i'm burnt out on tracking
tartsul
Posts: 298 Member
does anyone else feel this way? i'm so sick of tracking everything and being so anal about every last detail of every single thing i eat or drink. i'm very heavily considering not tracking anymore. i'm about 6 weeks away from a year of steady logging. i'm just sick of it. i feel like over these past months i've gotten a lot of good information and that i can easily continue on from here with making good choices, both with food and exercise. and i feel like i'd be a lot happier and more mentally at ease. and i'm happy with where i am weight-wise. and i can always come back!
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I stopped tracking my food, but weigh pretty often and go by my clothes. Tracking (for me) was becoming ridiculous, as all I'm trying to do is maintain my weight within 3-5 lbs. I feel a lot better now.0
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I couldn't have written it better myself. I feel exactly the same even though I do not log from Friday after 3 til Monday morning. It's definitely burning me out mentally. I'm going to keep weighing myself once a week and if I start gaining, then I'll be back
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When that happens to me I usually take a week off from tracking my foods. When I come back I'm refreshed and eager to log again.0
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If you are doing fine, you don't have to.
Same as with money. You don't need to write down every cent and dollar if you can meet your goals easily.
But if your mortgage is late and you can't fund your retirement, than you suck it up and do it, no matter how much "not fun" that is.0 -
Me, too! Sometimes I skip logging on the weekends, or anytime a special event happens, or on vacation. I figure my goal is to live my life, to make this a lifestyle and, honestly, all this logging is NOT sustainable for me!
It's more like training wheels. I am slowly taking off my training wheels.
(And when did they make a maintaining forum here?? How out of it am I?)0 -
I don't track religiously. If you have a good idea of what you're eating and weight yourself regularly, it's not critical. But I'm also sort of on maintenance. If I wanted to lose weight I probably would track most of the time because I have a very narrow margin for error.0
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Yes I was. Then I got married and threw it all out the window on the honeymoon. I decided I'd try to stay conscious of what I was eating and portions instead. This worked well for awhile while monitoring my weight but it was a slippery slope into doing nothing at all and eating everything! I'm now 15lbs+ and trying to lose again. So whatever you do, don't do what I did or you'll be kicking yourself! I should have locked it down when I crept up to 5lbs+.0
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I used my food diary for losing weight and learning how to get my proper nutrition and meet my macros. i don't find it necessary at all for maintaining; I'm sure I have days when I'm over my calories and days when I'm under...and I'm sure I don't hit my macros dead on, but I come pretty close.
I eat the same nutritiously dense foods now in maintenance as I did when I was losing...with a smattering of junk thrown in their for good measure. I'm of the opinion that your choices that you learn to make and your fitness is the "lifestyle"...not logging for an eternity. I've maintained easily for 5 months without logging; it hasn't been an issue for me.0 -
Yeah it got this way for me too. I was obsessing over numbers and it frankly didn't feel healthy.
Right now I'm tracking to get back in shape after slacking off a bit, but it's not a forever commitment for me.
Making healthier choices is a lifetime choice, but not the constant recording of all activity!0 -
I know how your feel!
Unfortunately - I need structure, so logging it must be.
Try taking a week off and watching your progress. If there is too much fluctuation, you may need to continue logging.
Best of luck!0 -
I think I have some control issues. I have to log. Everything!!0
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In my case, I continue to track, but I do not worry about being precise each time. For me, tracking my calories is like knowing how fast I'm driving- it just tells me what my current situation is. For this purpose, my diary is like the spedometer in my car.
The spedometer doesn't tell me how to drive, just how fast I'm going at that moment. I can choose at will to maintain my speed or go faster or slower depending on the situation. My spedometer also isn't entirely precise (it tends to average reading 2 mph fast).
The same goes with my diary. It's sole function is to tell me what my current consumption is. I don't worry if it says I'm above or below where I should be because, now that I'm maintaining, I'm freer to eat more or less as I see fit. But it's also not precise. When I was on vacation, I didn't worry about being exact with my calorie counts. I often just used items that seemed close enough to what I'd eaten.
