Why This Surprisingly Simple Nutrition Rule Beats Every Diet You’ve Tried

“Add, don’t subtract” is a food philosophy people adopt for various reasons. For some, it may be for weight management; for others, it’s meeting their nutrient needs. What they have in common is a food philosophy that promotes abundance over restriction. But what does that mean? Surely you can’t lose weight by eating more, right? That’s true in a specific sense: eating more calories. We’re not changing the laws of thermodynamics here.

But the aim of the “add, don’t subtract” method is not to increase calories; it’s an increase in the volume of food, nutrients, textures, and flavors that boost satiety, enjoyment, and are conducive to a healthier, more balanced lifestyle. It reframes the traditional dieting mindset of hyper-focusing on what you can’t have, what you need to remove, and what you need to eat less of. Thinking of food in this way can create a negative relationship with food for some by becoming preoccupied with restriction and “clean” eating. 

But even for those of us who don’t struggle with body image or disordered eating, a positive food philosophy can be a lot more empowering, healthy, and less stressful than a negative one. Instead of focusing on cutting out “bad” foods, which often results in more intense cravings or even a binge, the “add, don’t subtract” method encourages you to look at any meal or food you would like to eat and ask yourself, “how can I make this more nutritious, filling, or more nutrient-dense?” Instead of feeling deprived, you can still enjoy “unhealthy” or empty-calorie foods by shifting your mindset to optimization. In what ways can you improve the nutritional profile and satiety of this meal with the addition of other ingredients? This avoids the all-or-nothing thinking that leads many dieters to quit prematurely.

This food framework overlaps with volume eating, a strategy that maximizes satiety and enjoyment while staying in a calorie deficit for weight loss or even just managing weight at maintenance. The idea is to boost the size of your meals by adding high-volume, low-calorie foods. These are foods that tend to have high water content and fiber, like leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes, and whole grains. These foods beef up the size of your meal visually and texturally and literally take up more space in your stomach, helping you feel fuller without drastically increasing calories. 

Volume eating allows you to eat “more” for fewer calories. But it doesn’t mean eating only high-volume foods or transforming every meal into rabbit food. It’s about adding them to otherwise lower-satiety meals to improve fullness and satisfaction. It’s especially useful when dieting because you can cut calories more easily without getting too hungry or forcing yourself to eat rice crackers. Another dietitian suggests front-loading meals with these foods first before snacking on an intense craving, especially if you’re really hungry. This reduces over-indulgence, keeping you full, satisfied, and feeling less sluggish. I’ve seen people criticize volume eaters for promoting disordered eating because they advertise their meals as high volume and low calorie. However, I suspect this is a bit of a dietary panic triggered by buzzwords like “low-calorie.” 

Volume eating is not about just eating a giant bowl of cucumbers. It’s about beefing up meals so that you get all of your nutrients and feel satisfied. Volume foods are incorporated into meals with healthy fats, high protein sources, and carbs to enhance satiety and satisfaction.

But volume eating isn’t the end of the story. The appeal of this method goes far beyond practical hunger management. For a lot of people, it’s a way out of the all-or-nothing mindset that makes not only dieting, but general nutrition feel like misery. We all know (hopefully) that the fundamental principles of weight loss are simple: calories in need to be lower than calories out. It’s following through on them that can be the problem. In our convenience culture, immediate gratification is easy to come by and difficult to reject.

Why This Method Can Be So Powerful

A major frustration for people who struggle with weight and nutrition is navigating the confusing and often intentionally misleading advice online, designed more to sell products and courses than to provide clear, practical solutions. If there’s one point anti-diet dietitians get right, it’s that there’s an entire billion-dollar industry profiting off of people’s ignorance, designed to hook you onto their services. But it doesn’t have to be like this. 

People should be working smarter, not harder. What I like about the "add, don’t subtract" method is that it’s a psychologically transformative tool based on common sense. This principle applies to other dietary concerns, like eating healthier, increasing certain nutrients, and healing your relationship with food. I’ve taken issue in the past with other supposed revolutionary dietary philosophies like intuitive eating, which I find don’t have the same utility or applicability to people with different lifestyles and eating histories. 

Telling an obese person with a food addiction to “eat intuitively” accomplishes nothing aside from reinforcing the notion that every craving and ‘hunger cue’ deserves unquestioned obedience, even when those signals are wildly dysregulated. I can’t stand the trite mantra to “listen to your body.” Our bodies aren’t magical oracles. There’s no otherworldly insight to be gained from raw, unfettered impulse. Imagine applying this logic to other aspects of life, like relationships: Feel like cheating? Just listen to your body! Why exercise control? We’re wild animals at the behest of our desires!

It's a food philosophy that promotes abundance over restriction.

