Check out this "expert" advise! "Counting calories is bad!"
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yopeeps025 wrote: »yopeeps025 wrote: »yopeeps025 wrote: »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?
It's kind of like how some people stop exercising at some point in there life. I doubt everyone wants to keep logging foods forever and at that point did counting calories really change your eating lifestyle?
People that want to continue to use their bodies, never stop exercising. I haven't yet, and I don't ever plan to.
Isn't that what everyone says then life happens and fitness is not a top priority anymore?
Um, I've been around 35 years and the only time I didn't exercise were the few weeks I was laid up in bed, once for an ankle injury, and once for an ACL knee repair. As soon as I was able, I was up again, doing my PT and whatever workouts I could. I don't see exercise as an addition to my life, I see it as a part of it. A permanent part.
I see exercise that way too and people have told me find someone who feels that way too.
I've dated very active people, and complete slugs. Either way, I got my workouts in.
Exactly! For most of my adult life, I have considered exercise a mandatory activity, like showering, shaving, brushing my teeth, putting on deodorant, etc. - not optional, I just do it, regardless of how I feel, regardless of who I am in a relationship with, regardless of how much I like my job, regardless of anything. A few years go, I added food logging as a mandatory activity - it is critical to tightly control my nutrition, so I log my food and exercise, every day, whether I feel like it or not.0 -
yopeeps025 wrote: »yopeeps025 wrote: »yopeeps025 wrote: »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?
It's kind of like how some people stop exercising at some point in there life. I doubt everyone wants to keep logging foods forever and at that point did counting calories really change your eating lifestyle?
People that want to continue to use their bodies, never stop exercising. I haven't yet, and I don't ever plan to.
Isn't that what everyone says then life happens and fitness is not a top priority anymore?
Um, I've been around 35 years and the only time I didn't exercise were the few weeks I was laid up in bed, once for an ankle injury, and once for an ACL knee repair. As soon as I was able, I was up again, doing my PT and whatever workouts I could. I don't see exercise as an addition to my life, I see it as a part of it. A permanent part.
I see exercise that way too and people have told me find someone who feels that way too.
I've dated very active people, and complete slugs. Either way, I got my workouts in.
Exactly! For most of my adult life, I have considered exercise a mandatory activity, like showering, shaving, brushing my teeth, putting on deodorant, etc. - not optional, I just do it, regardless of how I feel, regardless of who I am in a relationship with, regardless of how much I like my job, regardless of anything. A few years go, I added food logging as a mandatory activity - it is critical to tightly control my nutrition, so I log my food and exercise, every day, whether I feel like it or not.
I agree 100% on the workout part. Even if I do like a half intensity workout I will take it. My workouts i need for relieving stress too.
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WalkingAlong wrote: »
I'm with you 100% otherwise but I'm curious what in the original article you thought was crap, besides her being against skipping meals? The other things she advocates are not overdoing alcohol, not eating "diet" foods, not shunning fat, not overeating on healthy food and not emotional eating. It all seems pretty non-controversial to me, besides the skipping meals thing (which I actually agree does help a lot of people avoid the night time overeating and bad choices, but that's neither here nor there)....
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.
That's fair -- I have a habit of finding some flaws in an article and dismissing it in it's entirely so having said that, here are the issues I take with the article:
1) She mentions studies numerous times without citing the studies. And in most of the cases where she mentions studies my opinion is that she's not considering the entire body of evidence.
2) I disagree with her assertion about diet foods. There are many foods that have had calories reduced from them so that they become a bit more diet friendly. Additionally, she claims "unwanted additives and impossible to pronounce ingredients". This is just alarmist nonsense that does nothing but further promote food phobia.
Your body doesn't see the names of the foods you eat nor does it care how they are pronounced. It sees the energy value, nutrient composition, and metabolites/ingredients in the food. But what we call them has nothing to do with their value.
3) The entire section on skipping meals is nonsense.
4) I disagree with her position on calorie counting. At the very least I'd have worded it differently and it starts out laughable with the assertion that quality and timing of calories is "critical". We have evidence that goes against that and the term "critical" certainly implies that it's of utmost importance.
5) I'd like to see the research on hormonal effects of plant fats. This isn't me saying she's wrong, I'd just like to see the evidence. We do have evidence that exchanging carbohydrate for fat (low fat/high cho) increases circulating leptin and may prevent ghrelin from increasing, both of which can prevent hunger from increasing.
6) "Don't emotionally eat" doesn't really do anything to help someone not emotionally eat. It would have been better for her to make suggestions as to how someone goes about identifying emotional eating and then working towards changing that habit.
It's sort of like if I said "you need to eat less and move more". It's a true statement but it's not particularly helpful to most people.
So those are the main issues I have with the article right now.0 -
yopeeps025 wrote: »yopeeps025 wrote: »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?
It's kind of like how some people stop exercising at some point in there life. I doubt everyone wants to keep logging foods forever and at that point did counting calories really change your eating lifestyle?
People that want to continue to use their bodies, never stop exercising. I haven't yet, and I don't ever plan to.
