Is counting calories disordered eating? Shouldn’t we be able to not overeat?

124»

Replies

  • sdavis484
    sdavis484 Posts: 160 Member
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    JeromeBarry1 wrote: »
    2,300 years ago Socrates recorded that he was overweight and resolved to dance more.

    Normal is that in times of abundance, we eat too much. It is our individual obligation to be aware of our own intake and stop when our intake is sufficient for our needs.


    Since Socrates never wrote anything (at least not anything that has survived), I question your sources.

    http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/socrates.html

    "...Socrates was a bit on the ugly side and overweight."

    Did he dance to overcome it? Perhaps that is more anecdotal.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    amusedmonkey wrote: »
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    asellitti6523 wrote: »
    amusedmonkey wrote: »
    asellitti6523 wrote: »
    I'm not a big fan of counting/measuring out calories over the long haul when it comes to lifestyle changes. I think in the beginning of a weight loss journey it's important to measure everything out and learn serving sizes of the foods you eat on a consistent basis and the amount of calories in those servings. But after a month or two you will be able to better guesstimate calories and portions having gone through the educational/enlightening process of measuring everything out. I'm a big believer in making any weight loss/lifestyle change as simple as possible because the more simple and less variables there are the more likely you are to stick it out for the long run. Changing up your nutrition after months or even years of poor eating habits/choices is hard enough as it is. Obsessing about calories and macros to the point that it makes you a nervous wreck is essentially trading a physical health concern for a mental/psychological one. What is doubly concerning about this is for many people overeating/poor food choices came as some from of coping mechanism to deal with stress and mental health issues so it's just another way to get stuck in a vicious cycle.

    That is precisely why I've been counting for 7 years and don't see myself stopping in the foreseeable future. I find counting simpler than having to obsess about what I can or cannot eat. I tend to restrict more "just in case" when I'm not counting and I find that exhausting. Everything is fair game if the numbers are right, and it requires fewer rules/less rigid rules. The only decision I have to make is "is this food worth the calories today?" when I feel like having a high calorie food, and the rest of the processes is self-driving.

    Maybe I believe in oversimplification but I just think doing things like eating more whole foods and avoiding processed foods, not drinking calories often, and reducing the intake of refined sugar and simple carbs will naturally put the vast majority of people trying to lose weight at a caloric deficit without having to track every single day.

    Not for a lot of us, no. I gained weight eating that way (which I have for most of my life).

    I can maintain and even lose without counting cals (counting cals makes me less stressed when losing), but it takes a lot more mindfulness about portion sizes and when I eat. It also works because I know a lot about foods, including which of those foods I include in my diet because they are nutrient dense (and delicious!) are also high cal. Those are things I do whether counting or not, but if I start to slip and eat more than I need, counting is a good way to force myself to be more mindful, and often a fun way to make mindfulness about something else (like am I hitting all my nutrients -- I track at Cron -- or how much of my diet is vegetables or some such).

    Sometimes I think people assume "cooking from whole foods" inherently means "cooking quite low cal meals" or even "mostly eating pretty bland meals," and for people who have mostly been doing that for a long time (including when overweight), that's not the case, and I wouldn't want it to be.

    Anyway, I mostly prefer not counting cals at maintenance, but I think it's silly to claim everyone SHOULD do that or counting cals longer than a brief period = disordered or is inherently unnecessary or more stressful.

    I also think that some have baggage with counting cals (that it involved feeling restricted or trying to fit in unsatiating foods or involved stressing about cals or very low cal levels). For whatever reason, I've never had that experience at all -- the first time I counted caused me to realize I was overrestricting when not counting, and to loosen up.

    My main meal today was cauliflower cooked in tahini sauce + grilled chicken. Minimally processed, no added sugar, high fiber, high protein, highly nutritious. I can tell you from experience that this "whole food" took more effort to fit in than most processed foods and fast foods I eat sometimes (unless I settle for a tiny unsatisfying portion).