Intuitive eating is really just a blank endorsement for a lack of discipline or common sense moderation. It takes for granted that some people find it easy to exercise self-control because they have smaller appetites, are less preoccupied with food on an emotional and habitual level, and experience less food noise, while others have dysregulated hunger hormones, use food for emotional regulation, are imbued with near-constant food noise, or are suffering from food addiction. A philosophy that teaches them to focus on what they can add, not subtract, to their meals, with the nuance that this means something particular—adding what’s necessary to create a balanced, energizing, and satiating meal to reach their goals in addition to what it is they already want to eat—is powerful because it’s teaching them two of the most important dietary principles: agency and balance.

A perceived lack of agency frequently underpins dietary failure, while the inverse is conducive to dietary success. When people believe that they aren’t in control, that hunger and weight gain are things that just happen to them, which they have no means to change, that’s a form of learned helplessness that supposed solutions like intuitive eating are ill-fit to address. Being told to listen to your internal cues of hunger and fullness to guide your food choices is useless if those cues are broken. Sometimes, you need to deny your cues. “Add, Don’t Subtract” is a positive reframe of denying those cues in a way that doesn’t feel repressive.

Balance is just the recognition that making things harder for yourself doesn’t actually make you more likely to achieve your goals or more deserving of fitness. A less wise dieter will tell themselves that their optimal physique requires Gladiator discipline and ascetic resolve, but all it really takes is a proper order of priorities and maturity to resist catastrophizing. The idea that falling “off track” or going over your calories for a single day “ruins” all of your progress is overly romanticized dramatics that will not serve you or get you to where you want to be.

You don’t get a participation trophy for suffering. When it comes to dieting, suffering should be explicitly discouraged, as anything that creates prolonged, unnecessary suffering for yourself is, by its very nature, unsustainable. You should instead invert any punitive level of self-control to figure out the easiest, most practicable way for you to eat in a calorie deficit or (if your goals are nutrition-oriented) optimize the nutrient profile of your meals. 

Making Better Food Decisions to Meet Your Goals

Temporarily cutting carbs might lead to quick weight loss, but it won’t help you maintain long-term results unless you learn how to sustainably integrate them into your diet. Because that’s the thing: it isn’t about the bagels. Or any other food. You can lose or maintain your weight by eating anything, so long as it fits into your calories. What the “add, don’t subtract” method provides is a framework that reorients your attention towards the things that matter: getting more nutritional bang for your buck. 

Critics of the calories-in/calories-out (CICO) model get frustrated when people claim that weight loss is simple thermodynamics. While it’s literally true that calories ultimately determine weight change, there are important nuances involved, like how macronutrients differ in their thermic effect. Protein, for example, requires more energy to digest (and therefore burns more calories) compared to carbs or fats. It doesn’t dramatically alter calorie math, but the difference isn’t negligible either. When you lack nutritional education and only have the bare minimum awareness that you need to eat fewer calories to lose weight, you might unknowingly set yourself up for failure (or at the least, make things unnecessarily difficult for yourself) by thinking about calories in isolation rather than as part of the full picture. 

There’s no reason you can’t lose weight while eating Snickers bars, but imagine how you’d feel if you had only eaten Snickers bars. You’d likely feel lethargic, gross, and despite “honoring your cravings,” still hungry. A Snickers bar isn’t a nutritionally adequate or satiating meal. It packs quite a lot of calories in the form of fat, sugar, and carbs into each tiny bite. The “add, don’t subtract” philosophy asks you to consider these factors in your daily food decision-making. 

If you really want that chocolate candy bar, you can have it. But there are ways you can incorporate it into your diet as part of a nutritionally complete meal, one that staves off hunger by bulking up the volume of your food with lower-calorie, satiating nutrients. These high-volume foods accompany the higher-calorie foods on your plate and satisfy you so you aren’t starving and likely to give in at the first temptation.

You could pair it with a small protein shake and a piece of fruit, like some apple slices paired with peanut butter. Now, you’re not just getting hit with a sugar bomb that won’t really fill you or provide any nutrients. This transformed snack plate, however, provides you with protein, fiber, and fat alongside the sugar and carbs. Alternatively, you could decide to wait to have the chocolate until after your next meal, once you’ve had your fill of a balanced meal, so the treat genuinely hits and you don’t need to continue snacking afterwards.

How to Implement the “Add, Don’t Subtract” Method

Registered dietitians like Kylie Sakaida suggest asking yourself what you can add to make it a more balanced meal. In one video, she uses a stereotypically demonized breakfast food: bagels. People starting a diet often avoid bagels because they’re high carb, low protein, and not particularly satiating. Some even demonize carbs as being incompatible with dieting. But if you’re an East Coaster like me, people will pry your bagels from your cold, dead hands. 

