Check out this "expert" advise! "Counting calories is bad!"
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mamapeach910 wrote: »mamapeach910 wrote: »WalkingAlong wrote: »I read Cynthia Sass' book and liked it. I do think calorie counting is not ideal for long term weight maintenance, for many. You don't have to look far to see people all over this site with disordered relationships with food and the numbers.
What would you call a disordered relationship with food and the numbers and why is calorie counting long term not ideal?
Speaking from personal experience I got to a point where I started selecting foods strictly based on numbers and not based on other factors related to typical food selection processes (nutrient needs, palatability, etc). I started viewing foods as strings of numbers and not as food themselves. Furthermore, I disliked the amount of attention I needed to pay to energy values and I developed the feeling of severe restriction.
It's really not all that different from someone deciding to eliminate entire categories of foods and how, in SOME of those cases those people end up developing a less than ideal relationship with food (orthorexic type behaviors) because of their methods.
I've also had clients who have had issues with the relationships in their life because of their tracking behaviors.
I don't direct this at you (person I am quoting) but it baffles my mind how many people believe that since an issue or problem doesn't exist in their world, then it must not exist.
Ultimately, with any behavior you select you need to determine how that behavior effects the quality of your life. For SOME people, tracking intake is a net negative.
For many people it's perfectly fine, and for those who don't have issues with it, it's a powerful tool.
Oh, I don't question that it's problematic for some at all. I question that the site is rife with people with disordered relationships with food and numbers as the other poster asserted.
I also question the other poster's premise that for some people, long-term tracking is less than "ideal", whatever that is. "Ideal" maintenance is pretty much going to be an individual thing, who gets to do decide what works best for anyone? Why have a concept of what is and isn't ideal?
I see.
I agree that regardless of the prevalence of disordered eating on this site (I make no claims about it) you can't say that it was caused by tracking.
I do think that long term tracking probably isn't a great idea for many people. Most people are going to be better off using calorie tracking in the short term while they develop food habits that allow them to sustain a reasonable calorie intake so that the tracking piece can eventually (at some point) go away.
It baffles me how people believe that they will be 90 years old in a nursing home and logging the jello they eat through a straw.
Now, if someone enjoys calorie tracking then doing it long term is fine. I suspect most people aren't in this position.
Why would it baffle you to find numerous people on the MyFitnessPal calorie counting website that are willing to use calorie counting as a long term solution?
Do you think you will be tracking until you are dead. I mean that question literally. Are you going to be tracking intake for the rest of your life?
That is what baffles me. The number of people who believe they will be doing this until they are dead.
And it is not about "willing" as much as it's the idea that they are somehow NEVER going to acquire the necessary habits to maintain weight without logging.
I am not baffled that there are people who use calorie counting as a long term solution.
And yes it's quite obvious that sites dedicated to calorie counting will generate mass opinions about calorie counting.
Finally for the record I thought the original article was crap and I also think tracking intake is a great idea for most people. Most of my clients do it. I mention all of this because my arguments about this topic get strawmanned quite a bit -- people think I'm against calorie counting. I'm absolutely not against it. I'm against dogma.
I actually do intend to log my diet “forever”. There are just too many activities and food attributes for me to reasonably mentally track my calories and macros.
I recently downloaded 589 days of food / exercise logging on MFP, and crunched the numbers in a database. There were over 15,300 individual food entries, comprising over 1.6 million calories consumed, or about 475 lbs of equivalent body weight (@ 3,500 calories per lb). That is over 196 thousand carb grams, 46 thousand fat grams, and 102 thousand protein grams. Of those 15 thousand individual entries, over 3,700 were unique. At the same time, I logged almost 26 thousand minutes exercised and over 225 thousand calories burned.
If you are able to process all of this consistently day in and day out without any sort of technological aid, I am extremely impressed. Beyond the calories and macros, sodium, sugar, fiber, vitamins, calcium, iron, etc. are all of interest to me. If I could track all of that in my head every day, I’d be doing something much more impressive for a living than I am right now. Scanning, weighing, and selecting food on the MFP app takes 10 minutes per day, which comprises about 0.69% of my day. Totally reasonable.
I don’t see the need to ensure that I am fueling properly diminishing as I get older, it will actually become more critical. So if I am lucky enough to live that long, I will be the 90 year old dude in the kitchen at the nursing home scanning and weighing food, and wearing an HRM to track my calorie burn as I scurry around with my walker.
