Calorie Counting FOREVER.

cnbbnc

I don't know if I'll be logging forever, but as of right now I have no intension to quit. I don't think it's a horrible thing to commit to for life. It's no different than anything someone else would do to tend to their health

cwolfman13

endlessfall16 wrote: »

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

endlessfall16 wrote: »

Need2Exerc1se wrote: »

bblue656 wrote: »

You will NOT be forced to count calories for the rest of your life. Once you are at your goal weight. You will just count calories for a couple months to learn what your body will need to maintain, then it should be easy

Just like any other diet some will eventually learn proper portion control without the tool and some will not. The reason most people regain is that they quit whatever they were doing when they lost weight. That's why it's so important to find a method of weight loss that is comfortable enough to be sustainable long term, or will at least give you the knowledge to proceed without it.

Since you and another mfp veteran Aaron have mentioned "proper portion" , I also feel the need to chime in that the "skill" to identify "proper portion" or accurate control is really unnecessary, if not time wasting and futile, per my experience.

Generally, for outside, unless you order a second meal -- who does that --, most restaurants don't serve obscenely big portions. So no accidentally walking into a calorie bomb that the body cannot handle. Or at home I doubt if people can't tell between a very full plate and a good size plate that is in healthy range.

My point here is the difference in portion size that we cannot tell does not significantly contribute to our weight problem. Our bodies and actions can easily manage this fluctuation.

What significantly contributes to most people's wt problem is the consistent over eating behavior. More specifically, it's their lack of discipline to cut back when they have to and they know that time. It's not their lack of portion assessment.

Anecdotally, in my counting days I (mistakenly) also thought that I needed to learn the "portion" skill. Soon I realized it was unnecessarily difficult and suffocatingly restrictive.

It's 10x easier and less energy to focus on developing discipline to identify when it is OK and cut back. Our bodies are very much built for handling fluctuation, much bigger than our perception could do with portion assessment.

I think most of my success comes from knowing where to focus my effort.

I don't know what restaurants you've been going to, but many many restaurants do indeed serve very large portions.

I'm thinking of the size of steaks served, serving sizes of pasta... things like that. They are huge.

For you to not think they're overly large? You must be a very, very tall man with a large frame whose normal portions are on the large side.

A palm sized piece of meat is something I don't recall seeing in any restaurant I've been in for a very, very long time. Don't even get me started on the size of a baked potato that comes with the average meal.

There are a few restaurants that give you options to order a very large steak but they also have options for very small steaks. A few months ago I went to a fine diner and ordered the largest 32 oz steak. I had to bring half home for next day, but it hardly did any damage to my diet that week.

I eat out a lot at casual places like Chipotle, Rubio, Carl Jr, privately owned restaurants and I never see any option that a healthy adult man couldn't finish.

However, the point here is if you manage your meals well, be a little disciplined with cutbacks, it makes no different whether you eat a 1500 cal Carl Jr meal or a 900 cal BajaFresh bowl. While you and others like yourself are concerned with every calorie point, I'm focused on cutbacks with other meals. Our bodies don't care that you eat 1500 calories in one meal and then 200 calories (a small sandwich) the next meal, or however less until the excess is gone; or even so less that it goes into deficit level. That's how weight is lost.

So, the issue is not the portion assessment or tight control. The issue is whether you are disciplined with cutbacks when needed.

If you're having restaurant leftovers boxed up and further compensating for calories with cutbacks on other meals...you're pretty much practicing portion control...so I guess I'm confused...that's pretty much what everyone does.

Intentional_Me

Man, I've only been at this for 6 months or so and the idea of NOT logging is just weird to me now.

The only part that sucks is I want to ditch the smart phone but ya, I'm not logging everything on the desktop.

Aaron_K123

I'll admit I haven't cracked maintenance yet. I tend to get very myopically focused on some aspect of my life I want to improve.

Focus on my relationships, work and health suffer. Focus on health, work and relationships suffer. Focus on work, health and relationships suffer. I excel in whatever I focus on but I haven't figured out how to split my attention.

When I get around to noticing I'm overweight or not where I want to be health wise and get the gumption to focus on that I have zero difficulty losing weight or building strength. Its really not that hard. But I focus on it. When I reach my goal I tend to go focus on something else and two years later I'm overweight again.

So yeah, either I have to find a way to drill habits into myself so deep that I don't have to pay any attention and I'll still maintain or be healthy OR I have to count calories forever. I'll let you know if I figure out how to do the first option.

If your curious this was my "success" story a little over two years ago where I lost a little over a pound a week for 6 months and built a considerable amount of strength.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1415525/180-days-28-pounds-down#latest

July of this year dawned on me I had let myself go and was back up to 180 pounds, so the cycle starts anew.

leanjogreen18

I am a self described queen/pro of dieting. I can loose weight like no ones business.

I suck at maintaining. So although I'm not using a food scale YET and I'm hoping to be able to inuitivly eat on maintenance...

REALITY is that a lot of long term maintainers are saying otherwise. I'm tending to listen to them even though I don't want to weigh/log/measure/ forever but it will be done if that's how I never have to lose weight again!! We will see next summer when I approach goal weight.

cwolfman13

johunt615 wrote: »

I am a self described queen/pro of dieting. I can loose weight like no ones business.

I suck at maintaining. So although I'm not using a food scale YET and I'm hoping to be able to inuitivly eat on maintenance...

REALITY is that a lot of long term maintainers are saying otherwise. I'm tending to listen to them even though I don't want to weigh/log/measure/ forever but it will be done if that's how I never have to lose weight again!! We will see next summer when I approach goal weight.

I don't log and haven't in 3.5 years of maintenance...but that doesn't mean I'm not aware or not paying attention. I do weigh/measure some things, but not everything...like yeah, I'm going to measure my dry serving of oats, mostly so I know I have the ratio of oats to water correct...and as weighing goes, I pretty much only weigh things that are very calorie dense and/or hard to estimate...after 4+ years, I still can't estimate spaghetti for example...

For most things I'm pretty good at being able to put in on my plate and say, "OK...that looks about right." Also, I lost the notion years ago that I need exactly XXXX calories...TDEE (maintenance) is really a range and the human body is more than capable of working within that range to maintain...homeostasis is what the human body strives for.

In most cases, when people gain the weight back, it isn't so much that they stopped weighing or measuring or whatever...it's that they revert back to old eating habits...they stop or substantially reduce the amount of exercise they're doing, and they stop paying attention. You don't have to log to be aware and pay attention...but most people treat "goal weight" as the finish line...

When I speak of maintenance, I generally speak of it in terms of maintaining my health and wellness and fitness, not so much maintaining some number on the scale...If I'm doing the things I need to be doing to maintain my health, wellness, and fitness (eating well for the most part and exercising regularly), the rest tends to take care of itself. Doing the things the lean, healthy, and fit people do generally results in being lean, healthy, and fit.

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