So I find that tracking feeds my desire for information, but I don't get too stressed out over it.0 -
I lost weight twice using calorie counting. The first time, I decided I could quit tracking and gained back 20 of the 37 pounds I lost before I went back to tracking.does anyone else feel this way? i'm so sick of tracking everything and being so anal about every last detail of every single thing i eat or drink. i'm very heavily considering not tracking anymore. i'm about 6 weeks away from a year of steady logging. i'm just sick of it. i feel like over these past months i've gotten a lot of good information and that i can easily continue on from here with making good choices, both with food and exercise. and i feel like i'd be a lot happier and more mentally at ease. and i'm happy with where i am weight-wise. and i can always come back!
But I do have OCD tendencies and a couple of months ago realized I was obsessing about it. I finally realized that I was keeping a historical record I never looked at. So now, I don't sweat every last condiment and additive and I don't log the last meal of the day. Once I've decided to eat it, there is no point. I never review old diaries anyway.
Now I use tracking like a GPS so I know the general neighborhood I am in. I still overeat, or undereat, if I don't track. I am far less precise than I was. I take an occasional unplanned day off from tracking but I try to maintain my regular eating habits on those days.
I've been on maintenance since May 2012.0 -
I took several weeks off from tracking at about the 1 year mark. My habits slipped and I started feeling like crap again, so I got back to it within a month. If you are tired, just give yourself a break. You aren't going to gain a hundred pounds if you take a month off from logging.0
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I dislike tracking as well. However, once I started tracking, I started (finally) losing weight. I think that it's very likely that I will have to continue tracking even after I have lost the weight, because I start forgetting what I have put into my mouth and think I can eat more than I really can.
It might work for YOU though. You will never know until you try, and if you are burnt out you need a break anyhow. :flowerforyou:0 -
I dont log from Friday night until Saturday night, those are my 'cheat days' and by that I dont mean WOOHOO PIZZA AND BEER, I mean if I want a little light mayo on a sandwich instead of hummus, I have it, or if I want a cupcake I eat it, I dont go crazy and I still make healthy choices the majority of the time. I also take a break from working out during that time period. That helps me from feeling burnt out. I was pretty relgiously working out, eating right and logging and I got so burnt out and just quit all of it once I had lost 12 pounds, I gained six of them back and had my wake up call. You have to do something you can stick with 0
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does anyone else feel this way? i'm so sick of tracking everything and being so anal about every last detail of every single thing i eat or drink. i'm very heavily considering not tracking anymore. i'm about 6 weeks away from a year of steady logging. i'm just sick of it. i feel like over these past months i've gotten a lot of good information and that i can easily continue on from here with making good choices, both with food and exercise. and i feel like i'd be a lot happier and more mentally at ease. and i'm happy with where i am weight-wise. and i can always come back!
I felt that way about a month and a half a go. I sstopped tracking my food but turned up the exercise. I gained about 20 lbs.0 -
Just take a break. I was away for 9 weeks with no computer and I tracked on paper - just so I had a view of what I was eating during the day... easy to forget and over eat. I didn't track every day... just when I felt I was losing a bit of control. The scale and your clothes will tell you how you are doing... congrats that you are on maintenance!!!0
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I get so sick of logging, but I am afraid to stop. Every time I try to do maintain on my own, my weight starts creeping back up, and I have to start over again.0
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I don't log Saturday or Sunday. It's a mental break. But, I'm still actively losing weight, so I feel motivated to at least log everything during the week when I'm on more of a schedule.0
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I've felt this way on numerous occasions. I recommend taking a week or two off, weigh in at the beginning, then weigh in at the end to see how you do on your own. Then decide from there what you want/need to do.0
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I am not on maintenance but I am close. I only have about 5 more lbs to lose so sometimes I get lazy. I hate tracking because it is so time consuming but I do it anyway. I go balls to the wall when I don't, so I have to. I am not sure what I am going to do exactly when I hit maintenance. My net calories are 1600 a day gross 2100 hundred because I am exclusively breastfeeding an 8 month old (who is having issues with solid food) so that is a lot of milk production. I am loosing weight at a slow steady pace with these calories but because of the breastfeeding I am SUPER hungry all the time (I was never like this pre-baby) I can easily wallop 3000 calories without thinking about it so for the time I need to keep myself in line. lol.