Isn't that what everyone says then life happens and fitness is not a top priority anymore?
Um, I've been around 35 years and the only time I didn't exercise were the few weeks I was laid up in bed, once for an ankle injury, and once for an ACL knee repair. As soon as I was able, I was up again, doing my PT and whatever workouts I could. I don't see exercise as an addition to my life, I see it as a part of it. A permanent part.
I actually read an article years ago yelling at us lazy folk for slacking off just because of an injury and applied it :bigsmile: . I sprained my ankle pretty bad and that was the first time I tried a weights class (RIP, it's kind of like BodyPump). Modified some of the exercises and then tried BodyPump much later when I was feeling better, and pretty much got hooked0 -
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.
.
Do you think you'll be exercising till you're dead? For the foreseeable future, YES, I see logging and exercising as something I would like to do. Just perform a search asking the same question on MFP. Lots of ABSOLUTELY yes, lots of nos, many I don't knows. It's a tool, but you seem to think of it as more of a crutch for even those that are receptive to this solution. I don't care if somebody else wants to track their calories or not. We're not being crazy for thinking we might want to do so permanently - sucking a straw in the retirement home or not
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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.
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As far as the exercise question, I have no idea.
I tend not to make absolute statements about things because often times life circumstances, experiences, viewpoints, interests change over time. There are many things I thought were absolute years ago, that I don't believe now.0 -
I'm sure that works for some people, and tracking works for others. I track, because I like to know that I'm eating at least 1k calories per day. How far over that I go doesn't bother me much, unless I went over from eating bad foods or drinking too much wine.0
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I feel like no one here disagrees with calorie counting being a valid tool. What some people bristle at are the widespread claims that it is the only valid tool, you have to weigh everything you eat, and you will have to do it forever.
There's a very common 'black and white' mentality here, in my opinion. Which isn't that surprising since calorie counting is a task that appeals to 'black and white' thinkers.0 -
WalkingAlong wrote: »I feel like no one here disagrees with calorie counting being a valid tool. What some people bristle at are the widespread claims that it is the only valid tool, you have to weigh everything you eat, and you will have to do it forever.
There's a very common 'black and white' mentality here, in my opinion. Which isn't that surprising since calorie counting is a task that appeals to 'black and white' thinkers.
LOL yea, just like when you thought MFP was run by men and all the moderators were men ...
your opinions don't have a great track record here...just saying...0 -
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.0 -
As far as the exercise question, I have no idea.
I tend not to make absolute statements about things because often times life circumstances, experiences, viewpoints, interests change over time. There are many things I thought were absolute years ago, that I don't believe now.
It seems that many people on this site have it as a hobby and passion to perfect their fitness and sculpt their bodies to an ideal. (I sometimes think I'm in the wrong place since all I want to do is slim down.) But that's great and I admire their accomplishments and their willingness to do what they do to get there and I've learned a lot from them.
For some, this will be a life long passion and even their profession, but for many, it's a phase they're in. They can't imagine being enthused about anything else right now. As we age, our passions often gravitate to other things. I hope the focus and highlight of my life will not be about how many calories I burned or whether I hit my macros as my days come to an end.
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I'm not here to bolster my feelings about my own intelligence relative to others, and I don't care how others rate my opinions in their own mind.WalkingAlong wrote: »I feel like no one here disagrees with calorie counting being a valid tool. What some people bristle at are the widespread claims that it is the only valid tool, you have to weigh everything you eat, and you will have to do it forever.
There's a very common 'black and white' mentality here, in my opinion. Which isn't that surprising since calorie counting is a task that appeals to 'black and white' thinkers.
LOL yea, just like when you thought MFP was run by men and all the moderators were men ...
your opinions don't have a great track record here...just saying...
Though I have to admit I'm somewhat happy my thoughts rarely if ever align with yours', just based on your personality.
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WalkingAlong wrote: »
I'm not here to bolster my feelings about my own intelligence relative to others, and I don't care how others rate my opinions in their own mind.WalkingAlong wrote: »I feel like no one here disagrees with calorie counting being a valid tool. What some people bristle at are the widespread claims that it is the only valid tool, you have to weigh everything you eat, and you will have to do it forever.
There's a very common 'black and white' mentality here, in my opinion. Which isn't that surprising since calorie counting is a task that appeals to 'black and white' thinkers.
LOL yea, just like when you thought MFP was run by men and all the moderators were men ...
your opinions don't have a great track record here...just saying...
Though I have to admit I'm somewhat happy my thoughts rarely if ever align with yours', just based on your personality.
just pointing out that your opinions usually go down in flames...0 -
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.0 -
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.0 -
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.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
0 -
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...0 -
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.
I somewhat agree with this. I've seen some posts from people who say it's not hard at all to eat 1200 calories - just replace the bread with lettuce etc etc and they're both full and satisfied. Well if that was me I don't know that there would be any point to tracking since my day to day calories would be so low and the weight would just fall off of me. Instead I'm much more interested in how much I can eat and not get hugely fat so tracking the numbers allows me to play a potentially precarious game on my terms :bigsmile:
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