Eat whatever as long its under calorie goal?

For weight loss, it's about keeping within your calorie goal/maintain a deficit. For health and sustainability in your diet macronutrients come into play. If you're getting proper nutrition and have spare calories for other things, go for it! Sometimes, my fun things help me meet my macros (my mcwrap yesterday helped me hit protein, my ice cream helps me hit fat goal).

This is a very slippery slope unfortunately. This opens the door to over indulgence. Kinda like, the old I'll just have one drink. While we may have the power to eat 1 piece of candy today does not mean we will have the power to not devour the entire cake another day. because believe me I could easily single handedly shut down a krispy kreme store for good. The could hook up that delicious conveyor belt of heavenly goodness directly to my mouth.

In terms of weight loss a calorie is a calorie. In terms of health each subsrate is different, e.g fructose or glucose. If you want to be healthy then you can't eat whatever you want.

Please excuse my spelling on that last post there. This makes it easy:
Eat foods with one ingredient 80% of the time
Eat whatever the heck you want 20% of the time
Do not beat yourself up if you have a rough day that requires some extra "heavenly snacks"

If you are losing weight then keep up the good work. Just remember that diabetes is real and easy for many people to get. I wish you the best and do not ever give up on your dreams.

In simple terms, yes. However I remain satiated a lot longer if I eat three square meals and a small snack of something sweet than if I had a huge cake at lunch time.

I know, because I had a huge cake at lunch time.
Now I am hungry and have no more calories. The cake was really good, and I don't do this every day, so totally worth it.

excellent post.

I wish I could say I saved you some cake.

Can you really eat chips, cake as long as you're exercising and watching the calories?

As long as you are getting your minimum macros and micros then yes... Well even if you aren't the answer is yes but I would not recommend doing it without at least getting the minimums.

yes, for weight loss, is the short answer.

the longer answer is that for health you also need to pay attention to getting enough nutrition, in particular getting enough protein and micronutrients. If someone eats their entire calorie goal of nothing but carbs for days on end (to give an extreme example) then the lack of protein and fat is going to cause issues.... plus protein and fat make you feel full while carbs don't.... aside from the health issues from insufficient protein it's probably going to leave you hungry and craving fatty, protein foods (but in reality, if someone's actually just eating what they want, these cravings for fat and protein will make them go and eat burgers or something that's going to give them the fat and protein they crave, so the "eat what you want but stay within your calories" approach isn't as bad in reality as it is in hypothetical situations... but if the cravings hit after you've used up your caloreis for the day then you have to wait until the next day to eat that burger, or let yourself go waaaaay over calories)

weight loss is purely about calories in v calories out

whether that weight lost is just fat, or whether it's a significant amount of muscle and bone density being lost with the fat, depends on getting enough protein, calcium and doing exercise that puts sufficient weight on the bones and works the muscles hard enough.

re micronutrients... a few days with insufficient micronutrients won't hurt. Months of that though, there will be problems. But for most people cravings will kick in and stop you dying from scurvy.

My personal experience of this is that if I just eat what i want without paying attention to macros is that I overeat on carbs and then I'm left hungry and craving protein and fat that I don't have enough calories for. If I pay attention to getting enough protein while tracking, then I feel satisfied on my allotted calories and can usually make room for some of whatever. If i'm paying attention to getting enough protein while not tracking, then I maintain my weight. Micronutrients take care of themselves because I like lots of food that are rich sources of a lot of different micronutrients. I could eat berries and brussels sprouts all day and I also eat enough full fat dairy and egg yolks to take care of fat soluble vitamins.

I think a good guide is that 80% of your calories should be coming from nutritionally dense food, but the other 20% can come from whatever you want, including cake and chips :P

Absolutely this!