If you're content with it or actually enjoy the process then that's great.
However:There are just too many activities and food attributes for me to reasonably mentally track my calories and macros
What's the reason that you would need to track these mentally or physically? The alternative to logging isn't necessarily "mentally logging". One alternative is to learn food related habits that allow you to eat within a reasonable range of calorie and nutrient intake. It is a learned behavior along with learning to respect satiety cues/etc.If you are able to process all of this consistently day in and day out without any sort of technological aid, I am extremely impressed. Beyond the calories and macros, sodium, sugar, fiber, vitamins, calcium, iron, etc. are all of interest to me. If I could track all of that in my head every day, I’d be doing something much more impressive for a living than I am right now. Scanning, weighing, and selecting food on the MFP app takes 10 minutes per day, which comprises about 0.69% of my day. Totally reasonable.
If this data is of interest to you and you enjoy the process of managing it then once again that's great. By all means continue to do it.
However, the assumption that you need to micromanage all of that data is not necessarily correct. EDIT: Let me clarify -- for some people it may be necessary at times. I don't mean to claim that it's absolutely not necessary for you right now because I don't know your goals or your current levels of leanness or the food related habits you've established during your intake tracking. I'm simply challenging the idea that it's always necessary to precisely manage all of those variables for everyone.
What matters is that you eat a diet that falls within a reasonable range for your goals. Whether or not you track the data within that diet is a separate thing, and it's possible to learn the necessary food habits to get your diet to fall within that reasonable range without logging or with intermittent logging.
Now having said that, there are contexts where micromanagement is superior such as someone pushing contest levels of leanness.
I think if you have a fairly regimented life and eat a lot of the same things consistently, it is manageable to mentally track your diet. But I don't know where I'm eating or what I'm eating for dinner tonight, lunch tomorrow, dinner tomorrow, etc. I ate a lot of familiar things yesterday, but I'm not sure if the combination of meals allowed me to reach my fiber minimums unless I track each thing.
Logging my diet is of interest, but enjoying it may be a stretch - I enjoy the results of it and it is a minimal time investment, so my intent is for it to be a lifelong habit.
Once again though, you are assuming that methods of "non logging" rely on "mental tracking". They do not.
I'm suggesting that for many people it's possible to develop habits and awareness around food selection, meal construction, physical activity and other behaviors such that you can eat within a range that allows you to maintain or develop a physique to be quite happy with.
I know what you are saying. If I ate the foods that I regularly ate and did not log them in I am pretty sure that my calories and macros would be pretty spot on because I have been doing this for a while. however, I choose to keep logging because I want to be accurate and I like having easy access to the data that it provides...
Quick question. Are you goals to have average physique?0 -
This sounds like the 'black and white' mentality I was referring to. Are you saying that logging calories/macros is the only valid path to weight loss/maintenance?Not tracking your calories or macros is like hiking without a map.
"How did i get here?" = "How did I get so fat?"
You wont know because you have no reconnaisance thats giving you useful data. You would just be feeling your way through whatever you are trying to do.
Knowing your calorie and macro intake is just common sense just as how using a map is common sense. If you get lost using a map then you dont know how to freaking use a map.
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The only difference between these two mice is their gut bacteria.
Both were allowed to self-select how much food to eat.
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20 years go when I tried counting calories, I did tend to obsess a little and thought too much about food. It slowed my progress. I did better just reducing portions and eating "intuitively." (Which might have made it harder to maintain, though.) However, these days with online sites and apps like MFP, counting calories has been very easy for me and is actually sort of fun. I think that with the support of MFP I won't gain weight back this time.0
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WalkingAlong wrote: »
This sounds like the 'black and white' mentality I was referring to. Are you saying that logging calories/macros is the only valid path to weight loss/maintenance?Not tracking your calories or macros is like hiking without a map.
"How did i get here?" = "How did I get so fat?"
You wont know because you have no reconnaisance thats giving you useful data. You would just be feeling your way through whatever you are trying to do.
Knowing your calorie and macro intake is just common sense just as how using a map is common sense. If you get lost using a map then you dont know how to freaking use a map.
LOL funny thing though is when I was little I didn't need a map when running through miles and miles of woods with friends and my favorite game. Flashlight tag in the dark in the woods. No map ever needed. You go in you get lost if you do. You learn from getting lost so it never happens again. Not everyone uses MFP to lose weight. People been doing it before computers were even made so no not common sense to need MFP to reach whatever goal you have.0 -
I don't think it's a crutch and I've not said that here or anywhere else, ever. Nor have I called anyone crazy for having that belief.
