Anybody else get tired of counting calories?
Replies
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stephieleee wrote: »I hate it if I'm honest... Especially when I'm eating with other people and I have to log my food before I forget. I always feel stupid for doing it.
But it seems to be getting the job done so I will stick with it.
I'm a 50 year old woman whose brain has become swiss cheese, and I've never had to log my food in the presence of others.
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yes I hate it. I haven't logged my food since July or so. I'm not trying to lose weight though. All the people saying it only takes 5 minutes of their day and it's so easy, I don't understand that. Everytime I cook something new I have to write down each ingredient and weigh it, and enter everything in a recipe builder, and remember to weigh the stupid pot before I make the thing so I can subtract that off the final weight etc. When I make dinner I have to carefully weigh each side dish I put on my plate one at a time instead of just plopping stuff on my plate like everybody else does. Logging food is so easy but only until dinner time. Sometimes I want to get back into counting my calories and lose another 5-10 lbs and lose this belly fat hopefully but ugh, counting calories is such a drag for me.
Could you try a happy medium and estimate the meals that accurately logging seems too daunting? Weigh what you can wrap your head around and estimate the rest. Maybe you've been doing it long enough that your estimation skills will be good enough.
I honestly don't cook many complicated things, and I'm sure that helps. But I eat at other family member's houses 3 or 4 times a week, and I estimate my portion sizes. I lost a little slower than the numbers suggested, so maybe that contributed a little, but I still got it done.
You don't necessarily have to log perfectly for it to work, especially if you take the time to learn about what a portion size of a food looks like when you weight it.10 -
Maybe it's just be but I find it to be a total drag, too. It's only a few minutes out of the day, sure, but it would be nice to just sit down to a meal with my husband instead of getting to the table later than him after weighing everything. To grab a snack and not have to worry about weighing/measuring it before eating. I miss just eating lol. But I do also realize that this is something that I have to do to reach my goal(s) so I keep doing it. Maybe one day I'll be in tune enough to do intuitive eating but for now, I'm not there yet and need to keep logging.6
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DaisyHamilton wrote: »Maybe it's just be but I find it to be a total drag, too. It's only a few minutes out of the day, sure, but it would be nice to just sit down to a meal with my husband instead of getting to the table later than him after weighing everything. To grab a snack and not have to worry about weighing/measuring it before eating. I miss just eating lol. But I do also realize that this is something that I have to do to reach my goal(s) so I keep doing it. Maybe one day I'll be in tune enough to do intuitive eating but for now, I'm not there yet and need to keep logging.
Not sure if this might help you at least with the snacks - I used to keep a snack basket in the cupboard, I'd buy things like a large bag of sweet/salty popcorn; cashew nuts; crackers; etc and pre-weigh them into tupperware tubs so they were ready to go with the weight marked on them in dry wipe marker.
I've also been weighing most of the same stuff for so long now that I am better at estimating weights so sometimes I don't worry too much about weighing and logging things exactly, if my weight loss slows down and I'm not knowingly over-eating I will start to tighten up with weighing everything again but I can pretty well eye-ball things like Meat/Potatoes/Cereal/Rice a lot better than I used to.
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DaisyHamilton wrote: »Maybe it's just be but I find it to be a total drag, too. It's only a few minutes out of the day, sure, but it would be nice to just sit down to a meal with my husband instead of getting to the table later than him after weighing everything. To grab a snack and not have to worry about weighing/measuring it before eating. I miss just eating lol. But I do also realize that this is something that I have to do to reach my goal(s) so I keep doing it. Maybe one day I'll be in tune enough to do intuitive eating but for now, I'm not there yet and need to keep logging.
Most of the meals I prepare and serve at home are in my recipe folder. So, at dinnertime, it literally takes me less than a minute to put my empty plate on the scale, tare it, add my main course, jot down the weight, tare it, add the side dish, jot down the weight, bring it to the table and eat. After dinner, I take those weights and drop them into MFP.
For me, it's a small and insignificant 'price' to pay for making sure I remain within my calorie budget, which was the key to me not only losing the 75 lbs in the first place, but maintaining that loss over time.
Intuitive eating doesn't work so well for me. I intuitively eat more than I should.
