How many almonds to eat per day to lose weight? A dietitian puts a number on the standard serve — and then makes the more interesting point that it is not a ceiling.
Dhamkee doesn't give medical or nutrition advice. This post reports what a qualified professional said on Instagram — their original post is embedded below, in full.
A standard serve is about 30g, which she puts at roughly 20 to 25 almonds — a small handful. She makes the more useful point that 30g is a serve size, not a maximum, and that nuts have been unfairly treated as a food to ration.
Badam is one of the few things nobody in an Indian household argues about — until weight comes into it, at which point the counting starts. Five in the morning. Soaked, peeled, rationed. So how many almonds to eat per day to lose weight, and where did the number come from?
Ashleigh Feltham, an Accredited Practising Dietitian, took the question on and started somewhere unexpected: with why nuts got the reputation in the first place.
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Post by @feedyourfuturedietetics, embedded with credit. She practises in Australia; the serve size she cites comes from the Australian Dietary Guidelines.
Why nuts got rationed in the first place
Her opening is the honest version of the case against them: nuts are high in fat, carry a reasonable amount of energy, and it is easy to eat a handful without thinking about it. That combination, she says, earned them a reputation as something to limit when weight loss is the goal.
Nuts are calorie-dense, so they need careful rationing if you are trying to lose weight.
Research does not show that regularly eating nuts causes weight gain. She says higher nut consumption has been associated with better weight outcomes in some long-term studies, and that randomised trials have found adding nuts to the diet does not produce the weight gain their calorie content alone would suggest.
The number, and what a serve actually looks like
Her figure is 30g — roughly a small handful. Because nuts vary in size, that works out differently depending on which one is in the katori. These are her estimates:
| Nut | In a 30g serve |
|---|---|
| Almonds | 20–25 |
| Cashews | 15–20 |
| Walnut halves | 15–20 |
| Pistachio kernels | 30–35 |
| Brazil nuts | 10–15 |
She is explicit that these are estimates rather than exact counts, because individual nuts differ in size.
The part most people miss
30g does not necessarily represent a maximum amount of nuts you can eat.
Ashleigh Feltham, Accredited Practising Dietitian
A serve is a measuring unit, not a limit. That distinction is the whole point of her post, and it is the opposite of how the number usually gets used.
The five-soaked-almonds rule is close to folklore in Indian homes, and it long predates anyone thinking about calories. What is worth noticing is that the number most families use is far below the serve a dietitian would describe as standard — the rationing came first, and the weight-loss reasoning got attached to it afterwards.
The practical version: almonds are one of the few protein-and-fat sources already sitting in most Indian kitchens, in a dabba, needing no preparation. If you are trying to make a mid-morning gap less miserable, that is a genuinely useful thing to have, and a handful is a serve rather than a transgression.
For the rest of the plate, see is poha good for weight loss, is rice good for weight loss, and whether a protein shake is worth it. The full section is Indian diet for weight loss, and if the effort is not showing on the scale, that has its own answer.
Questions people also ask
Should almonds be soaked?
Her post does not cover soaking. What it addresses is quantity and the reputation nuts have, not preparation.
Do almonds cause weight gain?
She says research does not show that regularly eating nuts causes weight gain, and cites trials where adding nuts did not produce the gain their calorie content would suggest.
Is 30g a limit or a target?
Neither, on her account. She calls it a standard serve and says explicitly that it does not necessarily represent a maximum.
How many cashews or walnuts is that?
By her estimates, roughly 15 to 20 cashews or 15 to 20 walnut halves make up the same 30g serve.
Shaina writes for Dhamkee. She is a mother of two who runs, practises yoga, and cooks — usually before the rest of the house is up. She is not a nutritionist or a doctor and does not play one here. On this blog she reports what qualified professionals have said publicly, and points you to them. More about how we work.