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You dont need to calorie count
Replies
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cmriverside wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »rileysowner wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »I'm one who feels people should strive to eat without counting. In some situations and as a learning tool, counting can be invaluable, but I don't understand the accepted reliance on daily calorie counting for life.
If after a period of time counting, surely you understand how much food you need and are ingesting without measuring every gram? If you have a trend up, eat less. If you are trending down, eat more. I know that relying on hunger cues can be dangerous, sometimes you follow your hunger & eat, sometimes you have to know when to ignore it. I also think that individuals should find foods that they enjoy that are difficult to overindulge on.
OK, I'm going to expose why Mrs Jruzer sometimes calls me "Sheldon."
How do you know if you're eating less, or more? How much less? How much more? If you're not measuring, how do you know?
I'm all for developing healthy habits, and I'm much better and thoughtful about what I eat than I used to be. But the whole "less/more" thing is confusing to me.
The scale tells you...
I typically put on about 8-10 Lbs over the winter due in large part to an overall decrease in activity...both NEAT and EAT. I take it off in Spring when I get back on the bike and I give it another nudge with doing things like not having grains or starches with my dinner most nights (not every night)...scaling back a snack...reducing the size of my breakfast, etc.
I don't count calories, as it was pretty bad mentally for me...I still weigh and measure certain things though, particularly if they're calorie dense and particularly if I'm trying to lose weight...maintenance is far less of an issue and I don't have to think about it too much except in winter when my activity dips.
Most of my diet is also whole foods based which is more of a health thing and keeping my blood work in line...but it also helps me not overeat or at least not overeat often enough to change anything...
That works for you. When I do that, it doesn't work for me. For me it is count calories so I can enjoy life. For others calorie counting doesn't put them in a good place, and if they have success intuitively eating, good for them.
Yeah, whatever works...I'm just hard pressed to believe the vast majority will actually, realistically count calories into perpetuity. I'm hoping to be around for another 40 - 50 years...the thought of counting every calorie for the next 50 years doesn't seem particularly realistic to me.
I'd wager the number of people who count calories for life are very few...
I tend to agree with this. Especially counting every single calorie / bite. And really, at some point would you not learn what 80 g of rice or a large egg vs. a medium egg looks like? When paying that much attention I just don't get how it wouldn't become obvious after a while.
But a lot o things people do seem crazy to me, so IDK why this should be different. I probably seem crazy to others.
Whenever I stop paying attention for more than a week or so, my eyeballed portions start to get bigger and bigger. My brain telling me that I've done well today and totally have room for a handful of chocolate covered peanuts becomes harder to argue with. My between meals snacking in general becomes more prominent. Maybe that just means I'm weak or easily deluded by the voices in my head
but it is what it is.
If you asked me right now to pour a serving of cereal into a bowl, I could probably eyeball to within a couple of grams. If you asked me to do the same thing after a month of not logging, it would be substantially more and I would honestly not realize it. I wouldn't be a glutton or anything, but I would eventually end up back at 15 lbs heavier, swearing I hadn't changed a thing.
I've been on MFP for ten years. I didn't always count and log during that time, but when I've stopped I've found my experience to be like @kimney72. Maybe not right away, but in time I start agreeing with that little voice in my head at the grocery store which says, "Yeah. Little Debbie. Mmm. Lays." I need to see it in writing. Otherwise I start having 40 grams of cheese and 100 grams of sausage and etc. It just sneaks up.
I can't speak for any other non-counters but this is true of me as well. When it happens I just clean my diet up a bit and get back on track. If I've gained a few lbs, I diet until they are gone.
That's the way I maintained a healthy weight for 30+ adult years before I gained so it made sense for me to go back to that. I have never worried about being XXX lbs exactly.2 -
cmriverside wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »rileysowner wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »I'm one who feels people should strive to eat without counting. In some situations and as a learning tool, counting can be invaluable, but I don't understand the accepted reliance on daily calorie counting for life.
If after a period of time counting, surely you understand how much food you need and are ingesting without measuring every gram? If you have a trend up, eat less. If you are trending down, eat more. I know that relying on hunger cues can be dangerous, sometimes you follow your hunger & eat, sometimes you have to know when to ignore it. I also think that individuals should find foods that they enjoy that are difficult to overindulge on.
OK, I'm going to expose why Mrs Jruzer sometimes calls me "Sheldon."
How do you know if you're eating less, or more? How much less? How much more? If you're not measuring, how do you know?
