NO MORE CALORIE COUNTING
Replies
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Public exhortation as to avoiding "processed" foods is mostly about virtue signaling. I ignore these statements in the same way as I ignore explanations of "Who is God" and "There is no God" - politely.16
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sweetangelkitten wrote: »I think most of us are here because we saw where our body naturally ended up and it wasn't where we wanted to be!
Calorie counting has been a godsend for me, but I know it's not a good fit for everyone.
Best of luck OP, I hope you find the balance you're looking for.
My natural body was going to die before much longer if I had not taken action.
That isn't a natural body, that was you eating poorly and treating it poorly
@sweetangelkitten
I guess it is time for one of my favorite sayings... It is what you learn after you know it all that counts.
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Good luck! Not saying that with any sarcasm or hate or malice.
Some people can do that...but for me, that's pretty much what got me obese in the first place. I was eating healthy food, just too much of it.4 -
paperpudding wrote: »sweetangelkitten wrote: »Best of luck in finding what works best for you.
unfortunately for me, eating "healthy" without calorie counting is why i was obese most of my life. even after loosing 100lbs twice. I'm a victim of my own portion creep. even in maintenance this time around i should do check ins with the scale and diary every few weeks even if i don't do so daily.sweetangelkitten wrote: »spinnerdell wrote: »Eating wholesome food when I was hungry led to a 70 pound weight gain over the years. Counting calories allowed me to lose that weight and maintain the loss. Wishing you a better outcome with your eating plan.
Why does this lead so many people to weight gain? We weren't counting calories a couple hundred years ago or even a hundred years ago... Seems unnatural to be measuring and counting, we should eat when we are hungry >,<
a couple of hundred years ago our access to food and what foods as well as our actiivty level was VASTLY different. you can't really compare the two.
Easy, don't eat the processed food
Well, as posters explained some of them ate next to no so called processed food and were still over weight.
Conversely I eat plenty of processed food - in about same proportion of my overall diet as when I was overweight, just smaller portions of everything. and some things less often and some things gone altogether - but gone altogether are things like regular soda replaced by diet version - not a less processed alternative.
Eat less calories than you burn - that is sole and only way to weight loss.
Do that by whatever way of eating suits you. (and is hopefully reasonably nutrionally balanced but that is a separate issue)
+1 This is exactly how I lost 50 lbs that I've kept off for over a year.1 -
No. I'm still pretty new to this and it's been amazing to know I'm not overeating and has made me much more aware of what I'm putting in my mouth. I'd like to lose 60 more pounds. Maybe someday when I've trained myself to know how much to eat per day but right now this really keeps me in check.6
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IMHO, with regard to health, it’s really not about counting calories. It’s about the quality of life first, the quality food second and the quantity of food third. Counting calories can help us understand what our bodies actually need but really says nothing about how healthy you are. The same goes for eating wholesome foods. It nice to know we are eating good wholesome foods, but without a feeling of what our bodies actually needed we could easily overeat.2
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sweetangelkitten wrote: »Best of luck in finding what works best for you.
unfortunately for me, eating "healthy" without calorie counting is why i was obese most of my life. even after loosing 100lbs twice. I'm a victim of my own portion creep. even in maintenance this time around i should do check ins with the scale and diary every few weeks even if i don't do so daily.sweetangelkitten wrote: »spinnerdell wrote: »Eating wholesome food when I was hungry led to a 70 pound weight gain over the years. Counting calories allowed me to lose that weight and maintain the loss. Wishing you a better outcome with your eating plan.
Why does this lead so many people to weight gain? We weren't counting calories a couple hundred years ago or even a hundred years ago... Seems unnatural to be measuring and counting, we should eat when we are hungry >,<
a couple of hundred years ago our access to food and what foods as well as our actiivty level was VASTLY different. you can't really compare the two.
Easy, don't eat the processed food
um hello - i wasn't eating much in the way of processed food. i've always cooked a ton at home and ate tons of veggies/fruit and so called health foods. i rarely ate out much less fast food and whe i did it was usually salad or fresh sandwich from a nice shop.
clearly you are not here to make friends. my post was polite and your reply was a diss? that actually dismissed what i wrote?16 -
sweetangelkitten wrote: »Yep, that's right! I'm done counting calories and tracking everything I eat! I'm eating wholesome foods and eating when I am hungry. Doing what feels natural! Anyone else here with me on this?