So, what can we add to bagels to boost the nutrient profile, promote fullness, and enhance the eating experience (because if you aren’t satisfied by a meal, you will want to eat more)? Kylie demonstrates by adding some eggs (for protein and satiety), arugula for fiber (controls blood sugar and reduces the risk of cancers and cardiovascular events), and then she adds some components that make the meal tasty. For her, that means a sprinkling of cheese and hot sauce. “We can still have carbs, but perhaps as part of a larger meal that can help us stay energized and nourished,” she explains. This can be done with just as much ease and flexibility for people with different dietary needs. Vegans might opt for tofu scramble rather than eggs and nutritional yeast or a dairy-free cheese substitute rather than regular cheese.

In another, she explains why she’s a dietitian who still eats frozen waffles for breakfast, showing how she makes them more filling and nutritious by spreading a sweet cinnamon Greek yogurt filling on them, which contains 12 grams of protein. In an alternative recipe, she mixes together Greek yogurt, peanut butter, and honey for a waffle spread. Then, she adds sliced bananas and toasted pecans for more fiber and healthy fats. She notes you could add syrup to this, but it isn’t necessary because she’s already made it tasty with her assortment of spreads and toppings. “It’s a delicious and fun way to get in fruit and nuts with your sweet treat without it feeling forced or boring and best of all, you can still enjoy your waffles.”

I love Kylie’s framing. She always signs off her videos with the encouraging reminder, “always remember what you can add to, not subtract from your meals.” This captures the entire ethos of the method: it’s not just another diet but a sustainable lifestyle. Recognizing that permanently abstaining from “bad” or nutritionally imperfect foods is unrealistic helps cultivate flexibility. No one sticks with a diet that feels like deprivation; enjoying your meals isn’t frivolous; it’s essential for lasting change. 

You can find countless ingenious recipes on Kylie’s YouTube channel, NutritionbyKylie, where she repositions foods that are stereotypically framed as off-limits for the health-conscious and dieters watching their weight as vehicles for enjoyment that can always be improved upon with the addition of other nutrients, textures, and filling proteins. She shows you how to transform convenience foods such as frozen dumplings into a cooked dumpling soup. Rather than swearing off frozen foods, she shows you how to incorporate them into a more balanced meal with the use of freshly cooked ingredients—chicken broth prepared with soy sauce, sesame oil, and garlic powder, along with other vegetables like mushrooms, shredded carrots, and spinach.

Recognizing that permanently abstaining from “bad” or nutritionally imperfect foods is unrealistic helps cultivate flexibility.

This method helps us reach our weight loss goals by not depriving us of the foods we love and crave, instead asking us to consider what our meals are missing to optimize their macronutrient profile and satiety. Kylie shows us how to use this method on another carby breakfast: cereal. What is it missing? It could use some protein, fiber, and healthy fats. With the addition of milk, fruits, crushed nuts, and seeds, we’re getting all of our macros in a balanced meal that is now more nutritious, satiating, and enjoyable. 

The addition of these nutrients will not only keep you fuller for longer but will keep your blood sugar stable, reduce the risk of certain health conditions, and improve absorption of other vitamins and minerals. The result is a colorful, varied meal that’s inviting to eat because it engages multiple senses with diverse flavors and textures. You have a varied sensory experience with different flavors and textures, and each of the components performs different functions, but combined, they provide a more satisfying eating experience that won’t tempt you to reach for the snack cupboard in the next hour. 

Limitations of the “Add, Don’t Subtract” Method

As valuable as this food philosophy is for people looking to gain a healthy but flexible perspective on dieting and eating healthier, some dietitians treat it as a rule rather than a tool. Yes, it’s one of the most useful frameworks for structuring meals—but it’s also perfectly fine to eat regular food without optimizing every bite. Some people are, as mentioned earlier, naturally more disciplined, less hungry, and less preoccupied with food. We mustn’t catastrophize or diagnose people for choosing not to use this method. 

As helpful as this method is for most people, not everyone needs to add chia seeds and a boiled egg to their midday piece of chocolate. If you can have a nutritionally empty snack and move on with your day without obsessing over blood sugar or fullness curves, if you can stand being a little hungry or a little suboptimal, that’s fine, too. Sometimes, it’s more trouble than the time, effort, and energy are worth, and you really don’t have much room in your calories. That’s why I’m emphasizing that this is an effective tool, not a rule to live or die by. You’re probably in good shape if most of your meals are structured using this protocol. 