I'm all for developing healthy habits, and I'm much better and thoughtful about what I eat than I used to be. But the whole "less/more" thing is confusing to me.
The scale tells you...
I typically put on about 8-10 Lbs over the winter due in large part to an overall decrease in activity...both NEAT and EAT. I take it off in Spring when I get back on the bike and I give it another nudge with doing things like not having grains or starches with my dinner most nights (not every night)...scaling back a snack...reducing the size of my breakfast, etc.
I don't count calories, as it was pretty bad mentally for me...I still weigh and measure certain things though, particularly if they're calorie dense and particularly if I'm trying to lose weight...maintenance is far less of an issue and I don't have to think about it too much except in winter when my activity dips.
Most of my diet is also whole foods based which is more of a health thing and keeping my blood work in line...but it also helps me not overeat or at least not overeat often enough to change anything...
That works for you. When I do that, it doesn't work for me. For me it is count calories so I can enjoy life. For others calorie counting doesn't put them in a good place, and if they have success intuitively eating, good for them.
Yeah, whatever works...I'm just hard pressed to believe the vast majority will actually, realistically count calories into perpetuity. I'm hoping to be around for another 40 - 50 years...the thought of counting every calorie for the next 50 years doesn't seem particularly realistic to me.
I'd wager the number of people who count calories for life are very few...
I tend to agree with this. Especially counting every single calorie / bite. And really, at some point would you not learn what 80 g of rice or a large egg vs. a medium egg looks like? When paying that much attention I just don't get how it wouldn't become obvious after a while.
But a lot o things people do seem crazy to me, so IDK why this should be different. I probably seem crazy to others.
Whenever I stop paying attention for more than a week or so, my eyeballed portions start to get bigger and bigger. My brain telling me that I've done well today and totally have room for a handful of chocolate covered peanuts becomes harder to argue with. My between meals snacking in general becomes more prominent. Maybe that just means I'm weak or easily deluded by the voices in my head but it is what it is.
If you asked me right now to pour a serving of cereal into a bowl, I could probably eyeball to within a couple of grams. If you asked me to do the same thing after a month of not logging, it would be substantially more and I would honestly not realize it. I wouldn't be a glutton or anything, but I would eventually end up back at 15 lbs heavier, swearing I hadn't changed a thing.
I've been on MFP for ten years. I didn't always count and log during that time, but when I've stopped I've found my experience to be like @kimney72. Maybe not right away, but in time I start agreeing with that little voice in my head at the grocery store which says, "Yeah. Little Debbie. Mmm. Lays." I need to see it in writing. Otherwise I start having 40 grams of cheese and 100 grams of sausage and etc. It just sneaks up.
I'm curious about @cwolfman13, though. He has often stated that the logging wasn't good for him, but not sure why that was. I can get obsessive about stuff and I was in the beginning but I've learned to relax about things quite a bit in Maintenance and I don't weigh everything, but my food scale is on the counter and I used it several times a day as a little self-check. I can eyeball a lot of stuff, BUT like kimney72 says - that would fly out the window if I stepped away from logging for any amount of time.
I tried to be an intuitive eater a few times. It's just not worth it to me to have to lose those same 8-10 pounds over and over. I've lost them three times in total now, and it's a pain.
The interesting thing is how my CICO has changed over the years I've been tracking and logging. Right after my initial 70 pound loss I had to stay low for quite a while. Like 1500-low. Now I've reset to a good amount of food and can eat 1900-2300 every day with no scale movement. My lifestyle hasn't changed drastically, either. I wouldn't have known that without logging for all these years. I need those numbers.
@cmriverside I was the opposite...I was fine in the beginning an thought the calorie counting thing was kinda cool and interesting and it taught me a lot about what I was doing "wrong" with my diet and helped me turn a lot of things around initially.
At first I was just really focused on improving my diet on the whole as my main issue was some really nasty blood work about one tick away from metabolic syndrome...so initially I was just looking to treat my health issues with better food choices...more veggies and fruit (I hardly ate any) more lean proteins from fish and chicken (ate beef or sausage pretty much everyday multiple times per day)...I wasn't laser focused on the numbers, just the nutrition.
For whatever reason though, it turned into a downward spiral...I was good for about 4-5 months, and then I just started to get more and more obsessed with the numbers and hitting this macro and that macro and I'd get all bent if I went over my calories when I wasn't on a planned maintenance day even though I knew I was still in a deficit or not over maintenance.
