Well a pizza hut pizza is roughly 2400 calories. That is quite high. But in the big scheme of things if you are eating clean and in a calorie deficit for the rest of the week, I don’t see anything wrong with it.
If I were you, I’d do a bit of excercise before or after the pizza to be on the safe side.
I used to do this early on – one ginormous pizza every Sunday evening, some greens on the side, maybe some fruit, oftentimes a scotch or two; all combined easily worth some 5k kcal. Obviously health-wise it wasn’t ideal but it did the trick insofar as it had been a long-standing ritual and upholding it allowed me to stick with my newfound OMAD protocol without feeling that I was sacrificing too much. And it didn’t prevent weight loss because over the remainder of the week my deficit was apparently greater. Also – and this is pure speculation, I haven’t read any studies – I’d like to believe that when we “squash” such a huge amount of calories into an hour or two, there will inevitably be wastage in the sense of subpar nutrient absorption; and we also have some minimal 5~10% TEF (digestion) wastage regardless, which might not seem like much but when it comes to such grand feasts it starts becoming a significant “discount” as well.
Needless to say, discounted or not, I cannot by far afford said ritual these days on a weekly basis, at a TDEE some 400 kcal/day or ~18% lower than it used to be a year ago.
I made my first pizza on lavash bread from Joseph’s this week. It was amazing and would save some cals. I cut the sheet in half and stacked them (layered a bit of cheese between the sheets). Was out of this world.
It really depends how many calories the pizza is and what your maintenance calories are. Some 14” pizzas are 2500 calories, which would peg an 18” at just over 4,000 calories. IF or not that wouldn’t be good.
Let me acknowledge this is an extremely loose definition of the Word “pizza“… But here’s what I do when I am in a low carb phase.
Pick up some Mission carb control tortillas, the large ones. Look up how to make skillet pizza; many recipes and approaches, cast-iron is great but it’s kind of a pain in the butt so I stopped using it.
The trick is to get the tortilla crispy before the sauce and the cheese goes on. I’m no cook, but play around and you’ll get some pretty good results. What I like about this is it really does taste good, just like thin crust pizza, but the carb hit is so very much lower than regular pizza! Full disclosure, I do eat regular pizza now and again as well… I’m trying to lose weight, I’m not trying to become a monk!
Gonna recommend trying something like a frozen cauliflower crust pizza made by companies like Open Nature. It’s a slightly larger personal size pizza- bake for only 10 mins. Scratches that pizza itch but for only like 800 calories (they do uncured pepperoni and also a three cheese). You couldn’t get me to eat cauliflower but the crust does not have a distinctive taste. A nice thin crunchy crust.
I’d say don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you want a pizza for your one meal weekend meal and that makes it possible to sustain your fasts on the other days? You can just keep an eye on your goals, right?
I sometimes think people get too focused on the fastest weight loss or healthiest possible diet but moderation is what keeps me in shape. I avoid obsession (for personal mental health reasons) and you don’t need a perfect diet, you just need a sustainable lifestyle that gets you to your goal and comfortably keeps you there. Not meaning every day will be comfortable or that you need never deny yourself - you will have to do a lot of denying yourself, most likely. But not obsessive search for perfection.