Basically, your plate can look just as full, but it’s built around foods with higher water and fiber content—like soups, fruits, vegetables, beans, yogurt, oats, stews—rather than filled with calorie-dense options, brownies, chips, high-fat cheeses, and spreads like peanut butter. A 2025 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition similarly suggests that when people eat primarily whole or minimally processed foods, they can often consume a larger volume while taking in fewer calories than on an ultra-processed diet.

(Here’s why exercise burns fewer calories than we think.)

That doesn’t mean calorie-dense foods are inherently bad, though. “I wouldn’t say there’s anything you can’t eat, but as you go up in calorie density, you have to be more aware of the amounts you’re eating,” says Rolls. She says that in her research, even when people consume fewer calories through less energy-dense meals like soups, they don’t tend to compensate later with more food, as often happens with more traditional, restrictive dieting approaches.

While people may still think about calories, they shouldn’t obsess over them, Rolls adds. People should find a healthy, satisfying eating pattern that they enjoy so they can sustain it.  “The goal is not just to drop the pounds, but we get so much of our daily pleasure out of eating,” she adds. “You‘re not going to want to spend the rest of your life eating food that you don’t like because you’re on this quest to always be managing weight.”