I started having a lot of anxiety (I have a general anxiety disorder anyway) about eating out (we don't really do chain restaurants much) or going to socialize with friends, vacations, holidays, etc. It got to the point that my wife and our friends started to take notice that I was irritable much of the time and not the fun loving guy they knew and just seemed stressed out all of the time and anxious and somewhat depressed.
My wife and some friends of ours are really into fitness and nutrition decided to have a little "intervention" with me and told me that they thought I was getting way over obsessed with things...I took the conversation seriously...these were not people who were over weight and saying, "come on...just one piece of cake." These were my wife and my very good friend and his wife, all of whom are very fitness and nutrition oriented and competitive athletes (well, my wife is a recreational athlete). I figured if they saw an issue and were concerned...well, maybe there was an issue.
The final straw was on my wife's birthday a week or two later. We dropped the kids off with grandma for a couple of nights and checked into a swanky resort. The room had a beautiful balcony with spectacular views of the Sandia Mountains...my wife pulled out a bottle of wine and asked me to join her on the balcony for a glass or two before dinner. I said that I'd join her, but skip the wine and she gave me this glare like, "you're *kitten* me right...it's my birthday." Well, I decided to go ahead and have the wine but she could tell that the wheels in my head were spinning...is this a 5 oz pore...what kind of wine is this...I should get my phone out and check the database...if I have these calories now, what can I have for dinner?"
After some "you gotta lighten up a little" conversation, we made our way to dinner. We looked at the menu and I was flooded with anxiety as to what to order. My wife asked me what I thought I'd get and I said something to the effect of, "maybe just the side salad...I'm not that hungry." She looked me dead in the eyes and said, "you're getting the short ribs...they're like your favorite thing on the planet and we haven't been out to eat on a date in over 2 months...you're not going to put those 40 Lbs back on tonight."
It was like a little switch went off in my head and I knew she was right and my little issue became very apparent to me. I ordered the short ribs and enjoyed every bite along with sharing another bottle of wine and splitting an amazing desert.
The next morning we had a bike ride planned and headed out for a 25 miler...on the ride she told me that she thought I should at least take a break and see how things go. She told me everything I already knew...she told me that over the past 9 months or so that I had really made some huge changes to my diet overall and had become a regular exerciser...she told me that I was doing all of the things that lean, healthy, and fit people do and to just keep doing those things minus meticulously logging every single calorie. She reminded me that these little things like her birthday or getting together with our friends are just occasions...that's not what we're doing every day. She reminded me that one of my very best friends who is a retired professional athlete and owns a gym likes to take tequila shots and drink Corona's and eat tacos on the weekend and that it's ok...
So that was it...I decided to take a break and just continue on with what I had learned. Interestingly enough, it didn't result in the anxiety that I expected to run into...quite the opposite...I felt immediately liberated and after a month or two it really did sink in for me that what I'm doing most of the time is what really matters...not the pool side indulgences when we're with our friends or a night out at one of our favorite restaurants.
As someone else on this site says (sorry, can't remember who)...I have some rules...and I have exceptions to those rules...and as long as those exceptions don't become the rule, I'm golden...I'm going on about 4.5 years of being golden...
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Need2Exerc1se wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »I'm one who feels people should strive to eat without counting. In some situations and as a learning tool, counting can be invaluable, but I don't understand the accepted reliance on daily calorie counting for life.
If after a period of time counting, surely you understand how much food you need and are ingesting without measuring every gram? If you have a trend up, eat less. If you are trending down, eat more. I know that relying on hunger cues can be dangerous, sometimes you follow your hunger & eat, sometimes you have to know when to ignore it. I also think that individuals should find foods that they enjoy that are difficult to overindulge on.
I can understand why people might want to find foods they enjoy that are difficult to overindulge on, but to say they "should"? I don't know, I think it's a matter of personal preference. I'm happier when I have the foods I love in my diet. The price I pay for that is that I have to exercise more self-control, but I'd rather have some potato than no potato.
I agree about the 'should'. But not sure I understand the rest of this. Why would eating potatoes = calorie counting more than other foods?
My point is that potatoes are a food that I personally find very easy to overeat, but I still include them in my diet. I don't try to restrict my diet to foods that are difficult to overeat.4 -
Awesome, thanks @cwolfman13
We're all about one rogue neuron away from full-blown eating disorders.