If you think you can more power to you though. I am hoping to be where you are at soon, within the next few months but will probably wait until she is weaned to stop tracking. You know what works for you, just keep a close eye on yourself for the first little while. Just like someone else had said it is going to feel like you are taking training wheels off at first, might be a bit scary and over whelming, but like you said, it is unreasonable to log for an entire lifetime. When do you get to live?0 -
Sometimes I feel that way, too. Unfortunately, tracking is the only way for me to be accountable and honest about what I eat. It's so easy for me to say "eh, this is about 300 calories" and it ends up more like 700 if I check it out. LOL. I don't have good self-control and, for now, tracking is the only thing that keeps me in check. I wish I could give it up.
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I stopped for a while and am just back now because without it my weigth was creeping slowly back up and my pants were getting tight. I know what you mean, it can tiresome but I is keeping me more honest and keeping csome of the cookiees out of my mouth and getting me to exercise some more as well. So on the whole I think it is better. But don't sweat it too much and remember why you doing it is to improve wellbeing.0
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I get so sick of logging, but I am afraid to stop. Every time I try to do maintain on my own, my weight starts creeping back up, and I have to start over again.
Exactly! Agree with ^^^^ 100%.
I admit to growing weary of tracking, esp. since I cook a lot. So I have to create recipes for everything to be sure my calorie count is close to on target as possible. That can get very annoying, esp. when I cook new/different dishes weekly.
I will say that when I stopped logging everything, the pounds did creep back on, ten to be exact. So now I am now trying to lose that ten, plus the additional pounds I wanted to lose. *sigh*
All that to say, logging can really be a pain in the butt. Hands down, no disagreement with you. But it is the only thing that has kept *me* honest and allowed me to lose weight safely and effectively.
But if you feel logging, at this stage in your journey, is hindering you then by all means ease up. Maybe just log during the week and take the weekends off. So log every other week. Good luck and let us know how it works out for you.0 -
I think I may have taken nearly the entire month of August off from tracking. Not because I wanted to necessarily, but because I was so busy that I would forget what I had eaten and thus not log. Yes I have the mobile app, but I'm not a fan of it. I guess once I figure it all out I'll like it more, but I find it difficult to add foods and exercise unless they're already in my list.0
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Ditto! I took about 3 weeks off from tracking and didn't gain any weight (phew). I think you probably have the tools you need to do okay without daily tracking. And like someone else said, I never did track on weekends (not near a computer on weekends), so maybe that is something to consider. I still weight myself everyday, and would like to track my exercise more consistently, but maybe focus less on tracking food daily, unless I get too off-track.0
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does anyone else feel this way? i'm so sick of tracking everything and being so anal about every last detail of every single thing i eat or drink. i'm very heavily considering not tracking anymore. i'm about 6 weeks away from a year of steady logging. i'm just sick of it. i feel like over these past months i've gotten a lot of good information and that i can easily continue on from here with making good choices, both with food and exercise. and i feel like i'd be a lot happier and more mentally at ease. and i'm happy with where i am weight-wise. and i can always come back!
As long as you have the restraint to stick with watching your portions knowing you don't have to "account" for it (I didn't last time, lol) I say go for it. Who wants to log forever???0 -
I admit to growing weary of tracking, esp. since I cook a lot. So I have to create recipes for everything to be sure my calorie count is close to on target as possible. That can get very annoying, esp. when I cook new/different dishes weekly.
I will say that when I stopped logging everything, the pounds did creep back on, ten to be exact. So now I am now trying to lose that ten, plus the additional pounds I wanted to lose. *sigh*
Mizz, this is pretty much me exactly!0 -
If you feel that you have the discipline to manage your lifestyle without tracking then go for it.
Test the theory and see if your are able to meet / maintain your goals.0
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