Can I have a takeaway pizza and still lose weight?

I have pizza about once a month. I make sure I have the calories to cover it tho.

I is okay to have a cheat day, if it keeps you on track the rest of the week and you are still losing. Look up the calories for the pizza and see how many calories you have left over from exercise the entire week. And I would ditch the chips. Good luck!!

The pizza will be at least 700 calories and the chips another 400

I have a single slice of pizza once a month and zero takeaway chips (only a small number of low fat frozen chips). A whole pizza and chips would set me back two weeks. Its ok to eat some "junk" food and still lose weight, but you have to limit the serving size.

I save my guilt-free days for special occasions (holidays and birthdays) or a day when I've hit a milestone. Pizza is a pretty delicious (but evil) thing to be eating, so I would try to limit my intake of it, but at the very least I would log the calories so I would know what I was getting into. There's a lot of salt in cheese and restaurant food, which is going to make you retain water weight as well.

Logging everything that passes your lips (for me) is the only way to keep successful, because it keeps me responsible to myself.

No doubt. As long as you don't do this everyday. Eat everything in moderation.

I cut out takeaways for a month and it made no impact on my loss (I didn't try to replace it either- e.g. with frozen pizzas- though I do eat frozen chips on a weekly basis). But different strokes for different folks and all that, so you could try it for a month and see how it goes. Alternatively, you could try eating a plate of steamed veggies while waiting for your pizza to arrive, and see if that makes you fuller sooner, cutting down on your pizza intake. Or you could try making a pizza from naan bread (these are so yum, but not exactly wholesome) or a tortilla wrap (my sister swears by this, and it is quite small) so you can at least measure your calories on MFP.

For me, life is a little bit better (or a little bit fatter) with the occasional bit of batter in it. I'm just going to live with it.

For a while, I was eating pizza twice a week and definitely losing weight. I just didn't eat the WHOLE pizza. Stop when you're full. Don't get the meatiest greasiest pizza you can find.

I eat pizza once a week and still lose.

Of course you can. I'm 111lbs - maintaining easily with high-fat eating - and will sit down and eat half a thin crust (with bacon, more bacon and black olives!! YUM! - and the alfredo sauce rather than tomato sauce - even better!) for dinner. I will also eat the entire thing depending on how hungry I am or how active I have been.

The majority of my food is real, whole food. It's not often I eat industrial commodities (what I call 90% of what you find in a grocery store). But I deprive myself of nothing (except candy)

I don't count calories anymore. I found out that eating moderate protein and high fat keeps me lean and healthy. Sometimes when I'm busy at work I'll down a can of full fat coconut milk (Thai Kitchen is my fave!). Within an hour I'm bouncing off the walls and have to get up and move or else I'm fidgeting at my desk.

Let's say I burn 2000 calories a day (this is my average). Conventional wisdom says I need to eat 2000 calories per day to maintain my weight. A calorie is a unit of energy only.

Our body takes a good chunk of the protein (amino acids) and fat (fatty acids - it prefers saturated fat and MUFAs by the way - it will keep PUFAs at only 4% in our body - more is toxic. Even the majority of the carbs we eat are converted into saturated fatty acids) we eat and uses it towards cellular (and body) repair and maintenance and not as energy intake. How can we apply these amino acids and fatty acids toward energy intake if the body doesn't use them as energy?