I can see how all you describe can happen, and especially with phones and addictive tendencies that we all have to one extent or another. I started getting that way and stepped away from this site for six months to reset. Now I have learned to let go about it and my logging is as accurate as I can stand...which is to say, I have never and will never weigh an egg. Or a slice of bacon. Or a small bowl of salad greens. My logging is an estimation at best, but I still need to do it. I can't be trusted with a full refrigerator. Or with a debit card, for that matter.
When I quit drinking alcohol my anxiety disorder completely went away, unless I have too many lattes or don't exercise for a month. Then the thoughts start up pretty regularly. No alcohol was the key to the lock for me. It caused and paradoxically temporarily relieved my anxiety. Never again on the too many cocktails.
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To clarify a few things from my post that seem to be misinterpreted
Should find/eat foods that are hard to overindulge on does not mean never eating other foods that you may like/love that are calorie dense. It just means this using this tactic makes it easier to not overeat since you aren't tracking every calorie. Then when you are faced with a food you have to be more cautious around, you are aware of that and take whatever steps necessary, probably eating a smaller portion, or limiting frequency.
How do you know if you are eating more/less. Several ways...the scale will trend up or down, your hunger will be higher/lower or you can know look at the foods you eat...a lot of low calorie foods eaten means you're eating less than if you were eating a lot of high calorie foods. If you've been tracking calories you know the high calorie bombs, and you know what's not.
These are reasonable tactics for controlling your eating without counting calories. This is not really eating intuitively though. None of this is listening to your body's hunger/fullness cues or cravings. Instead you are looking at results, using your knowledge of foods to direct your intake to lower calorie choices.
In my household my dh and I both lost weight differently. I lost weight logging food, planning my eating, learning about calories, exercising more. I don't really recognize full until I have consumed way more calories than I should for my activity level. I would do better now after 2 years of logging if I stopped but logging is easy, helps me make better nutritional choices and I like having the record. I don't feel limited or anxious about eating with logging. I lost weight in the past without calorie counting but it was less consistent and I did not maintain my loss.
My dh started taking a medication for a health issue that decreased his appetite as a side effect. He just didn't feel like eating as much so he didn't. He lost 30+ lbs and has maintained. He has never looked at calories, counted calories, did not start eating salads every day or avoiding fried foods or desserts. He just listened to his hunger cues and ate whwt felt good to him like an intuitive dieter would.
My takeaway is that some can lose without calorie counting. Some can eat healthier without logging. If you struggle though being more aware of calories/nutrients you consume is a helpful thing. You may not need to log forever to use that knowledge successfully. If you want to log food long term it is a useful tool to care for yourself and not something you should feel bad about doing.1 -
Same. I'm in maintenance and I am fully aware that I will have to log my food and workouts for the rest of my life. It is what it is and that's okay.1
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Need2Exerc1se wrote: »That's one of the sillier things I've read on this site. You obviously have no idea of my way of thinking, nor I yours. And that's okay. At least it's okay with me.
No way. This is not the one of the silliest posts here. That is for sure. Either that or you are very very selective at what you read lol
I'm very silly selective.
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For me logging is much more than just calorie counting. It is provides a place to correlate my thoughts, actions and health with the food I eat. I continue to learn so much about myself and food qualities based on the graphs and the baseline data that you can extrapolate from the MFP. As for counting calories, I don't have to count calories to eat moderately but I am so curious about the nutrients,etc. that foods have that keeping track is fun. Plus it's a good practice.9
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cwolfman13 wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »rileysowner wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »I'm one who feels people should strive to eat without counting. In some situations and as a learning tool, counting can be invaluable, but I don't understand the accepted reliance on daily calorie counting for life.
If after a period of time counting, surely you understand how much food you need and are ingesting without measuring every gram? If you have a trend up, eat less. If you are trending down, eat more. I know that relying on hunger cues can be dangerous, sometimes you follow your hunger & eat, sometimes you have to know when to ignore it. I also think that individuals should find foods that they enjoy that are difficult to overindulge on.
OK, I'm going to expose why Mrs Jruzer sometimes calls me "Sheldon."
How do you know if you're eating less, or more? How much less? How much more? If you're not measuring, how do you know?
I'm all for developing healthy habits, and I'm much better and thoughtful about what I eat than I used to be. But the whole "less/more" thing is confusing to me.
The scale tells you...
