Can you lose weight without counting calories?

DreamCatcherGirl

Can you lose weight without counting calories?
I find it kind of hard to count calories because I eat mainly home cooked meals and I cook for the whole family (bigger sizes). I find it that it is hard to count the calories exactly especially with soups, stews, meat, etc.
What are your healthy substitutions for not so healthy products? How does you plate looks like? How often should I eat? Portion sizes? Please help
I try to log things I eat but it's hard sometimes.

packersfan0103

I'm having the same issue. So I end up counting calories until I get to dinner. I guess it would just be best to not have more than one serving.
Sorry. I hope someone with a better answer then this.

Liftng4Lis

If you're in a deficit, you're going to lose weight. As far as soups and stews, use the recipe builder her on MFP. This allows you to add how many servings per batch. You don't need to substitute anything, all things in moderation. Food timing is irrelevant, as it all comes down to CICO.

CooCooPuff

You can enter your meals into the recipe builder and log it from that.

Plenty of people do lose and maintain without counting. I can't offer much advice as I didn't do so hot without it myself. There are helpful threads about a lot of things, like the recomp thread in the maintenance section. Is there one for losing without counting?

andysport1

You can but you'll need to choose the right meals and stick to them as Lifting4Lis has said, or just increase your daily exercise to at least 3 hours a day, either way not counting will be a long long road

PAV8888

Lots of people have lost weight and some have even kept it off without counting calories.

They probably don't hang out at MFP, which happens to be a predominantly calorie counting site ;-)

That said, you can always use the recipe builder and log your recipes based on raw ingredients and final cooked weight.

I tend to enter the ingredients based on raw weight and call it a 2 portion recipe. Then I edit the recipe once I've weighed the final product and make it out to whatever number of 10g (or 100g) portions I weighed out.

So I call 1.2kg of final product 120 x 10g portions. Then I measure the amount of cooked product I've put on my plate and go on from there.

Of course the most common solution is that people guess their portion sizes based on cups and log based on that. I tend to do this only for restaurant meals.

Precision will be hard to find. Small deficits difficult to keep. Weight loss may go in spurts or stall at times. A lot of people have lost weight this way.

If the weight loss is too fast or to slow you adjust by eating more or less in general.

random5483

Counting calories aids in weight loss, but is not necessary. Not counting calories could result in effective weight loss if you naturally know how much to eat given your activity level. But for those of us who became overweight, we likely don't have the best calorie sense and are less likely to lose weight without tracking calories. Cutting too much is unhealthy and even depressing. Doing so would likely result in us quitting before losing weight. Cutting too little might give slow or even no weight loss.

You don't have to count calories to lose weight, but if you have been unsuccessful doing so without counting, you might want to start counting.

SideSteel

DreamCatcherGirl wrote: »

Can you lose weight without counting calories?
I find it kind of hard to count calories because I eat mainly home cooked meals and I cook for the whole family (bigger sizes). I find it that it is hard to count the calories exactly especially with soups, stews, meat, etc.
What are your healthy substitutions for not so healthy products? How does you plate looks like? How often should I eat? Portion sizes? Please help
I try to log things I eat but it's hard sometimes.

First of all yes, it's possible to lose weight without counting calories. I think many people benefit from counting calories at least for a little while because it teaches you a great deal about calories and macronutrients and it's valuable information that carries over into methods of eating that don't use tracking.

Whether or not it's a good fit long term is really going to depend on how you feel about it after giving it some time.

As far as the home cooked meals thing, that's actually ideal for tracking since you're in control of all of the ingredients in the dish. People who eat out at restaurants or college campuses have a much harder time of it because they are guessing at ingredients entirely.

There's a recipe builder feature that you can use, or you can just estimate.

As far as meal frequency goes I'd select whatever frequency allows you the best appetite control and fits best with your lifestyle. Assuming of course, that you stay within your calorie goal.

mwyvr

I started my program on my birthday in September 2014 and didn't start to count calories until April 2015 (why and when I joined MFP) because I'd noticed my weight loss was slowing and I really wanted to ensure I was optimizing progress. Calorie counting helped.

By the way, I cook from scratch too and don't find that to be an obstacle to counting, although I will admit to having more convenience items in my diet than I might have in my pre-calorie counting days. For regular family menu items you can create a custom recipe, figure out how many portions there are, and get an accurate-enough breakdown. Once you build up a number of these it becomes pretty easy.

See the Recipe Box: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/recipe/box

It's easy.

My experience losing weight without using calorie counting: From September to April I lost 22.5kg (49.5 pounds). Not a day of calorie counting in there. Since adopting calorie counting I've lost another 31 pounds with a few plateau / maintenance periods (1 intentional, 2 not).