I don’t count calories. Micromanaging every little thing isn’t a good time for me!
What made you want to stop??
@sweetangelkitten1 -
You should check out phit n phat. I believe her name is Corrine; She also has a podcast.4
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The freedom from the need to count I find personally empowering.7
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It doesn't work for me. I have a very low blood pressure for most of the day, and just moving around feels more difficult and causes hunger and fatigue. But I don't actually need those calories. If I ate what my body told me I'd be overweight.2
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GaleHawkins wrote: »The freedom from the need to count I find personally empowering.
How different people are. I find the freedom to eat anything I want empowering. I can take a few seconds to log something, and that gives me the freedom to choose any food I want and structure my calories around that. When not counting, I'm more likely to restrict my choices to stay safe, and that's the opposite of freedom to me.18 -
sweetangelkitten wrote: »Yep, that's right! I'm done counting calories and tracking everything I eat! I'm eating wholesome foods and eating when I am hungry. Doing what feels natural! Anyone else here with me on this?
My wife doesn't track calories but she is Asian and her default diet doesn't require it. She eats 1pm to 11pm apart from coffee and eats lots of greens, soups. noodles, nuts, little protein, never sweet things.
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Yes there are many people who lose/ maintain weight without counting calories.
If that works for people that's great. Calorie counting is just a tool after all.6 -
Ive lost weight and maintained weight without counting calories but I have to really stay focused. I think counting calories is easier. I can just guesstimate and even take weekends or other random days off here and there and it still holds me accountable5
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wilson10102018 wrote: »Public exhortation as to avoiding "processed" foods is mostly about virtue signaling. I ignore these statements in the same way as I ignore explanations of "Who is God" and "There is no God" - politely.
Actually, there are some studies, scant as they are, that point to a low reward diet/less energy dense/ less hyper processed, leads to a lowering of bf settling points. Combine that with a high activity level and someone might not have to be as crazy about tracking. Maybe... who knows.3 -
suzannesimmons1 wrote: »sweetangelkitten wrote: »Not me. I gained a lot of weight eating wholesome foods and eating when I was hungry.
There are others who are basically doing what you are doing so you are not alone.
Whatever your goals are I wish you the best of luck.
Thank you! I can't seem to find anyone on here who isn't counting calories sadly...
Because it's a calorie counting site perhaps......
Lots of people use it for calorie counting - when I downloaded it - it highlighted it as a tracking app for whatever you would like to track.
I track workouts and measurements currently. I don’t do as much calorie counting anymore.
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amusedmonkey wrote: »GaleHawkins wrote: »The freedom from the need to count I find personally empowering.
How different people are. I find the freedom to eat anything I want empowering. I can take a few seconds to log something, and that gives me the freedom to choose any food I want and structure my calories around that. When not counting, I'm more likely to restrict my choices to stay safe, and that's the opposite of freedom to me.
I agree as well since finding a range of macros that gives me the freedom to eat anything I want and not have to do any counting is doubling empowering.11 -
janejellyroll wrote: »ladyzherra wrote: »Hi there! I applaud your idea to not count calories. Back in times in which people did not know the nutritional content of food, there was no calorie counting, as you write. People had to develop and cultivate a knowledge of their bodies which most of us, I believe, have lost. When one is in harmony with her body (the emotinal and mental bodies align with the physical body), then I do believe that we can intrinsically know what is right for our consumption.
However, even the issue of hunger becomes boggy when considering the contemporary way of moving through the world in a first world country. So many of us are practiced as associating other emotions with hunger, that unearthing "actual" hunger is going to take quite a journey of discovery. Hunger has become much more conflated than it was before grocery stores and easily accessible foods, for example.
I do think that the ideal life would be to NOT count calories and to eat when hungry. But each of these aspects require a very long process of excavation. Imagine being able to listen to and TRUST the body? I mean, right? That's so important...but also very challenging. So, I would keep your goal in sight but also be practical about how you can achieve it. In order to understand the path toward this, many things in the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical body need to be resolved.