I typically put on about 8-10 Lbs over the winter due in large part to an overall decrease in activity...both NEAT and EAT. I take it off in Spring when I get back on the bike and I give it another nudge with doing things like not having grains or starches with my dinner most nights (not every night)...scaling back a snack...reducing the size of my breakfast, etc.
I don't count calories, as it was pretty bad mentally for me...I still weigh and measure certain things though, particularly if they're calorie dense and particularly if I'm trying to lose weight...maintenance is far less of an issue and I don't have to think about it too much except in winter when my activity dips.
Most of my diet is also whole foods based which is more of a health thing and keeping my blood work in line...but it also helps me not overeat or at least not overeat often enough to change anything...
That works for you. When I do that, it doesn't work for me. For me it is count calories so I can enjoy life. For others calorie counting doesn't put them in a good place, and if they have success intuitively eating, good for them.
Yeah, whatever works...I'm just hard pressed to believe the vast majority will actually, realistically count calories into perpetuity. I'm hoping to be around for another 40 - 50 years...the thought of counting every calorie for the next 50 years doesn't seem particularly realistic to me.
I'd wager the number of people who count calories for life are very few...
I tend to agree with this. Especially counting every single calorie / bite. And really, at some point would you not learn what 80 g of rice or a large egg vs. a medium egg looks like? When paying that much attention I just don't get how it wouldn't become obvious after a while.
But a lot o things people do seem crazy to me, so IDK why this should be different. I probably seem crazy to others.
Whenever I stop paying attention for more than a week or so, my eyeballed portions start to get bigger and bigger. My brain telling me that I've done well today and totally have room for a handful of chocolate covered peanuts becomes harder to argue with. My between meals snacking in general becomes more prominent. Maybe that just means I'm weak or easily deluded by the voices in my head but it is what it is.
If you asked me right now to pour a serving of cereal into a bowl, I could probably eyeball to within a couple of grams. If you asked me to do the same thing after a month of not logging, it would be substantially more and I would honestly not realize it. I wouldn't be a glutton or anything, but I would eventually end up back at 15 lbs heavier, swearing I hadn't changed a thing.
I've been on MFP for ten years. I didn't always count and log during that time, but when I've stopped I've found my experience to be like @kimney72. Maybe not right away, but in time I start agreeing with that little voice in my head at the grocery store which says, "Yeah. Little Debbie. Mmm. Lays." I need to see it in writing. Otherwise I start having 40 grams of cheese and 100 grams of sausage and etc. It just sneaks up.
I'm curious about @cwolfman13, though. He has often stated that the logging wasn't good for him, but not sure why that was. I can get obsessive about stuff and I was in the beginning but I've learned to relax about things quite a bit in Maintenance and I don't weigh everything, but my food scale is on the counter and I used it several times a day as a little self-check. I can eyeball a lot of stuff, BUT like kimney72 says - that would fly out the window if I stepped away from logging for any amount of time.
I tried to be an intuitive eater a few times. It's just not worth it to me to have to lose those same 8-10 pounds over and over. I've lost them three times in total now, and it's a pain.
The interesting thing is how my CICO has changed over the years I've been tracking and logging. Right after my initial 70 pound loss I had to stay low for quite a while. Like 1500-low. Now I've reset to a good amount of food and can eat 1900-2300 every day with no scale movement. My lifestyle hasn't changed drastically, either. I wouldn't have known that without logging for all these years. I need those numbers.
@cmriverside I was the opposite...I was fine in the beginning an thought the calorie counting thing was kinda cool and interesting and it taught me a lot about what I was doing "wrong" with my diet and helped me turn a lot of things around initially.
At first I was just really focused on improving my diet on the whole as my main issue was some really nasty blood work about one tick away from metabolic syndrome...so initially I was just looking to treat my health issues with better food choices...more veggies and fruit (I hardly ate any) more lean proteins from fish and chicken (ate beef or sausage pretty much everyday multiple times per day)...I wasn't laser focused on the numbers, just the nutrition.
For whatever reason though, it turned into a downward spiral...I was good for about 4-5 months, and then I just started to get more and more obsessed with the numbers and hitting this macro and that macro and I'd get all bent if I went over my calories when I wasn't on a planned maintenance day even though I knew I was still in a deficit or not over maintenance.
I started having a lot of anxiety (I have a general anxiety disorder anyway) about eating out (we don't really do chain restaurants much) or going to socialize with friends, vacations, holidays, etc. It got to the point that my wife and our friends started to take notice that I was irritable much of the time and not the fun loving guy they knew and just seemed stressed out all of the time and anxious and somewhat depressed.
