Do I still have to count calories if I eat healthy foods (Fruits, vegetables and protein)
KingDolph340
Posts: 3 Member
I really need to know cause I'm confused, I looked it up online and there are so many different answers on how to lose weight, some people say all u need is a calorie deficit, some say a calorie deficit is only short term and others say stop counting calories and eat healthy/exercise. I'm going to go with the "eat healthy " way but do I still have to count my calorie from healthy natural foods? I'm confused af
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a calorie deficit is all you need to lose weight...do that eating what you choose...6
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Has anybody lost weight just counting but eating whatever they felt like eating?0
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KingDolph340 wrote: »Has anybody lost weight just counting but eating whatever they felt like eating?
yes, I'd say thousands upon thousands of people on here alone!9 -
KingDolph340 wrote: »Has anybody lost weight just counting but eating whatever they felt like eating?
If they maintained a calorie deficit then yes. Google McDonald's diet and Twinkie diet. Doesn't mean it was healthy, but they lost.5 -
I eat pretty healthy...I put on 10 Lbs pretty much every winter due to a reduction in activity...calories still matter. There are many healthy foods that are also calorie dense. Also, there's more to "healthy" than just eating veg and fruit and protein. Dietary fat is essential to a proper diet. There are also things like beans and lentils and whole food starches that are very good for you, but also calorie dense.
ETA: I don't calorie count or log and haven't in years...but I did with my initial weight loss. It was very educational.4 -
KingDolph340 wrote: »Has anybody lost weight just counting but eating whatever they felt like eating?
Yup, I lost previously eating ice cream, pizza, chocolate .. whatever I wanted but I made it fit into my day - not just mindlessly eating it.
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Eating healthy gives is a great way to ensure that your body gets all the nutrients it needs and often plays a role in satiety, but weight loss happens when you eat at a deficit. Counting calories is usually the best way to ensure that you are eating at a deficit. All those weight-loss plans, healthy and unhealthy, come down to that at their core.
I eat healthy on-balance, but I don't feel guilty about a couple of indulgences, and so long as I eat at a deficit, the weight comes off.3 -
KingDolph340 wrote: »Has anybody lost weight just counting but eating whatever they felt like eating?
35 lbs and counting!1 -
Only if you want to lose weight.1
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KingDolph340 wrote: »Has anybody lost weight just counting but eating whatever they felt like eating?
60+ lbs.1 -
KingDolph340 wrote: »Has anybody lost weight just counting but eating whatever they felt like eating?
<waves hand in the air> ME!
I eat a lot of frozen meals and protein bars because I like them and don't have much time to cook. I supplement my micros with vitamins and have basically reduced my labs from OMG put the woman on meds now to almost normal 30 lbs later (the extra weight was unhealthy, not the diet). I've calculated a calorie limit that's a little less than my CO and continue to lose as expected. I can do this forever now that it's a habit.3 -
Do I still have to look at my checking account even if I'm only paying the bills and not buying anything fun?22
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KingDolph340 wrote: »Has anybody lost weight just counting but eating whatever they felt like eating?
Honestly, feel free to look at my diary. While it is "more clean" (whatever the hell that means) than I ate before I started tracking, it is not clean by anyone's standards. But it is less than I used to eat and I've lost over 70 lbs since Sept.
Others have done better and (and this is the important part) maintained their weight for years with this kind of eating. I hope to be one of them in a few years.
Eating healthy is not enough if you don't eat less calories than your burn. But if you can accomplish that without having to count, then good for you. I can't but that does not mean you can't.
Besdies. I hate most veggies.1 -
You can gain weight by eating healthy.
You don't HAVE to count calories, but it's the best way to know you're in a deficit and will lose weight.3 -
The best things I have done to help me are: #1 bought a digital food scale that 0's out for the kitchen that I can weigh everything going into my mouth easily. #2 learned how to scan the food items from the myFitnesspal app. #3 learned how to find restaurant menus on the myFitnessPal app.1
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If you eat healthy foods and eat above maintenance calories, you'll get fatter.
If you're already comfortably losing weight without counting calories, you don't "have" to do anything (until you stop meeting your goals).
But if you want to *guarantee* weight loss, controlling calorie balance is THE direct way to control weight loss. It's the direct path.3 -
KingDolph340 wrote: »Has anybody lost weight just counting but eating whatever they felt like eating?
I lost almost 80 lbs, working on losing more at the moment. I've never made any foods "off-limits", so its made it long-term sustainable to keep the weight off. I started losing weight in 2012!2 -
You don't have to count if your diet is 100% vegetables.. I doubt you could eat enough to go over a deficit. YES you need to count calories! It's good practice if you aren't use to eating healthy. And many ppl think they are eating healthy but don't consider oils or volume (nuts add up Fast). Until you have trained yourself to eyeball portions and memorize calories in a tsp, tbls, quarter cup... etc.. of the foods you intend to keep on hand, you need to be careful.2
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KingDolph340 wrote: »Has anybody lost weight just counting but eating whatever they felt like eating?
Yes. I have lost 70 pounds. I think I eat healthy, but I do have treats regularly and eat out regularly too both in sit down or digest food restaurants. All you need to lose weight is a calorie deficit. How you create that deficit is up to you.1 -
I was SUPER confused before I joined MFP. I was like, "What in the hell is in a carb that makes it so eating less of them makes you lose weight." Well, the answer is nothing. There is nothing in any particular food that makes it more possible to lose weight with or without it.
What makes you lose weight is eating at a calorie deficit, which means figuring what a calorie deficit is for you.
That's where MFP comes in because there are great tools and calculators to help you figure out how much to eat each day to maintain a calorie deficit to lose at a certain rate. MFP gives you the tools you need to track your weight and your food intake to give you a certain degree of confidence that you are "doing it right."
Healthy foods (like fruits and vegetables) and exercise are GREAT for your health, but eating 1500 calories of celery is still 1500 calories. I could just as easily eat 1500 calories worth of cheeseburgers with relatively the same weight loss expectation. However: I can get a lot more bang for my 1500 calorie buck if I fill that 1500 calorie budget with things like fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and other "healthy" foods. I like to eat a LOT of food, so I tend to eat a lot of those types of foods. I also love tacos and pizza, so I work my calorie budget to make sure there are room for those foods, too.
It takes planning and forethought to manage your calorie budget to get the weight loss results you want.
If you look in each forum, there are some pinned threads at the top. Look specifically in the Getting Started forum. It's laid out pretty clearly on how to get MFP up and running with reasonable accurate expectations. I spent the first few weeks on MFP just logging my food and getting used to using a digital food scale to weigh everything I ate to the gram. It was clunky and time consuming at first, but 6 months in and 60lbs later, it is second nature to me and I have worked food planning and weighing into my life routine. Honest to God this works.
If you can put all the mumbo jumbo the world has imparted on the weight loss industry aside and focus on finding your calorie budget and meeting that calorie budget by weighing your food on a food scale (barring any kind of medical or metabolic disorder) you will lose weight.
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