You're right, you didn't say that at all. You're just "baffled" at the amount of people on MyFitnessPal and other locations that might be willing to track their calories for the foreseeable future. Whatever that means
I said the following and I'll requote it exactly:It baffles me how people believe that they will be 90 years old in a nursing home and logging the jello they eat through a straw.
This is not what you just misrepresented above. You are making a strawman argument yet again.
I am happy to debate with you on this but you seem to repeatedly argue against things that I have not said.
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mamapeach910 wrote: »mamapeach910 wrote: »WalkingAlong wrote: »I read Cynthia Sass' book and liked it. I do think calorie counting is not ideal for long term weight maintenance, for many. You don't have to look far to see people all over this site with disordered relationships with food and the numbers.
What would you call a disordered relationship with food and the numbers and why is calorie counting long term not ideal?
Speaking from personal experience I got to a point where I started selecting foods strictly based on numbers and not based on other factors related to typical food selection processes (nutrient needs, palatability, etc). I started viewing foods as strings of numbers and not as food themselves. Furthermore, I disliked the amount of attention I needed to pay to energy values and I developed the feeling of severe restriction.
It's really not all that different from someone deciding to eliminate entire categories of foods and how, in SOME of those cases those people end up developing a less than ideal relationship with food (orthorexic type behaviors) because of their methods.
I've also had clients who have had issues with the relationships in their life because of their tracking behaviors.
I don't direct this at you (person I am quoting) but it baffles my mind how many people believe that since an issue or problem doesn't exist in their world, then it must not exist.
Ultimately, with any behavior you select you need to determine how that behavior effects the quality of your life. For SOME people, tracking intake is a net negative.
For many people it's perfectly fine, and for those who don't have issues with it, it's a powerful tool.
Oh, I don't question that it's problematic for some at all. I question that the site is rife with people with disordered relationships with food and numbers as the other poster asserted.
I also question the other poster's premise that for some people, long-term tracking is less than "ideal", whatever that is. "Ideal" maintenance is pretty much going to be an individual thing, who gets to do decide what works best for anyone? Why have a concept of what is and isn't ideal?
I see.
I agree that regardless of the prevalence of disordered eating on this site (I make no claims about it) you can't say that it was caused by tracking.
I do think that long term tracking probably isn't a great idea for many people. Most people are going to be better off using calorie tracking in the short term while they develop food habits that allow them to sustain a reasonable calorie intake so that the tracking piece can eventually (at some point) go away.
It baffles me how people believe that they will be 90 years old in a nursing home and logging the jello they eat through a straw.
Now, if someone enjoys calorie tracking then doing it long term is fine. I suspect most people aren't in this position.
Why would it baffle you to find numerous people on the MyFitnessPal calorie counting website that are willing to use calorie counting as a long term solution?
Do you think you will be tracking until you are dead. I mean that question literally. Are you going to be tracking intake for the rest of your life?
That is what baffles me. The number of people who believe they will be doing this until they are dead.
And it is not about "willing" as much as it's the idea that they are somehow NEVER going to acquire the necessary habits to maintain weight without logging.
I am not baffled that there are people who use calorie counting as a long term solution.
And yes it's quite obvious that sites dedicated to calorie counting will generate mass opinions about calorie counting.
Finally for the record I thought the original article was crap and I also think tracking intake is a great idea for most people. Most of my clients do it. I mention all of this because my arguments about this topic get strawmanned quite a bit -- people think I'm against calorie counting. I'm absolutely not against it. I'm against dogma.
I actually do intend to log my diet “forever”. There are just too many activities and food attributes for me to reasonably mentally track my calories and macros.
I recently downloaded 589 days of food / exercise logging on MFP, and crunched the numbers in a database. There were over 15,300 individual food entries, comprising over 1.6 million calories consumed, or about 475 lbs of equivalent body weight (@ 3,500 calories per lb). That is over 196 thousand carb grams, 46 thousand fat grams, and 102 thousand protein grams. Of those 15 thousand individual entries, over 3,700 were unique. At the same time, I logged almost 26 thousand minutes exercised and over 225 thousand calories burned.