My wife and some friends of ours are really into fitness and nutrition decided to have a little "intervention" with me and told me that they thought I was getting way over obsessed with things...I took the conversation seriously...these were not people who were over weight and saying, "come on...just one piece of cake." These were my wife and my very good friend and his wife, all of whom are very fitness and nutrition oriented and competitive athletes (well, my wife is a recreational athlete). I figured if they saw an issue and were concerned...well, maybe there was an issue.
The final straw was on my wife's birthday a week or two later. We dropped the kids off with grandma for a couple of nights and checked into a swanky resort. The room had a beautiful balcony with spectacular views of the Sandia Mountains...my wife pulled out a bottle of wine and asked me to join her on the balcony for a glass or two before dinner. I said that I'd join her, but skip the wine and she gave me this glare like, "you're *kitten* me right...it's my birthday." Well, I decided to go ahead and have the wine but she could tell that the wheels in my head were spinning...is this a 5 oz pore...what kind of wine is this...I should get my phone out and check the database...if I have these calories now, what can I have for dinner?"
After some "you gotta lighten up a little" conversation, we made our way to dinner. We looked at the menu and I was flooded with anxiety as to what to order. My wife asked me what I thought I'd get and I said something to the effect of, "maybe just the side salad...I'm not that hungry." She looked me dead in the eyes and said, "you're getting the short ribs...they're like your favorite thing on the planet and we haven't been out to eat on a date in over 2 months...you're not going to put those 40 Lbs back on tonight."
It was like a little switch went off in my head and I knew she was right and my little issue became very apparent to me. I ordered the short ribs and enjoyed every bite along with sharing another bottle of wine and splitting an amazing desert.
The next morning we had a bike ride planned and headed out for a 25 miler...on the ride she told me that she thought I should at least take a break and see how things go. She told me everything I already knew...she told me that over the past 9 months or so that I had really made some huge changes to my diet overall and had become a regular exerciser...she told me that I was doing all of the things that lean, healthy, and fit people do and to just keep doing those things minus meticulously logging every single calorie. She reminded me that these little things like her birthday or getting together with our friends are just occasions...that's not what we're doing every day. She reminded me that one of my very best friends who is a retired professional athlete and owns a gym likes to take tequila shots and drink Corona's and eat tacos on the weekend and that it's ok...
So that was it...I decided to take a break and just continue on with what I had learned. Interestingly enough, it didn't result in the anxiety that I expected to run into...quite the opposite...I felt immediately liberated and after a month or two it really did sink in for me that what I'm doing most of the time is what really matters...not the pool side indulgences when we're with our friends or a night out at one of our favorite restaurants.
As someone else on this site says (sorry, can't remember who)...I have some rules...and I have exceptions to those rules...and as long as those exceptions don't become the rule, I'm golden...I'm going on about 4.5 years of being golden...
Very inspiring story brother.
I continually bring up @cwolfman13 as one of the success stories on here simply because of this. Bottom line you figured out what you needed to do to be successful.3 -
I count, and I hope that I will be counting for a long loooong time. Because I cannot be trusted. Rice, potatoes, bread, cheese. I could easily overeat on these if I'm not counting. But when I DO count I feel free. I can fit in chocolate cake and grilled Brie sandwiches with hot pepper jelly on freshly baked crusty French bread without a single worry.
Counting calories makes me feed in control, and ZERO guilt, which is very important to me as a recovering ED sufferer.
And around that TOM. All bets are off! I can easily have 5 days where my body feels like a bottomless pit of hunger. I wouldn't be surprised if I were to hit 4,000 calories on those days if I were to just let myself eat what I wanted. I would just stuff myself on curry with rice and garlic naan bread all day, every day for a week if I could. Plus wine and lemon meringue pie.5 -
I have the incredible ability to underestimate the amount of vegetables and overestimate the amount of carbs I put on my plate over time. My appetite for healthy food decreases when I do not log and hold myself accountable, and before I know it I'll deliberately tell myself: Oh come on, that piece of *insert dessert* can't have THAT many calories. It usually has more.
So yeah, after a lifetime of being overweight I will forever have to keep track of my food intake. Perhaps not daily, but a check in every once in a while to make sure my portions are what I think it is. Besides, we get used to it and trying new things wouldn't be so daunting if we can quickly look up how much of it you can eat to stay within your range, instead of either leaving it all together or overindulging.0
This discussion has been closed.
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