    Yes, I cook quite a few meals that are minimally processed, whole foods type meals and some of them are calorie bombs. If it was all about ease of meeting calorie goals, I could do it much easier with Lean Cuisines and sugarfree Jello.

    I eat the food I like because I *like it* not because it makes it automatically easier to hit my calorie goal.
  • magnusthenerd
    magnusthenerd Posts: 1,207 Member
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    JeromeBarry1 wrote: »
    2,300 years ago Socrates recorded that he was overweight and resolved to dance more.

    Normal is that in times of abundance, we eat too much. It is our individual obligation to be aware of our own intake and stop when our intake is sufficient for our needs.


    Since Socrates never wrote anything (at least not anything that has survived), I question your sources.

    http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/socrates.html

    "...Socrates was a bit on the ugly side and overweight."

    Did he dance to overcome it? Perhaps that is more anecdotal.

    The comment was on a source that would refer to what Socrates recorded because, truly, we have nothing directly written by Socrates. It isn't even an out there theory in history to question if there was a real person called Socrates, or if instead he was invented by his famous students, either whole cloth, or amalgamations, or just a dialogue device in their own writings.
  • magnusthenerd
    magnusthenerd Posts: 1,207 Member
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    I think evolutionary pressures/advantages would have not made it any advantage to be able to self regulate to prevent overeating when food was available over most of human history, and it might well have been an advantage to be able to do so. So it doesn't surprise me that most people don't naturally self regulate well during a permanent time of abundance (where even cultural checks have been removed).

    I would agree that SOME people probably do tend to have an off switch (no, don't want more) that works better than others (and some studies seem to suggest that with basically whole foods (or the mashed up equivalent) toddlers or young kids have that, although I'm not sure how totally reliable those are). I'd argue that the cap on "natural off switch that works well" is about the third or less not overweight in the US, and that since some portion of those do use strategies to regulate their eating (my sister is assumed to be naturally thin and has never been overweight but does not just eat whatever she feels like but eats mindfully and is intentionally active).

    We do see some lines of evidence across multiple species (both humans and rodent) that there are probably some mechanisms of sensing and having some response to weight. Loading a rodent's body with a metal weight implanted internally causes spontaneous changes in calorie flux that leads towards maintaining the "normal" weight for that rodent. Humans seem better able to maintain their weight loss, when below their typical set point by wearing weighted clothing / vests.

    I think the tendency in nature for humans might just be the time cost trade offs involved. Rather than a mainly purely negative feedback, I would think it becomes hard to become overweight because the reward for more and more food shrinks, while the use of time probably increases stress pretty fast - wandering around looking for more grubs, more fruit, and more game at some point probably becomes socially isolating.
    I suppose that might be another end of it in modern society that isn't discussed much in literature. Processed food isn't just convenience, it also facilitates low sociability.
  • tcunbeliever
    tcunbeliever Posts: 8,219 Member
    The SANE eating plan is organized around just that concept - that weight should regulate just like body temperature or insulin levels and it's a non calorie counting plan.

    https://sanesolution.com/about/
  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
    magnusthenerd wrote: »
    sdavis484 wrote: »
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    JeromeBarry1 wrote: »
    2,300 years ago Socrates recorded that he was overweight and resolved to dance more.

    Normal is that in times of abundance, we eat too much. It is our individual obligation to be aware of our own intake and stop when our intake is sufficient for our needs.


    Since Socrates never wrote anything (at least not anything that has survived), I question your sources.

    http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/socrates.html

    "...Socrates was a bit on the ugly side and overweight."

    Did he dance to overcome it? Perhaps that is more anecdotal.

    The comment was on a source that would refer to what Socrates recorded because, truly, we have nothing directly written by Socrates. It isn't even an out there theory in history to question if there was a real person called Socrates, or if instead he was invented by his famous students, either whole cloth, or amalgamations, or just a dialogue device in their own writings.

    Referencing a lecture from a philosophy profession... Socrates did not write anything down because he believed it negatively affects memory and our pursuit of wisdom. A very unwise belief in my opinion.

Categories