If you are able to process all of this consistently day in and day out without any sort of technological aid, I am extremely impressed. Beyond the calories and macros, sodium, sugar, fiber, vitamins, calcium, iron, etc. are all of interest to me. If I could track all of that in my head every day, I’d be doing something much more impressive for a living than I am right now. Scanning, weighing, and selecting food on the MFP app takes 10 minutes per day, which comprises about 0.69% of my day. Totally reasonable.
I don’t see the need to ensure that I am fueling properly diminishing as I get older, it will actually become more critical. So if I am lucky enough to live that long, I will be the 90 year old dude in the kitchen at the nursing home scanning and weighing food, and wearing an HRM to track my calorie burn as I scurry around with my walker.
If you're content with it or actually enjoy the process then that's great.
However:There are just too many activities and food attributes for me to reasonably mentally track my calories and macros
What's the reason that you would need to track these mentally or physically? The alternative to logging isn't necessarily "mentally logging". One alternative is to learn food related habits that allow you to eat within a reasonable range of calorie and nutrient intake. It is a learned behavior along with learning to respect satiety cues/etc.If you are able to process all of this consistently day in and day out without any sort of technological aid, I am extremely impressed. Beyond the calories and macros, sodium, sugar, fiber, vitamins, calcium, iron, etc. are all of interest to me. If I could track all of that in my head every day, I’d be doing something much more impressive for a living than I am right now. Scanning, weighing, and selecting food on the MFP app takes 10 minutes per day, which comprises about 0.69% of my day. Totally reasonable.
If this data is of interest to you and you enjoy the process of managing it then once again that's great. By all means continue to do it.
However, the assumption that you need to micromanage all of that data is not necessarily correct. EDIT: Let me clarify -- for some people it may be necessary at times. I don't mean to claim that it's absolutely not necessary for you right now because I don't know your goals or your current levels of leanness or the food related habits you've established during your intake tracking. I'm simply challenging the idea that it's always necessary to precisely manage all of those variables for everyone.
What matters is that you eat a diet that falls within a reasonable range for your goals. Whether or not you track the data within that diet is a separate thing, and it's possible to learn the necessary food habits to get your diet to fall within that reasonable range without logging or with intermittent logging.
Now having said that, there are contexts where micromanagement is superior such as someone pushing contest levels of leanness.
I think if you have a fairly regimented life and eat a lot of the same things consistently, it is manageable to mentally track your diet. But I don't know where I'm eating or what I'm eating for dinner tonight, lunch tomorrow, dinner tomorrow, etc. I ate a lot of familiar things yesterday, but I'm not sure if the combination of meals allowed me to reach my fiber minimums unless I track each thing.
Logging my diet is of interest, but enjoying it may be a stretch - I enjoy the results of it and it is a minimal time investment, so my intent is for it to be a lifelong habit.
Once again though, you are assuming that methods of "non logging" rely on "mental tracking". They do not.
I'm suggesting that for many people it's possible to develop habits and awareness around food selection, meal construction, physical activity and other behaviors such that you can eat within a range that allows you to maintain or develop a physique to be quite happy with.
I know what you are saying. If I ate the foods that I regularly ate and did not log them in I am pretty sure that my calories and macros would be pretty spot on because I have been doing this for a while. however, I choose to keep logging because I want to be accurate and I like having easy access to the data that it provides...
And there's nothing wrong with that. And depending on your leanness (can't tell from pics) you might be in a place where the room for error that you have with respect to intake might demand or necessitate a level of accuracy that isn't necessarily with general population.
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mamapeach910 wrote: »mamapeach910 wrote: »WalkingAlong wrote: »I read Cynthia Sass' book and liked it. I do think calorie counting is not ideal for long term weight maintenance, for many. You don't have to look far to see people all over this site with disordered relationships with food and the numbers.
What would you call a disordered relationship with food and the numbers and why is calorie counting long term not ideal?
Speaking from personal experience I got to a point where I started selecting foods strictly based on numbers and not based on other factors related to typical food selection processes (nutrient needs, palatability, etc). I started viewing foods as strings of numbers and not as food themselves. Furthermore, I disliked the amount of attention I needed to pay to energy values and I developed the feeling of severe restriction.
It's really not all that different from someone deciding to eliminate entire categories of foods and how, in SOME of those cases those people end up developing a less than ideal relationship with food (orthorexic type behaviors) because of their methods.
I've also had clients who have had issues with the relationships in their life because of their tracking behaviors.
I don't direct this at you (person I am quoting) but it baffles my mind how many people believe that since an issue or problem doesn't exist in their world, then it must not exist.