My opinion is calorie counting becomes even more important if you want to keep the loss continuing at a steady rate a) when nearing the end of the goal, and/or b) if you are doing a significant amount of exercise. For me both apply. I'm a distance runner and my work-outs range from burning, realistically, 500-700 calories one day to 1,500 or 2,000 on long run days. Calorie counting helps me ensure *I eat enough*.

Now was I *aware* of calorie intake? Absolutely. No more multiple snack spoonfuls of peanut butter (I cut it out largely just to make it easier). No more ice cream every single evening, and when I had it, I exercised some control over portion size. While I'd always eaten very well at dinner time (albeit too many second helpings) from a nutritional perspective, for morning, lunch, and snacks I'd been reaching too often for simple carb-rich, mostly baked or more processed rather than veggie carbs, foods instead of taking the time to extend balanced nutrition to all my meals. In short, I'd gotten lazy during the work day when it came to food. So I changed that too.

Not only did I clean up my eating act, I upped my activity level at the same time. I started running. The combo, whether I knew it at the time or not, was enough to put me in calorie deficit and I started losing weight. Eventually saw progress, and that encouraged me further so I doubled down and made more changes, became even more mindful of my eating, and increased activity further. Consequently I got hooked on running again (before getting fat I was a distance runner) and loved how that made me feel. I'm still hooked, by the way.

Yes, absolutely you can lose weight without counting every single calorie but you still will need a decent idea of your daily caloric needs and some sense for whether you are overdoing it on intake. Increasing your activity level via exercise can help paper over some mistakes for sure, but, frankly, not all activities are created equal. Going out for a short walk every day isn't going to cut it as a mistake-buffer.

If you are like most of us who had some significant amount of weight to lose -- meaning it will take some time -- you probably also want to maximize the impact of all your time and energy on your weight loss program.

Despite my experience, calorie counting from the start would have helped me get to my goal faster. And quite frankly... I was lucky. Lots of people fail at the wing-it approach.

If I had to do it over again (I most certainly will not have to), I'd definitely start calorie counting on day one.

Mike
Vancouver BC

Kalikel

DreamCatcherGirl wrote: »

Can you lose weight without counting calories?
I find it kind of hard to count calories because I eat mainly home cooked meals and I cook for the whole family (bigger sizes). I find it that it is hard to count the calories exactly especially with soups, stews, meat, etc.
What are your healthy substitutions for not so healthy products? How does you plate looks like? How often should I eat? Portion sizes? Please help
I try to log things I eat but it's hard sometimes.

That's a LOT of questions, lol.

No, you do not have to count calories. Tons of people have lost weight without counting calories. There are many ways to lose weight. You'll find that most people here (a calorie-counting site!) are counting calories. But if you find some other way to eat less than you burn, you'll lose.

I don't have a lot of substitutions. I make my own stuff, like peanut butter, so I can have a little of that now and again without eating the Jif. But mostly, I changed my diet. Started eating healthy stuff and let the less healthy (or unhealthy) stuff go, for the most part. It's easier, for me, to commit to something and stick with that. If I try to keep up the old ways by substituting...it will always seem like a compromise. So I just found new stuff to like. That sounds like it was so easy, doesn't it? It wasn't.

My plate looks different all the time. I eat a lot more often now, because I eat lots of little meals. Easier to eat a wide variety of food that way and I never feel stuffed like I would if I only ate 2-3 times a day. But everyone is different. You have to try different stuff and see what you like.

If you don't like counting calories, maybe Weight Watchers would be a better fit. Or just eating healthy in smaller amounts. Whatever.

You have to find what works for you. Might take some trial and error, but if you're determined, you'll get there.

lorrpb

I counted and logged for the first 20-25 pounds, then I took a break because I was getting stressed out. I haven't logged for more than a year and have lost 112 pounds. BUT I can do this because I'm a very consistent eater. I have a few typical meals I rotate among for each meal and I estimate substitutions even when eating out. I have a list of self-approved snack choices I select from.

So yes, it's possible, but it requires discipline and self-honesty, just as counting & logging does. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone but it has worked for me.

OsricTheKnight

DreamCatcherGirl wrote: »

Can you lose weight without counting calories?
I find it kind of hard to count calories because I eat mainly home cooked meals and I cook for the whole family (bigger sizes). I find it that it is hard to count the calories exactly especially with soups, stews, meat, etc.
What are your healthy substitutions for not so healthy products? How does you plate looks like? How often should I eat? Portion sizes? Please help
I try to log things I eat but it's hard sometimes.

