I stopped counting!

I have stopped counting too. I am still losing, but at a slower pace, which is fine. I don't have that far to go anyway and I feel so much better eating a bit more. My goal was to stop counting and just maintain for a while, so continuing to lose was a nice bonus.

I closed my account after losing 110 lbs in 7 months..L.ived two days without counting and realized I have no idea about calories because MFP was doing all for me. Here I am again. I am a slave lol

Me too.

I would like to make the gentle suggestion to everyone here that the issue isn't that counting makes you a slave/makes you obsessed/makes you crazy... This is categorically impossible, in the same way owning a gun doesn't "make" you a killer. Fitnesspal is nothing but a tool, and counting calories is the method by which we use that tool - in the same way we brush our teeth with a toothbrush. It is neutral. It cannot "make" you "feel" anything.

The problem is Control. Specifically that people like us (and I lump myself in with this group) HATE having to control ourselves. Deep down, we HATE Accountability. On the other hand, we hate what life is like when we DON'T control ourselves, or submit ourselves to Accountability. We have this constant, unbearable tension going between these two extremes: knowing we can't succeed without controlling ourselves or having some sort of structure that holds us accountable to our actions, yet hating the necessary processes to do so because we have "enjoyed" being passive and unrestrained for so long. I define passivity as ignoring the need to control oneself or submit oneself to structure. Being passive allows us to eat compulsively and without restriction, even though this traps us in a devastating cycle of weight gain and misery. *This* is one of the biggest reasons we became overweight - we never resolved that tension of control vs. passivity. We could not handle the emotional toll this took on us, and thus we gave in to the vicious cycle of compulsively overeating and compulsively dieting.

I believe that instead of believing that real Freedom begins when we *stop* counting, we need to embrace the JOY of living *with* the structure...for life. Joy?! Why would I say Joy? Because one of the most ironic life-truths is that Discipline (such as recording one's calories) brings FREEDOM. Control + Accountability = Discipline and Discipline brings the greatest freedom you'll ever know. Why? Because the thing you want most in the world is to be free over your compulsive overeating and your heavy weight - and you'll never achieve that....without the discipline. Discipline is not temporary. It is a life-long thing. As someone who has tracked every calorie that's gone in her mouth for almost two years - I can personally attest to this phenomenon of absolute Joy and Freedom due to Discipline. And I say this as a gal who would've laughed in my own face had I said this to myself 10 years ago! The thought of counting the rest of life would've sent me to the grave. LOL

I lost almost 70 lbs here on MFP and have maintained it for almost two years. Yeah, I'm still a newbie. But now I consider counting calories as a life-and-death activity. Not as a burden, not as something to make me anxious, not something that's a drag or a drudge. It's a joy. It protects me. It protects me like putting on my seatbelt when driving on the highway, or locking my doors at night. It's that serious for us compulsive folks. We need boundaries and this is such a fantastic way to achieve that.

If you're feeling nutso about counting, I'd maintain that belies a deeper issue that will impact your future success in a way that might not be so positive for you. It shows that you probably still have deeper issues of resistance to discipline and control, anxiety issues, and even issues of compulsivity and obsession. *These*, folks, are the REAL problem. Not calorie-counting. That's the least of your worries. Deal with the emotional issues, resolve those...and watch how quickly you'll learn to love Counting.

Blessings.

I have lost like 14-15kg before I join MFP, back then I was not counting calories at all. I was just eating healthily and working out consistently. After I joined MFP my aim is to find out my maintenance calories intake, but I have become so calories sensitive I cannot eat without thinking the amount of calories of the food that I am eating. I feel really stressed eating out as well because the food outside are not healthy and I do not know what they add in the food and the calories and stuffs. I really hope that I can find my calories intake for maintenance so that I can roughly know how much calories i need to eat and then i can take a break and stop counting calories if i can. My mum thinks im crazy weighing the food that I put into my mouth and keep on counting calories...

I found out the hard way that I lose control when I stop counting.... I had lost almost 20 lbs at the end of last January & stopped counting. I found myself trying on shorts in June and had gained 12 of the 20 back. I started counting again & just reached my goal of 25 lbs today! Am now setting a new goal to lose another 14 lbs, that will put me in my weight range for my height. Good luck to you, I hope not counting works for you....

good job

I log intermittently as needed. Now, I'm back to logging as a preventative measure, since I've cut back on exercise this week as I recover from a pulled muscle and sinus infection. With my regular activity level, it really doesn't matter so much, but I just want to put a little focus on calories in while the "burn" is reduced.

For starters, I was looking to lose 12 pounds to get rid of my 'belly' [from 182 to 170, 5'11"]. With that accomplished, and since I'm now in 'Maintenance Mode', I am not nearly as rigorous with my cataloging calories and meals as I was when I started MFP. From the onset, I was able to catalog and use the 'meals' option a lot. Now, if I can look up and use a cataloged 'meal', I do that, especially if the meal contents are close to or exactly what I ate. I usually don't catalog my meals over the weekend, but use the 'fast-add-calories' for each day of the weekend. My main gauge for this portion of my maintenance is my bathroom scale. If I see on Monday that I'm still at 170, I keep going. If i'm up from 170, I cut back early in the week t get back to 170. This seems to work for me. My exercise at this point was/is doing several minutes of walking per day, usually from 20-40 minutes.

I can maintain just fine without counting calories as long as I eat the same types of food as I was before, watch portion sizes, avoid mindless snacking, and be mindful about what I am eating. Once you get a feel for how many calories are in your food and you just want to maintain, I say go for it. Throw off the training wheels and maintain. I just got off 8 months of maintenance and have decided to lose another 20 or so to make one of my athletic pursuits easier and am counting again but I maintained for 8 months without counting for most of it.

Whenever I've gained weight back, it has to do with lapsing into emotional eating and failing to exercise. Counting has had nothing to do with it. If I wasn't in a frame to do what needed to be done, whether I logged it or not was immaterial. Counting can become obsessive and unhealthy for some. You know what you are feeling and no one else does.