how I stopped obsessing over the scale and lost 16 pounds anyway

This isn’t a diet story. It’s about breaking up with shame and eating well again (plus my high-protein fluffy yogurt recipe and list of low-calorie foods that keeps one full!)

ANNOUNCEMENT

my dear friend, my next cookbook, 108 Asian Cookies, is coming this October, and if you preorder now, you will receive a year-long subscription to my premium substack (worth $70) and access to new recipes all year long! Preorders mean so, so much to underrepresented authors like me and show publishers and retailers that voices like mine deserve prominent spaces on the bookshelves! Thank you!

END OF ANNOUNCEMENT

Photo by Suhyeon Choi on Unsplash

dear friend,

Is this you? Every year, you gain a few pounds. You swear you don’t eat that much, and yet it feels like even a sip of water makes you gain weight.

This was me.

Because here’s the truth: many of us have lost our natural connection with food. We’re surrounded by ultra-processed options and bombarded with conflicting advice.

Potatoes are bad for you! Wait, no, they’re great for you! Eat eggs. No, stop eating eggs!

No wonder we don’t know how to eat anymore, let alone enjoy eating. And food just doesn’t taste the same, right?

Then there’s everyday meal time. Deciding what to eat for lunch or dinner has become such a chore.

And what seems “harmless” to add to our food often isn’t. Take, for example, one of those tiny packets of Chick-fil-A ranch. Dip your fries in it and finish the entire packet, and you’ve just added over 100 calories!

Meanwhile, a tablespoon of mustard? That’s only about 10 calories.

katlieu

A post shared by @katlieu

Lately, relearning how to eat—intentionally, joyfully, and with awareness—has changed everything for me. I stopped restricting myself or punishing my body. I just started paying attention. I ate with intention.

And in the process, I’ve lost over 16 pounds—not by fearing food, not by crash dieting, and not by using any drugs (though I have zero shame around people using tools like Ozempic if it helps them lose weight and feel better in their bodies), but by finally understanding how food works for me.

It all started, however, as a diet, with me tracking my food every day.

tracking all my food in an app on a daily basis

See, I’ll admit it, without any shame. I started a weight loss journey because I wanted to lose weight. I honestly hated how I looked on camera and how all my clothes started to feel tighter on me. So I began counting calories and tracking everything I ate. I stuck to a calorie-deficit diet for over half a year, eating around 1,300 to 1,400 calories daily. At first, the weight came off quickly—about a pound a week. But then my progress plateaued. I stopped losing weight, and so I knew something had to change.

I also realized I wasn’t eating enough protein, and by 2 p.m., I’d hit a wall. I was tired, bloated, and low-energy. I wanted to nap and when it came nighttime, I definitely was not in the mood to work out.

All this time, I had thought that eating fewer calories alone would do the trick. But I was wrong.

See, what I ate mattered just as much as how much I ate. I had thought that as long as I kept my daily caloric intake low, I could eat everything I wanted and lose weight.

Here’s what I started doing differently, and soon, not only did I start losing weight (fat), but I noticed my body was getting fitter, and my waistline started looking snatched! Even some abs popped out! My neighbors commented on how different my arms looked.

I continued to track my calories and nutrients/protein with the app I have been using since 2024, called…