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Me think it's stupid 😉12
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I don’t get tired of it, I enjoy it. I have no problem eating intuitively but I like to log because it keeps my meal planning organized and I waste less food (I tend to forget about leftovers and seeing it written down reminds me). I’m also not great about meeting my protein goals so it helps keep me aware of it. And the friends on here are great! If it bothers you just stop logging, plenty of people in the world are normal weights/healthy and don’t log.6
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cartersmom06 wrote: »LivingtheLeanDream wrote: »How long have you been logging?
I never minded logging my food, certainly not for the first few years anyway (it got me to goal weight and it helped me keep it off imo) - I now no longer need to log as I can maintain my loss without physically logging however mentally I still am very aware of my approx calorie daily intake.
Ive been logging on and off for years never losing much weight because I grow tiresome of the process. I dont have alot to lose, 20 pounds would be nice. I keep coming back to this app though because its the only way of eating that lets me eat what I want without restricting certain foods. I always lose momentum though during the process because I dont see any results of weight loss. I can never seem to lose that pound a week I have my calories set for and always feel hungry in the evening after I have used up my calories for the day. I get frustrated when I step on the scale and there is no loss, sometimes even a gain. FYI Im a 53 yo woman, 5'7" 178 pounds. Im also in perimenopause. Cycles are all over the map! Maybe somebody here has some advice that has been where I am. I trust the process, just growing tired of not seeing results thats all!
I'm getting the sense here that maybe it's not the logging that you find discouraging so much as the (seeming) lack of results. I wonder if logging would feel so burdensome to you if you were seeing a substantial difference on the scale from week to week. Sadly, that's not the way it usually works, especially with so little to lose. I actually feel bad for those on here only needing to lose 10-20 lbs, because the precision required to hit that calorie window for weight loss can be so difficult to achieve on a consistent basis, whether a person logs or not. As others have mentioned, especially if hunger is an issue, you would be better served going for .5 lb/week, and at that rate progress can easily be obscured by normal fluctuations, so you have to do it for a long time to see the true trend. And since .5 lb/week requires only a 250 calorie deficit, logging really needs to be spot on because there's just not a lot of room for error.
I view logging a little like Tetris- I don't obsess about it, but it's sort of fun for me to see how good of a day I can build macro-wise. Then I can give myself a little pat on the back each day, rather than waiting for validation from the scale. 8 -
At first I found it a chore, but I am inherently lazy so I find most things a chore. Now it is just part of my day. I log religiously at home and do my best at guessing when I go out to eat. Nothing is unaccounted for. I think the more you do it, and the more you see how it really works, the easier it is.4
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Yeah, it's really exhausting sometimes to be honest. I feel like I can never relax. Like, I can't just grab an apple without thinking and eat it when I'm hungry. I should take out my scale, weight it, make sure it fits into my goal, then log the number before I forget. It sort of takes the enjoyment out of eating the apple. Any event that has food in it, makes me a little nervous and needs to be prepared for in advance. How will I know the calories of food that I will be eating? Should I try to look for the info in advance? should I estimate? How will I work it into my goal? should I readjust all of my other meals that day or the next day to bee able to "afford" it. Sometimes it's easier to pass on the invitation than to worry about all that. And sometimes when I'm eating out with friends or I'm at a party the calories are always on the back of my mind. Like, before grabbing a handful of popcorn or dip a carrot into the hummus, I have to estimate the calories and decide if it fits into my goal and make a mental note to log it as soon as I can instead of focusing on the conversation I'm having. Eating out, being invited over for dinner, parties, holidays, spending time over at a friend's place, when you have to cook for yourself and someone else at the same time, going to vacation... everything is associated with slight anxiety around calories and is less enjoyable due to having to log.
Cooking, instead of being therapeutic and relaxing is now less enjoyable as well, and takes so much more time. Because I have to make sure to weigh every single ingredient before adding it, log everything, then divide into equal portions, all while making sure that the calories and macros per serving fit your goal.
I really don't understand how people here take "only a fe minutes to log". Most of my meals are made from scratch and contain many ingredients. So I have to weigh every one of them every time I cook and log it while I'm cooking or preparing my meal to eat later. Which takes quite a lot of time in my opinion. If I include the time I spend on grocery planning to fit my goals, meal planning, weighing separately the ingredients for my every meal (3-5times a day), or looking for the closest estimates when I don't know the exact calories, logging it, making sure it fits my goal etc. it takes much more time than "a few minutes" and much more energy and headspace than I want to spend on t.