Ultimately, with any behavior you select you need to determine how that behavior effects the quality of your life. For SOME people, tracking intake is a net negative.
For many people it's perfectly fine, and for those who don't have issues with it, it's a powerful tool.
Oh, I don't question that it's problematic for some at all. I question that the site is rife with people with disordered relationships with food and numbers as the other poster asserted.
I also question the other poster's premise that for some people, long-term tracking is less than "ideal", whatever that is. "Ideal" maintenance is pretty much going to be an individual thing, who gets to do decide what works best for anyone? Why have a concept of what is and isn't ideal?
I see.
I agree that regardless of the prevalence of disordered eating on this site (I make no claims about it) you can't say that it was caused by tracking.
I do think that long term tracking probably isn't a great idea for many people. Most people are going to be better off using calorie tracking in the short term while they develop food habits that allow them to sustain a reasonable calorie intake so that the tracking piece can eventually (at some point) go away.
It baffles me how people believe that they will be 90 years old in a nursing home and logging the jello they eat through a straw.
Now, if someone enjoys calorie tracking then doing it long term is fine. I suspect most people aren't in this position.
Why would it baffle you to find numerous people on the MyFitnessPal calorie counting website that are willing to use calorie counting as a long term solution?
Do you think you will be tracking until you are dead. I mean that question literally. Are you going to be tracking intake for the rest of your life?
That is what baffles me. The number of people who believe they will be doing this until they are dead.
And it is not about "willing" as much as it's the idea that they are somehow NEVER going to acquire the necessary habits to maintain weight without logging.
I am not baffled that there are people who use calorie counting as a long term solution.
And yes it's quite obvious that sites dedicated to calorie counting will generate mass opinions about calorie counting.
Finally for the record I thought the original article was crap and I also think tracking intake is a great idea for most people. Most of my clients do it. I mention all of this because my arguments about this topic get strawmanned quite a bit -- people think I'm against calorie counting. I'm absolutely not against it. I'm against dogma.
I actually do intend to log my diet “forever”. There are just too many activities and food attributes for me to reasonably mentally track my calories and macros.
I recently downloaded 589 days of food / exercise logging on MFP, and crunched the numbers in a database. There were over 15,300 individual food entries, comprising over 1.6 million calories consumed, or about 475 lbs of equivalent body weight (@ 3,500 calories per lb). That is over 196 thousand carb grams, 46 thousand fat grams, and 102 thousand protein grams. Of those 15 thousand individual entries, over 3,700 were unique. At the same time, I logged almost 26 thousand minutes exercised and over 225 thousand calories burned.
If you are able to process all of this consistently day in and day out without any sort of technological aid, I am extremely impressed. Beyond the calories and macros, sodium, sugar, fiber, vitamins, calcium, iron, etc. are all of interest to me. If I could track all of that in my head every day, I’d be doing something much more impressive for a living than I am right now. Scanning, weighing, and selecting food on the MFP app takes 10 minutes per day, which comprises about 0.69% of my day. Totally reasonable.
I don’t see the need to ensure that I am fueling properly diminishing as I get older, it will actually become more critical. So if I am lucky enough to live that long, I will be the 90 year old dude in the kitchen at the nursing home scanning and weighing food, and wearing an HRM to track my calorie burn as I scurry around with my walker.
If you're content with it or actually enjoy the process then that's great.
However:There are just too many activities and food attributes for me to reasonably mentally track my calories and macros
What's the reason that you would need to track these mentally or physically? The alternative to logging isn't necessarily "mentally logging". One alternative is to learn food related habits that allow you to eat within a reasonable range of calorie and nutrient intake. It is a learned behavior along with learning to respect satiety cues/etc.If you are able to process all of this consistently day in and day out without any sort of technological aid, I am extremely impressed. Beyond the calories and macros, sodium, sugar, fiber, vitamins, calcium, iron, etc. are all of interest to me. If I could track all of that in my head every day, I’d be doing something much more impressive for a living than I am right now. Scanning, weighing, and selecting food on the MFP app takes 10 minutes per day, which comprises about 0.69% of my day. Totally reasonable.
If this data is of interest to you and you enjoy the process of managing it then once again that's great. By all means continue to do it.