Yes. The easiest way to lose weight without counting calories in my opinion is to plot your daily weigh ins on a trend graph, like libra or trend weight or happy scale, and then eat fairly consistently for a week or two. If you aren't losing, reduce your intake and repeat until your weight is going down at the speed you want.

All of these programs will tell you what your deficit is - which is the only thing that matters for weight loss. Counting calories is a means to an end - it is one way to be confident you are creating a deficit. But make no mistake, the final arbiter is your weight, and the trend graph will quickly show you when something is wrong.

Here are my last 4 weeks:



It's plain to see when I'm losing and when I'm not. Data points above the line occur the day after I've overeaten so there's immediate and harsh feedback when I do something wrong.

So weigh in daily, get your weight on a trending graph, and eat less until you are seeing results (or exercise more, it amounts to the same effect - but it is much harder to exercise enough than it is to restrain yourself at dinner time).

To answer your questions:

- healthy substitutions: water substitutes well for anything, or eat nothing. It is easier to eat nothing than to have a limited quantity of something bad or to have a reasonable quantity of a not as good alternative.
- plate size: try aiming for a small bowl or side plate size, barely filled. small portions make a big impact
- how often you eat: as often or rarely as you like. the more often, the more important it is to eat very healthy foods like vegetables so that you aren't just piling on the calories all day
- portion size: I guess I didn't distinguish this from plate size. I guess what you meant by what your plate looks like as "what proportions of what food". It really doesn't matter what you eat from a weight loss perspective, as long as it's much less than you think is reasonable in terms of quantity.

Once you've started losing, watch your deficit number and keep it between 250 and 1000 kcals/day. 1,000 would cause you to lose 2lbs/week which I think is quite difficult to sustain; 250 is only 0.5lb/week and might not be fast enough to satisfy you. Somewhere in the middle is a happy medium of quickly visible results that isn't completely impossible to live with.

Good luck
Osric

entwife

You can learn to rate your feelings of fullness and hunger
http://foodwatch.com.au/blog/healthy-weight-loss/item/rating-your-hunger-and-fullness.html
http://drphil.com/articles/article/681

Patttience

DreamCatcherGirl wrote: »

Can you lose weight without counting calories?
I find it kind of hard to count calories because I eat mainly home cooked meals and I cook for the whole family (bigger sizes). I find it that it is hard to count the calories exactly especially with soups, stews, meat, etc.
What are your healthy substitutions for not so healthy products? How does you plate looks like? How often should I eat? Portion sizes? Please help
I try to log things I eat but it's hard sometimes.

Absolutely, you do not have to count calories to lose weight. But it is a good idea to know how many calories in different types of foods that you commonly eat so it is good to use for a while, even if its to get a sense of what's what.

But what i have done thorugh my most of journey over the last 20 months is keep a food diary and in combination with daily weighing, i can easily monitor whether I need to cut back a bit more or can eat more.

If you do it this way, what i suggest you do is measure your portion sizes accurately. Weigh your meat portion before you eat or at least measure it in some way. You can measure vegies as diced in a cup. Use measuring spoons too. But for cups and spoons its important to make them level so that you have consistency.

There are also simplified systems of portioning out food eg for meat and three veg it was 1/3 plate for meat, 1/3 for starchy vegetable or rice or wahtever and 1/2 the plate is for vegies.

Another check is to stop eating when you are satisfied and before fullness. AVoid hunger. Eat when you get hungry. Do not leave the table hungry. Do not leave the table full. I find if i go to bed wiht a little bit of very mild hunger, i will usually lose weight overnight. If you eat after dinner you will probably not get this feeling and so risk missing yoru chance to lose weight without much pain.

Not only is it useful to know how many calories in foods roughly, its also useful to know that processed food is less satisfying in both the short and longer term. So its good to lean about the glycaemic index. This is pretty easy but you need to find a copy of the index and udnerstand what it means. This will teach you that most cereals are not worth eating and oats are. That white bread is not very sustaining while wholegrain bread is. While some rice is better than others. It does not mean you ahve to give up the unsustaining ones completely , i would not recommend giving up potatoes but be moderate with these foods and increase your more sustaining carbs such as vegetables and legumes.

How often you eat depends on how active you are and your daily routines. My life is fairly sedentary so i can easily eat only three meals a day. The key for me is to eat my meals close together. Only about 3-4 hours between breakfast and lunch adn then 4-5 hours between lunch adn dinner. The thing is with this scenario i am usually hungry before dinner so i have a glass of wine and generally sorts me but a piece of fruit is fine too. ON active or busy days i may need an extra meal. But the thing is the bigger your meals generally the fewer snacks you need. Providing your meals are comprised of whole foods and not processed foods.

If i worked in an office, i know from past experience that i would need to eat something at the end of my work day so that i could resist eating junk on the way home. And i know that i would be too tired to cook when i got home so i'd try to be organised so that dinner would be quick and easy together.

