lunch feels like too little because it has no sauce. Dinner feels like punishment because it doesn't end with a protein pudding. You spend the day waiting for the next good thing and, when it doesn't come, you feel like you're missing out.

That way, the diet becomes a fight every single day.

When you stop expecting every meal to taste like dessert, you eat, you feel fine and you get on with your day. The diet becomes much easier.

And chocolate can still be there. Once in a while, without it being the reason you make it to the end of the day.

Your palate can be trained

Your palate changes. Not overnight, but it changes.

Back when I was preparing for competitions, I had diets based on fish and broccoli. Every time I had oats with egg whites and eggs, it tasted like dessert to me. I started to enjoy food in a different way. Even plain mineral water tasted like juice to me.

Your ability to enjoy the taste of food is greater when you don't bombard your palate with hyperpalatable foods.

Science points the same way. In a 2016 study (Wise and colleagues), a group of adults cut down on sugar for three months. From the second month on, the puddings they tasted in the lab already tasted sweeter to them than to the group eating as usual. By the third month, around 40% sweeter. How much they liked them didn't change. In other words, their palate adjusted, but their liking for sweet things didn't disappear.

With salt, an older study (Bertino and colleagues, 1982) saw something similar: people who followed a low salt diet for a few months started to find food saltier and to prefer less salt.

And with new foods, studies in children show that it often takes several tastings before you start to like something. There are fewer studies in adults, but the ones that exist point the same way.

I'm not asking you to be a slave to a diet.

It just doesn't make much sense to be a slave to all your cravings.

Changing your body is also about learning to eat better. Trying new things. Training your palate. No longer needing every meal to be a reward.

You're not 5 anymore. And you can do better than that.