However, the assumption that you need to micromanage all of that data is not necessarily correct. EDIT: Let me clarify -- for some people it may be necessary at times. I don't mean to claim that it's absolutely not necessary for you right now because I don't know your goals or your current levels of leanness or the food related habits you've established during your intake tracking. I'm simply challenging the idea that it's always necessary to precisely manage all of those variables for everyone.
What matters is that you eat a diet that falls within a reasonable range for your goals. Whether or not you track the data within that diet is a separate thing, and it's possible to learn the necessary food habits to get your diet to fall within that reasonable range without logging or with intermittent logging.
Now having said that, there are contexts where micromanagement is superior such as someone pushing contest levels of leanness.
I think if you have a fairly regimented life and eat a lot of the same things consistently, it is manageable to mentally track your diet. But I don't know where I'm eating or what I'm eating for dinner tonight, lunch tomorrow, dinner tomorrow, etc. I ate a lot of familiar things yesterday, but I'm not sure if the combination of meals allowed me to reach my fiber minimums unless I track each thing.
Logging my diet is of interest, but enjoying it may be a stretch - I enjoy the results of it and it is a minimal time investment, so my intent is for it to be a lifelong habit.
Once again though, you are assuming that methods of "non logging" rely on "mental tracking". They do not.
I'm suggesting that for many people it's possible to develop habits and awareness around food selection, meal construction, physical activity and other behaviors such that you can eat within a range that allows you to maintain or develop a physique to be quite happy with.
I don't disagree that people can do this intuitively with experience.
My initial response was basically to your post :"That is what baffles me. The number of people who believe they will be doing this until they are dead." I do believe that tracking my diet is worth the 10 minute investment every day from now until my death, for the reasons I stated above.0 -
Well I do agree that it's a pain in the *kitten* to log EVERYTHING you eat.And to think there are people who accurately MEASURE everything they put into their mouth..It might seem easy to some but I find that difficult as hell.
I prefer just guesstimating in my head tbh,and it works for me
And I think most people would lose weight if they minimized intake of calorie dense foods and ate a little less than 'feeling full' level even ifthey don't count calories..But yeah counting calories is the only way you can be SURE0 -
I don't think it's a crutch and I've not said that here or anywhere else, ever. Nor have I called anyone crazy for having that belief.
You're right, you didn't say that at all. You're just "baffled" at the amount of people on MyFitnessPal and other locations that might be willing to track their calories for the foreseeable future. Whatever that means
I said the following and I'll requote it exactly:It baffles me how people believe that they will be 90 years old in a nursing home and logging the jello they eat through a straw.
This is not what you just misrepresented above. You are making a strawman argument yet again.
I am happy to debate with you on this but you seem to repeatedly argue against things that I have not said.
Because to me there's no real difference between "till you're dead" or "foreseeable future". If it doesn't baffle you that you might be 90 and looking to take a stretch and breathe in the fresh air (exercise), I guess I don't really see the point of your earlier statement. Let's agree that I'm not understanding what you mean. I've been told I have a tendency to be dense
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I don't think it's a crutch and I've not said that here or anywhere else, ever. Nor have I called anyone crazy for having that belief.
You're right, you didn't say that at all. You're just "baffled" at the amount of people on MyFitnessPal and other locations that might be willing to track their calories for the foreseeable future. Whatever that means
I said the following and I'll requote it exactly:It baffles me how people believe that they will be 90 years old in a nursing home and logging the jello they eat through a straw.
This is not what you just misrepresented above. You are making a strawman argument yet again.
I am happy to debate with you on this but you seem to repeatedly argue against things that I have not said.
Because to me there's no real difference between "till you're dead" or "foreseeable future". If it doesn't baffle you that you might be 90 and looking to take a stretch and breathe in the fresh air (exercise), I guess I don't really see the point of your earlier statement. Let's agree that I'm not understanding what you mean. I've been told I have a tendency to be dense
He isn't talking about continuing to work out or exercise. He's talking about tracking calories until you die.
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I need to pull them, but there are studies that indicate that more people have success in the long term (i.e. maintain) by education, support and changing their behaviours and environment than actually calorie counting. Obviously, as with every study - the 'results' show the average stats - not outliers - and so some people will do better calorie counting - but it is by no means necessary or even advisable for everyone.