With regards to cooking for you and your family. IN mfp, you can put in recipes eg stews and stuff and measure a serve as 1 cup or whatever, thsi way you would know how many calories you'd eaten but yes it is time consuming and probably really a bit difficult if you are cooking for a family all the time. So i'd go mainly with food diarising, daily weighing and accurate measuring. A spreadsheet is good for this.

When you weigh yourself, it is important to udnerstand that your weight will fluctuate often and for a variety of reasons. Therefore you should not be upset when the scales jump suddenly and vice versa. What you should do if this bothers you a bit is to calculate the weekly average and use that number as the one you watch over time. I never needed to do that becuase i ahve a pretty good idea of why my weight fluctuates and i do not get upset by it.

yarwell

Patttience wrote: »

There are also simplified systems of portioning out food eg for meat and three veg it was 1/3 plate for meat, 1/3 for starchy vegetable or rice or wahtever and 1/2 the plate is for vegies.

1/4 * 2 + 1/2 surely ?

hamlet1222

Only fad diets that are severely restrictive on what you can eat would, e.g. keto, bananadiet,... (and so you simply can't 'stomach' eating excess calories) save you from needing to watch portion sizes and count calories - I think they are really bad unbalanced diets to follow, but a lot people swear by them and I'm sure I'll get shouted down for saying they are rubbish. However you're in the position of not wanting to inflict whatever diet you do on the rest of your family In this case, assuming your weight is stable and not increasing I would suggest taking the following steps in this order:

1. Examine the calorie content of your usual drinks. I lost my first 5kg by simply reducing to one fruit juice per day, cutting out all other calorie laden drinks completely (except for 1 sugar in two/three cups of coffee a day). I didn't have to fiddle with my food at all.

2. Reduce the quantity of what you currently eat by 10% - just visually.

3. Stop eating when you feel satisfied, not stuffed.

I would judge portion size of typical foods to be about and handful e.g. a handful of cooked rice and a handful of chilli-con-carne would be a reasonable meal if you're aiming to stay at a healthy BMI.

Yi5hedr3

Some people can....the lucky ones.

Francl27

The best way to track calories is to eat mostly home cooked meals, as you know exactly what's in there. It just takes a few minutes weighing the ingredients, the final product, and using the recipe builder.

But yes, a lot of people have successfully lost weight without counting calories... I'm just not one of them.

You can use tricks like - dessert only once a week, no seconds, avoid alcohol, fill up your plate with half veggies, 1/4 protein and 1/4 grains/starches.

Personally, I'd rather take the extra 10 minutes a day to weigh my food and log so I don't have to cut out anything just to make sure I'm not eating too much.

Lounmoun

You might lose weight without counting calories. I didn't lose consistently or maintain any loss that way.

I eat mostly home cooked meals too. Use the recipe builder. Check that the ingredients and amounts entered are accurate. Record the serving you ate. Be sure to record cooking oils, sauces, dressings, butter. Make sure you are choosing the correct entry in the diary.

I pre-log my food so I decide the portion size in advance that fits my calorie goal and then weigh or measure it out. Pay attention when you weigh or measure stuff so you know what different portion sizes look like.
If you are not laboratory exact with your logging you can still lose weight. If you aren't losing at the rate you want, try to increase your logging accuracy or try to hit a bit below your calorie goal/eat back only a portion of exercise calories to offset your errors.

My plate would have a smaller portion of a high calorie item and more of low calorie items like vegetables. Pre-logging really helps me figure out how much I can eat of something.

I don't label foods as unhealthy or unhealthy. I haven't cut any food out of my diet. There are foods that give me more nutrition for the amount of calories and help me meet my goals better. When I pre-log, I look at calories first and then how much protein I am getting. I try not to go too far over with sodium. If I'm paying attention to those things most of my other goals are fine I've noticed.
I like spinach for sandwiches, salads, tacos, etc instead of lettuce. I have eaten zucchini noodles as a fun way to get more vegetables.

You should eat as often as you like. I eat 3 meals a day and 1-2 snacks... usually every 3-5 hours while I am awake. I prefer a smaller breakfast and more food later in the day. That is what works for me. You might find something else works best for you.

rybo

yes you can. I know this is a calorie counting website, but I am not a fan of long term counting as a means of weight loss/control. I think its great for an eye opener of how much you are currently eating, or if you need to be very much on top of your macros and calories for a specific goal, but otherwise calorie counting is not a mindset that i can grasp long term.

spzjlb

For me, I never could have lost my weight without counting calories. I also have a family and ate home cooked meals, but I estimated as carefully as I could.