Japanese Food

There are many ways of eating in Japan, as anywhere else. They, like other people worldwide, maintain their weights depending on how much they eat and burn. In that sense, I myself lost 60ish lbs by eating less than my TDEE, and now I maintain my weight by eating as much as I burn.

I live in Japan, and have been eating "Japanese" for years. The thing is though, general Japanese food usually does not have enough protein. It is mostly Carbohydrate based as most diets around the world. As someone that does weight lifting and different workouts, I usually cook my own stuff.

Apart from certain stuff like tempura or heavy ramen's, its relatively low fat and healthy in general I would say.

However if you don't eat same or lower than your daily calorie expenditure, you will gain weight. Weight-loss is simply eating less than you burn in a day. Healthy diet on the other hand, is a different story. I would split those two first.

Yes, Japanese food is really healthy, and it helps you to lose weight.
I usually eat tofu and natto every meals along with multi-grain rice, a main dish and a bowl of soup.

I lived in Japan for a few years and have some cookbooks I bought there, many of them are labelled "futoranai" or "don't make you fat", haha. What I love is that they give you tips to cut back on calories, such as removing skin from chicken or mixing vegetables/tofu with meat, and NONE of them talk about fad foods.

All of the dishes I have made using those books have been really tasty, and since Japanese home cooking often features a variety of small dishes to accompany rice, it's a great way to try many new things and feel satisfied at the end of the meal. I cook meals like this for me and my boyfriend 3-4 times a week. He used to not like vegetables very much at all, but now he will eat pretty much anything

Example menu we had one dinner last week:
Bowl of rice
Ground chicken with miso/soy/garlic/ginger sauce over boiled broccoli and bean sprouts
Miso soup with spinach, wakame and tofu
Simple salad topped with boiled egg and ponzu/mayonnaise dressing
Total: 640 cal

There is a lot of emphasis on using fresh vegetables and fish. The only drawbacks I can think of at the top of my head is potentially high salt-content (due to soy sauce, miso, both of which you can get low-sodium varieties), and some of the most popular dishes are deep-fried.

Edit: Oh, and regarding weight-loss, I have lost 6kg in the last 2 months, but that's because of counting calories. Japanese-style home cooking easily fits in my budget and tastes good