Anecdotally, I can maintain my weight and lose weight without tracking - historically, when I was maintaining a lean weight, I just tracked every now and again and only if I got a little fluffier than I liked, and that was just to remind myself of portion sizes etc. When I want to cut a bit more severely to 'lose those last 5 - 10lbs' to hit a weight class for competition or just coz, I track - but that is really to ensure I hit my protein goals (lower calories = higher protein target and less food to hit it) and get more data. For me, tracking is a good tool but in no way do I expect to need to do it forever, and nor would I want to. From a lifestyle perspective, personally I would rather be a few pounds heavier (still in a healthy weight range) than track permanently.
I track when it is conducive to my goals and lifestyle at the time.0 -
Lol, don't count your calories. Don't look at the food you put in your mouth. Right, ug! Oh and btw don't bother counting your steps or monitoring your heart rate either. Yeah, heaven forbid we take control of our health. Fox news wouldn't have any advertisers left then, would they? Huffington Post for that matter either.
lol?? I don't count for months at a time - in fact I have not tracked consistently for over a year. I do not count my steps (never have) and pay no attention to my heart rate.
Apparently, I have not taken any control over my health???
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mamapeach910 wrote: »mamapeach910 wrote: »WalkingAlong wrote: »I read Cynthia Sass' book and liked it. I do think calorie counting is not ideal for long term weight maintenance, for many. You don't have to look far to see people all over this site with disordered relationships with food and the numbers.
What would you call a disordered relationship with food and the numbers and why is calorie counting long term not ideal?
Speaking from personal experience I got to a point where I started selecting foods strictly based on numbers and not based on other factors related to typical food selection processes (nutrient needs, palatability, etc). I started viewing foods as strings of numbers and not as food themselves. Furthermore, I disliked the amount of attention I needed to pay to energy values and I developed the feeling of severe restriction.
It's really not all that different from someone deciding to eliminate entire categories of foods and how, in SOME of those cases those people end up developing a less than ideal relationship with food (orthorexic type behaviors) because of their methods.
I've also had clients who have had issues with the relationships in their life because of their tracking behaviors.
I don't direct this at you (person I am quoting) but it baffles my mind how many people believe that since an issue or problem doesn't exist in their world, then it must not exist.
Ultimately, with any behavior you select you need to determine how that behavior effects the quality of your life. For SOME people, tracking intake is a net negative.
For many people it's perfectly fine, and for those who don't have issues with it, it's a powerful tool.
Oh, I don't question that it's problematic for some at all. I question that the site is rife with people with disordered relationships with food and numbers as the other poster asserted.
I also question the other poster's premise that for some people, long-term tracking is less than "ideal", whatever that is. "Ideal" maintenance is pretty much going to be an individual thing, who gets to do decide what works best for anyone? Why have a concept of what is and isn't ideal?
I see.
I agree that regardless of the prevalence of disordered eating on this site (I make no claims about it) you can't say that it was caused by tracking.
I do think that long term tracking probably isn't a great idea for many people. Most people are going to be better off using calorie tracking in the short term while they develop food habits that allow them to sustain a reasonable calorie intake so that the tracking piece can eventually (at some point) go away.
It baffles me how people believe that they will be 90 years old in a nursing home and logging the jello they eat through a straw.
Now, if someone enjoys calorie tracking then doing it long term is fine. I suspect most people aren't in this position.
Why would it baffle you to find numerous people on the MyFitnessPal calorie counting website that are willing to use calorie counting as a long term solution?
Do you think you will be tracking until you are dead. I mean that question literally. Are you going to be tracking intake for the rest of your life?
That is what baffles me. The number of people who believe they will be doing this until they are dead.
And it is not about "willing" as much as it's the idea that they are somehow NEVER going to acquire the necessary habits to maintain weight without logging.
I am not baffled that there are people who use calorie counting as a long term solution.
And yes it's quite obvious that sites dedicated to calorie counting will generate mass opinions about calorie counting.
Finally for the record I thought the original article was crap and I also think tracking intake is a great idea for most people. Most of my clients do it. I mention all of this because my arguments about this topic get strawmanned quite a bit -- people think I'm against calorie counting. I'm absolutely not against it. I'm against dogma.
I actually do intend to log my diet “forever”. There are just too many activities and food attributes for me to reasonably mentally track my calories and macros.
I recently downloaded 589 days of food / exercise logging on MFP, and crunched the numbers in a database. There were over 15,300 individual food entries, comprising over 1.6 million calories consumed, or about 475 lbs of equivalent body weight (@ 3,500 calories per lb). That is over 196 thousand carb grams, 46 thousand fat grams, and 102 thousand protein grams. Of those 15 thousand individual entries, over 3,700 were unique. At the same time, I logged almost 26 thousand minutes exercised and over 225 thousand calories burned.
