Whether you eat all your fruits and vegetables or only donuts, you need calories to lose weight, and you can track them with a calorie counter. For your body to use stored fat for energy, you need to eat less than you expend.
Fresh foods generally have fewer calories than foods like meat, grains, and dairy products, making it easier to maintain a calorie deficit. A low-calorie diet typically allows for 1,000 to 1,200 calories per day for women and 1,200 to 1,600 calories for men. But if you only eat fruits and vegetables, you may not even reach that goal. For example, 1 cup of raw carrots contains only 53 calories.
Although a very low-calorie diet provides only about 800 calories per day and can cause some people to lose 3 to 5 pounds per week, most experts do not recommend that adults follow this style of eating for more than 12 weeks.