I will definitely not be able (or willing) to spend my entire life doing that. I can only hope that someday after losing enough weight and logging at maintenance I can learn to eat intuitively. I mean 80% of the people around me are at a healthy weight and don't count calories, they can rely on their hunger cues to know how much they should eat. So I hope I can learn to do that too...
i use the recipe builder every week when i meal prep - but instead of doing equal servings i set the overall serving to 10g serving sizes (so if the final prepared weight is 600g, i log it as 60 servings) - then wehn i go to eat, i have figured out roughly what i need to hit my goal macros and scoop out that5 -
Nope. I find it quick and easy and don't give it much thought.8
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Reading the comments about whether weighing logging only takes 5-10 minutes vs. is tremendously time consuming, I think the effect is about more than just the actual clock time. I'm not judging when I say this - people differ, and that's a good thing - but I think our feelings or attitudes about it color how much time it feels like. Please bear with me while I explain!
I got there by really thinking about how long it took me to log my breakfast, because I was considering adding up how much time logging takes me today, to make sure I was being honest with myself, underestimating the time because I feel it has great value. (I decided I couldn't really add it up, for reasons that may become obvious.)
Breakfast had 13 ingredients, oatmeal with a bunch of add ins, coffee with milk, cold matcha - takes around 20 minutes to make, weigh/log or not. The actual logging steps were exceedingly overlapped with the must-do-for-making steps; I can't really separate them. I'd always be scooping raw oatmeal out of the container. I sit the container on the scale (always on the counter), and maybe scoop a little extra or tip a little out until the scale says -30g. It adds - what - maybe 3 seconds to the scooping. Most of the parts are like that - doing what I'd do regardless, but a couple of seconds extra to tap some off or add some on (and I wouldn't need to be this precise with most of the ingredients if I weren't a data geek, because it's reasonably few calories).
The most time-consuming is the molasses, because it comes out in big messy blops. I put a little cooking spray on a spoon, put the molasses on the scale, dump some in the spoon, put the bottle back on the scale, read the negative. That's also the only ingredient that varies daily (hard to get exact), so I just remember the number. Even if I didn't log, I don't think I'd just pour the stuff into my oatmeal, because sometimes I'd get a huuuuge blop that wouldn't be tasty, so I'd still be putting some in a spoon first.
I usually read forums while I eat breakfast, so as part of the MFP-breakfast-fest, I go to diary, click two check-boxes on the meals list (coffee/milk, and the oatmeal concoction), then when my diary comes up, I click the molasses and change the quantity.
So, to me, the time spent on logging is a few shakings/levelings of ingredients as I scoop them, then 30 seconds or so to log the "meals". I'd be surprised if it added up to a whole minute, but there isn't really any sensible way to add it up.
Even dinners are similar, though cooked from scratch, typically a dozen or so separately-logged ingredients, never the same, few saved recipes. I'm chopping a bunch of stuff on a cutting board, say, then sitting the board on the scale, zeroing, scraping off each ingredient into the pot at the right time, reading the negative, scribbling it on a junk mail envelope, and re-zeroing. Usually 80% of the ingredients are in "recent", so click-quantity change-click, and look up a 3-4. I'm giving dinner 3 minutes or so extra time, since I'd do most of the steps regardless. The looking at the scale, scribbling, and later logging are what I count as extra time.
Here's the thing: I'm a data geek. I like quantifying things. I think it's fun to think about how to make things more efficient, so I think of faster ways to do these steps and that's entertaining to me. That makes me think of "time to log" as not burdensome, and to count just the unique extra time, those few seconds of leveling or tapping, plus some clicks.
If I were a different personality type who found this all unnatural and fiddly and annoying, I'd be looking at the whole burden of thinking about all of this and doing steps differently than otherwise, feeling the annoyance of injecting the scale into every danged step, and feeling this would be so. much. faster. without all the fuss - I'd be counting almost the whole time I was cooking as extra time needed to log, because truthfully every step involves fiddling with the scale in some way. For me, it's become automatic and smooth, but if I weren't a data geek and systems analyst by nature, I'm not sure it would ever feel that way.