If you are able to process all of this consistently day in and day out without any sort of technological aid, I am extremely impressed. Beyond the calories and macros, sodium, sugar, fiber, vitamins, calcium, iron, etc. are all of interest to me. If I could track all of that in my head every day, I’d be doing something much more impressive for a living than I am right now. Scanning, weighing, and selecting food on the MFP app takes 10 minutes per day, which comprises about 0.69% of my day. Totally reasonable.
I don’t see the need to ensure that I am fueling properly diminishing as I get older, it will actually become more critical. So if I am lucky enough to live that long, I will be the 90 year old dude in the kitchen at the nursing home scanning and weighing food, and wearing an HRM to track my calorie burn as I scurry around with my walker.
If you're content with it or actually enjoy the process then that's great.
However:There are just too many activities and food attributes for me to reasonably mentally track my calories and macros
What's the reason that you would need to track these mentally or physically? The alternative to logging isn't necessarily "mentally logging". One alternative is to learn food related habits that allow you to eat within a reasonable range of calorie and nutrient intake. It is a learned behavior along with learning to respect satiety cues/etc.If you are able to process all of this consistently day in and day out without any sort of technological aid, I am extremely impressed. Beyond the calories and macros, sodium, sugar, fiber, vitamins, calcium, iron, etc. are all of interest to me. If I could track all of that in my head every day, I’d be doing something much more impressive for a living than I am right now. Scanning, weighing, and selecting food on the MFP app takes 10 minutes per day, which comprises about 0.69% of my day. Totally reasonable.
If this data is of interest to you and you enjoy the process of managing it then once again that's great. By all means continue to do it.
However, the assumption that you need to micromanage all of that data is not necessarily correct. EDIT: Let me clarify -- for some people it may be necessary at times. I don't mean to claim that it's absolutely not necessary for you right now because I don't know your goals or your current levels of leanness or the food related habits you've established during your intake tracking. I'm simply challenging the idea that it's always necessary to precisely manage all of those variables for everyone.
What matters is that you eat a diet that falls within a reasonable range for your goals. Whether or not you track the data within that diet is a separate thing, and it's possible to learn the necessary food habits to get your diet to fall within that reasonable range without logging or with intermittent logging.
Now having said that, there are contexts where micromanagement is superior such as someone pushing contest levels of leanness.
I think if you have a fairly regimented life and eat a lot of the same things consistently, it is manageable to mentally track your diet. But I don't know where I'm eating or what I'm eating for dinner tonight, lunch tomorrow, dinner tomorrow, etc. I ate a lot of familiar things yesterday, but I'm not sure if the combination of meals allowed me to reach my fiber minimums unless I track each thing.
Logging my diet is of interest, but enjoying it may be a stretch - I enjoy the results of it and it is a minimal time investment, so my intent is for it to be a lifelong habit.
Once again though, you are assuming that methods of "non logging" rely on "mental tracking". They do not.
I'm suggesting that for many people it's possible to develop habits and awareness around food selection, meal construction, physical activity and other behaviors such that you can eat within a range that allows you to maintain or develop a physique to be quite happy with.
I know what you are saying. If I ate the foods that I regularly ate and did not log them in I am pretty sure that my calories and macros would be pretty spot on because I have been doing this for a while. however, I choose to keep logging because I want to be accurate and I like having easy access to the data that it provides...
And there's nothing wrong with that. And depending on your leanness (can't tell from pics) you might be in a place where the room for error that you have with respect to intake might demand or necessitate a level of accuracy that isn't necessarily with general population.
I think last time you all estimated me in the body fat forum I was about 11 to 12% I then went and did a bulk over winter and put on ten pounds 175.5 to 185.5 ..cutting back down now..
yes, I do have some room for error and sometimes take advantage of that when I have a night out with the boys and get into a little drinking and late night eating..
0 -
I think the article leaves a lot to be desired. I personally have no problems tracking and have done it a long time with no issues. That said, I no longer think that I'll do it forever. My habits now just aren't what they once were-- I don't think I would go back if I stopped tracking now. At the moment my problem is more one of getting adequate calories and nutrition, rather than too many calories, so I plan to track for awhile until those issues are resolved (or until I have a good handle on dealing with them) and then start to experiment with phasing it out. It'll be interesting to see how it goes-- I have logged for the better part of 4 years.0
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