A limitation I’ve found with this food philosophy is that the dietitians who promote it tend to use it as an antidote to restriction of the sort found in disordered eating. Consequently, it’s become a stand-in for “food freedom.” This is incredibly useful for people in recovery because it’s anti-restrictive in an intelligent way. It’s not just “eat what you want, when you want” but helps you smartly design your meals around what you want so you can meet your goals. If you find dieting to be a massive burden, this method also helps you with satiety, regulating hunger, and meeting your nutrient needs without giving up your favorite foods. 

But sometimes, the method is flattened into a slogan. Influencers promoting “food freedom” tend to be breezy or overly rosy in their explanations. That’s understandable for a 60-second TikTok, but it often leaves out the necessary context. “Add, don’t subtract” can’t be taken at face value because the terms are deceptively vague. It doesn’t mean, “Just keep adding things you like, and don’t worry about limits.” You still have to compensate somewhere. Believing you can eat whatever you want, whenever you want, and still lose weight is wishful thinking or possibly untreated hyperthyroidism. The problem is that these “food freedom” influencers aren’t necessarily explicit about that fact because of their target audience. It’s described as an “additive rather than a restrictive” approach, which is true, but it’s true in a very specific sense. 

Add French Nutrition, Subtract American Mindsets

I like to think of it as “eating French” because that’s essentially what French dietary habits consist of: eating anything they want in moderation. French people don’t cut out food groups or “bad” foods, seeing them as normal indulgences part of everyday life. However, they do always find ways to compensate. By compensating, I don’t mean the American dietary notion that you have to skip lunch if you want that 350-calorie cookie that’s been calling your name. There are smarter ways to satisfy the craving. I don’t mean making a pathetic cookie “substitute” you saw on Instagram reels that’s made of cottage cheese, either. That’s the other French dietary nugget of wisdom: nothing is quite like the real thing. 

As a vegan, this might seem counter-intuitive, as I do make plant-based substitutes for animal-based foods all of the time, but I don’t sacrifice flavor or the essence of what the food is supposed to be by resorting to a sad, bland, tasteless low-calorie “substitute.” The French don’t believe in half-assing anything. That’s not very joie de vivre. The French prioritize pleasure via quality and attunement to desire over convenience and portion size. Notice which culture struggles more with fitness, opting for rushed, on-the-go lunches in the form of sad protein bars and finding ways to overcompensate later at the gym. 

The French approach to food is about abundance, balance, and pleasure, but it’s also about restraint. They control their portions instead of participating in a moral panic over “bad” foods. It’s why they’re able to maintain their figures so easily without losing their minds. A meal is never something to be compensated for later. It’s something to be designed with thought and intention. A croissant isn’t a crisis; it’s just part of a larger meal that includes protein, fiber, and maybe a piece of fruit. The French avoid moralizing food and instead build balanced, satisfying, and enjoyable meals so they don’t spiral over every bite. 

The mystique over how the French manage to stay so slim whilst indulging in so much bread, wine, cheese, and delicious pastries is mostly just American nutritional ignorance. Compensations are being made constantly, in subtle ways that may be invisible to you; but they’re happening, nonetheless. Yes, living in walkable cities helps. But they’re also trained from childhood to eat at regular intervals and avoid snacking. This is trained from a young age: you eat at consistent times each day, which regulates hunger. They avoid snacking in between so they don’t spoil these meals, which are exquisitely slow, social occasions and expressions of love. A French meal can consist of three to five courses and up to seven for celebrations! If that sounds like a lot, it is. But they’re all proportionally restrained, serving specific roles that are sensorily indulgent but not overboard in portion size. 

These meals can take hours, especially if it’s a weekend dinner. They may consist of aperitif, which is a tiny canape, like olives, usually with an alcoholic drink meant to jumpstart your appetite. This is followed by the entree (appetizer), which can consist of something like a French onion soup, followed by the main course, usually meat accompanied by seasonal vegetables or a starch (in formal settings, a fish course may be served as separate from the main course, followed by a palate cleanser like sorbet). The salad course is usually light and refreshing—a bed of leaves served with a vinaigrette meant to aid digestion (no humongous salads with popcorn chicken and blue cheese dressing). 

A cheese course follows this: a few select cheeses are presented alongside a serving of bread, but this is typically a small selection meant to transition between the savory and sweet courses. Finally, it’s time for dessert, which tends to be finely crafted, rich, indulgent, but noticeably petite. Meals are less extensive and time-consuming for, say, a weekday lunch compared to a Sunday night dinner, but they never omit the key components: thoughtful meals constructed with deliberate, balanced ingredients, consumed slowly, mindfully, and with great pleasure. 

If American meals were more like this, we would all be more satisfied, healthier, and less neurotic about dieting. If the “add, don’t subtract” framework could break containment from eating disorder recovery communities online and into the broader culture, we might just heal some of the most deeply embedded nutritional and body image issues in the United States.