Jenn
I really don't know if the reality of the average human throughout history has been that they developed and cultivated a "knowledge of their bodies." The reality for a lot of people is that they ate what was available to them in the quantities that they could afford. They weren't non-obese due to some folk knowledge we've failed to cultivate. They were non-obese because they worked hard and food has historically been a limited quantity for many.
Yep.
Two hundred years ago an American child might get an orange in his or her stocking at Christmas as a special treat. Go another couple hundred years even further back, and oranges were so rare and expensive in parts of Europe it was a custom to allow a pregnant woman to have one orange as an extra special treat once during her pregnancy. I had an orange this morning as a snack, and I have a big bag of oranges in my fridge right now.
Not to mention that the foods we eat today, even when minimally processed and called by the same names, are not the same foods. Navel oranges didn’t exist when my ancestors settled in this part of the country. And I myself am old enough to remember when a massive orange the size of the one I ate today was not a thing, large oranges were about the size of baseballs. That’s just a size difference, but the fruit itself is also sweeter and higher in sugars. Bananas today are nutritionally almost nothing like bananas a hundred years ago. Eggs, fish, beef, all nutritionally different because of a century of selective breeding and changes in husbandry.
Please don’t mistake me for someone saying that modern foods are in some way evil or lesser. They are however different from the foods humans evolved to eat. It’s not reasonable to expect that evolution should have prepared us to instinctively eat the right amount and mixture of modern foods, any more than it’s reasonable to expect your dog to know better than to eat all the chocolate out of your Easter basket and then die. Dogs did not evolve to cope with Easter baskets, and humans did not evolve to cope with modern plenty.17 -
GaleHawkins wrote: »The freedom from the need to count I find personally empowering.
I often don't count, but find the idea that that's "empowerment" to be odd. But YMMV and all that.6 -
psychod787 wrote: »wilson10102018 wrote: »Public exhortation as to avoiding "processed" foods is mostly about virtue signaling. I ignore these statements in the same way as I ignore explanations of "Who is God" and "There is no God" - politely.
Actually, there are some studies, scant as they are, that point to a low reward diet/less energy dense/ less hyper processed, leads to a lowering of bf settling points. Combine that with a high activity level and someone might not have to be as crazy about tracking. Maybe... who knows.
Sure, I suspect that works for many, especially if contrasted with a diet full of so-called hyper-palatable foods, as they tend to be eaten more for taste than hunger and are on average not that satiating for many. They also tend to be eaten in many cases in addition to mealtimes, as extra foods.
I don't think that really has much to do with avoiding "processed" foods as a declared rule, as for many people processed foods (including canned beans, frozen spinach, greek yogurt, dried pasta, smoked salmon, to run through some of those I use often) can actually make having a healthful diet a lot easier without meaning it's packed full of high cal "hyper-palatable" foods (which IMO are actually often less tasty than alternatives, especially if one is not eating them a lot).
So I think both of you can be right.5 -
GaleHawkins wrote: »The freedom from the need to count I find personally empowering.
I often don't count, but find the idea that that's "empowerment" to be odd. But YMMV and all that.
I can see why someone may find it empowering and it’s not odd at all. Imagine finally learning what works for you in order to lose weight and maintaining without having to micromanage or depending on anything but just being mindful after years of bad habits and not really knowing what you’re doing. I think empowering is a good word for that.12 -
sweetangelkitten wrote: »Not me. I gained a lot of weight eating wholesome foods and eating when I was hungry.
There are others who are basically doing what you are doing so you are not alone.
Whatever your goals are I wish you the best of luck.
Thank you! I can't seem to find anyone on here who isn't counting calories sadly...
Not to be snippy, but to me this is a calorie counting site, I wouldn't be on here if I didn't need to count calories....12 -
sweetangelkitten wrote: »Not me. I gained a lot of weight eating wholesome foods and eating when I was hungry.
There are others who are basically doing what you are doing so you are not alone.
Whatever your goals are I wish you the best of luck.