Well, that was a stupid-long essay!
Bottom line: I think it seems to take more time or less time, depending on how you count the time, which probably depends in part on how natural and happy this sort of process is to an individual by nature. (I also think some tips and tricks shorten the time, but you have to want to do it enough to invest time in that initially, too, so still somewhat personality driven).
It's not essential for everyone to log in order to succeed. It's not essential to log every single thing accurately in order to succeed. Doing so comes more naturally to some of us than others.23 -
Yes, lately I've been getting really sick of doing it. It wasn't a problem for the first year, but the closer I am to my goal the more tiring it gets for me. It's weird because I should be used to it, but honestly it has been making me really anxious for the past few months.5
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yes I hate it. I haven't logged my food since July or so. I'm not trying to lose weight though. All the people saying it only takes 5 minutes of their day and it's so easy, I don't understand that. Everytime I cook something new I have to write down each ingredient and weigh it, and enter everything in a recipe builder, and remember to weigh the stupid pot before I make the thing so I can subtract that off the final weight etc. When I make dinner I have to carefully weigh each side dish I put on my plate one at a time instead of just plopping stuff on my plate like everybody else does. Logging food is so easy but only until dinner time. Sometimes I want to get back into counting my calories and lose another 5-10 lbs and lose this belly fat hopefully but ugh, counting calories is such a drag for me.
I find these comments about cooking so odd. I'm really lazy and have never had an issue using the recipe builder, or saving meals, and tweaking the weights the next time I have it. The most time-consuming part of that for me is finding the dumb recipe in my database (which is full), because MFP doesn't have a search function for it. I don't fuss over lower-calorie ingredients like onions, mushrooms, or celery but eyeball those by cups. As to the couple of specific issues you mention, I keep a list of the weights of all of my pots, pans, & baking dishes on the fridge and keep a calculator nearby. I plop stuff on my plate the same as everyone else, but my plate is on the food scale and I tare it in between items.10 -
I mean, sure. It sucks that I'll have to do this the rest of my life but you know what sucks more? Being obese/out of shape/out of breath all the time/not actually living life.
I actually had better quality of life at 320# than I do at 141#. At least people didn't tell me I have an ED because I log food.
That makes me really sad. I'm in awe of your dedication but I'm sorry that you have to deal with rude comments.4 -
Nope - been doing this for 4 years now. Takes 5-10 mins/day and keeps me maintaining possibly the most critically important health indicator.
I'd rather do that than not track and fail.
You're looking for something easier than 10 mins/day?
Its not 10 mins a day because i dont eat the same things every day. I dont plan out my meals, I eat when im hungry.3 -
I've been logging for about two and a half years now, and for me it's fundamental to my relationship with food and weight maintenance. Intuitive and mindful eating don't work for me. I over-think it to the point where I can spend 10 minutes trying to decide if I'm really hungry or just want to eat, if eating this amount of food is the correct portion, am I eating enough to fuel my activity today or am I eating too much, and on and on. Logging takes all that stress out, and is so automatic at this point that it's just a part of my life.
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cartersmom06 wrote: »Getting tired of logging everything I eat...there has to be an easier way!
There are a million ways to lose weight...for some people calorie counting is the way to go, for others, they do better with a diet plan.
I haven't counted calories in years...I can maintain without counting and I can lose weight if I need to without counting.9 -
cartersmom06 wrote: »Nope - been doing this for 4 years now. Takes 5-10 mins/day and keeps me maintaining possibly the most critically important health indicator.
I'd rather do that than not track and fail.
You're looking for something easier than 10 mins/day?
Its not 10 mins a day because i dont eat the same things every day. I dont plan out my meals, I eat when im hungry.
so do i and it still probably takes less than 15 minutes i day - i eat roughly the same/similar foods - but different time periods/amounts - those are saved in my frequent foods; if its new (or something that has fallen off my frequents) i search for it and rarely take more than about a minute to find it (the more specific in your searches you can be helps - ie. strawberry greek yogurt vs. simply balanced, greek yogurt, strawberry, 5.3oz)
my food diary is broken up into time periods (0400-0800; 0800-1200; 12-1600 etc)4
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