Thank you! I can't seem to find anyone on here who isn't counting calories sadly...
Not to be snippy, but to me this is a calorie counting site, I wouldn't be on here if I didn't need to count calories....
To others this is a place to get advice for fitness or motivation, to join in on challenges ect.9 -
I log M thru F only. Weekends can't be bothered.5
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GaleHawkins wrote: »The freedom from the need to count I find personally empowering.
I often don't count, but find the idea that that's "empowerment" to be odd. But YMMV and all that.
I can see why someone may find it empowering and it’s not odd at all. Imagine finally learning what works for you in order to lose weight and maintaining without having to micromanage or depending on anything but just being mindful after years of bad habits and not really knowing what you’re doing. I think empowering is a good word for that.
I'm pretty sure the poster in question never actually counted. That's one reason why I find it odd. Personally, I never thought I had to count (I know how to lose weight just fine without counting, for me), it was something I thought might be an enjoyable way to lose (I was struggling with motivation and found that just as creating a workout schedule and logging workouts often motivates me to be more consistent with my workouts, that logging food was a fun approach for me). I mostly don't count at maintenance, unless I'm experimenting with a new way of eating or just think it would help me be more mindful for a while, and I do it at Cron (which is more micromanaging than MFP, since you can see so many nutrients so much better).
But for me, if one must use the rather abused word "empowering," what would seem empowering is feeling in control of one's dietary choices and weight. Not counting or not.10 -
I'm with you. And my weight has only increased by 5kg in an entire year (because I actually wanted to) and now is remaining steady!
I only eat twice a day though (max) and fast quite often. That might be why it's OK.1 -
I am also with you. I also don't regularly log foods or count calories. I shifted the way I was eating and lost 39 pounds since August to be a healthy 130ish (5 ft 5in) female which I have maintained since February. I am eating wholesome foods. I focus on lots of veggies/fruit, no saturated fat (only eat poultry and fish, no cheese, no butter etc. but do use olive oil), almost no alcohol, almost no desserts but happily eat 3 fruits a day. I eat a lot of food each day (3 meals and at least 2 healthy snacks). I try to get a good 8 hours of sleep each night and drink lots of water to stay hydrated and exercise regularly. And for special occasions, I eat dessert or have a glass of wine and enjoy it. I feel great and the weight came off easily and has stayed off the last 3 months. I do weigh myself every few days just as a check. Mostly I try to choose food that is both healthy and that I enjoy.
I have occasionally logged foods for a day, out of curiosity to see what my caloric intake was and also to see if I was meeting daily requirements for protein, fiber, etc.
I appreciate that logging works for lots of people on this site. I also appreciate the inspiration of people's stories on this site. I respect everyone's approaches. We all share the desire to be a healthy weight and to maintain it. It is ok that we approach this goal differently.8 -
I can’t understand why some people think calorie counting is such a chore.
Once the majority of my foods are entered, logging takes less than 60 seconds of my entire day.
Couldn’t be simpler.
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GaleHawkins wrote: »The freedom from the need to count I find personally empowering.
I often don't count, but find the idea that that's "empowerment" to be odd. But YMMV and all that.
I can see why someone may find it empowering and it’s not odd at all. Imagine finally learning what works for you in order to lose weight and maintaining without having to micromanage or depending on anything but just being mindful after years of bad habits and not really knowing what you’re doing. I think empowering is a good word for that.
I'm pretty sure the poster in question never actually counted. That's one reason why I find it odd. Personally, I never thought I had to count (I know how to lose weight just fine without counting, for me), it was something I thought might be an enjoyable way to lose (I was struggling with motivation and found that just as creating a workout schedule and logging workouts often motivates me to be more consistent with my workouts, that logging food was a fun approach for me). I mostly don't count at maintenance, unless I'm experimenting with a new way of eating or just think it would help me be more mindful for a while, and I do it at Cron (which is more micromanaging than MFP, since you can see so many nutrients so much better).
But for me, if one must use the rather abused word "empowering," what would seem empowering is feeling in control of one's dietary choices and weight. Not counting or not.
Lol. Ok14
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