Tips for losing weight without calorie counting?

All you can do is try an estimate the calories in the meals. Without actually properly weighing and measuring the food it will only ever be guess work. Try cutting your portions sizes down and see how you go but without control or information of the actual ingredients its just going to be trial and error

If you hate calorie counting maybe try 5:2 intermittent fasting to build in a weekly deficit. This is a protocol where you eat 500 calories on two non consecutive days, and at maintenance levels otherwise. It means you only need to count two days a week.

It's a good program for people who deal with short term extreme deprivation (you only have to hold out in terms of hunger until the next day) better than long term mild deprivation.

My mom just lost 12lbs without counting calories.
She cut back on portion sizes, cut back on alcohol and became more active.

I have terrible will power and can eat my weight in junk food in a sitting, so counting calories has been helpful so I can get into a routine with my food.

I eat a lot of what other people eat too, but I still track calories. I just ask what they used, make a recipe in MFP (I usually add a little extra than what they say as people tend to estimate low), then I just pay attention to how many servings and add it into my tracker. It takes a little extra work, but it keeps me on track. Most people understand by now that I will ALWAYS ask, and have started to actually measure ingredients when they know I will be there. If they can't/won't/get annoyed, I just go to the store and buy stuff to cook for myself or I bring something from home.

I lost quite a bit of weight before MFP and without calorie counting and I've maintained my weight for over a year now without calorie counting. I found counting beneficial in the short run in that it really helped me to just balance things out better...but really, I was doing pretty well without it and I've been just fine in maintenance.

1 ) Portion control. This was probably the single biggest thing for me to learn. I started paying very close attention to what packages and what not said for recommended portions. When cooking for myself and my wife, I pretty much stuck to those portions for the most part....using my food scale for most things and measuring other things. I also became accustomed to what that looked like on my plate for a variety of different foods so it became easier for me to judge visually when I was eating someone else s preparations or out at a restaurant, etc.

2) Better decision making. You're going to be hard pressed to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight without meticulously counting calories if you practice the SAD. Before I started counting calories, I changed my dietary habits to reflect more of a Mediterranean/South-beach type of diet (noun). This meant replacing many of the fattier cuts of beef that my wife and I consumed on a regular basis with leaner cuts (and again, proper portions) and introducing much more chicken and fish and lean cuts of pork into our diet. Does this mean we never eat a good fatty roast or go out for a pizza or whatever? Of course not...it's just much more rare these days.

Additionally, we put a huge premium on vegetable consumption...pretty much heaping helpings of vegetables at lunch and dinner (sometimes breakfast but usually a V8 and fruit there) and we snack on them a lot as well. On average we take in around 6-8 actual servings of vegetables per day. During the summer I also eat around 3 servings of fruit per day...but in the winter I'm pretty much relegated to an apple a day.

I also pretty much dumped soda...I was a 3-5 12oz Mt Dew guy per day back in the day...I have a soda once in a blue moon these days. I also rarely eat candy or cakes or things of this nature...not that they're inherently evil or anything, they're just very easy to over-consume when you're not meticulously counting calories. I eat these sorts of things on occasions like holidays, birthdays, etc.

Note that "cleaning" up your diet isn't going to automatically result in an energy deficit...but it is much more likely that you will, particularly if you're coupling that with portion control.

3) Invest a lot of time in learning actual nutrition and learn how to fuel your body and optimize your nutrition. People know that vegetables and fruit are important to proper nutrition, but beyond that people tend to be lost...dietary fat is very essential and so is protein and a lot of people miss the boat there.

4) Cook more. I never thought I ate out that much until I made it a point to change my diet around...I definitely ate out less than the average Joe/Jane, but I found that I ate out a lot more than what I was perceiving. Not that eating out is bad necessarily...but restaurants tend to serve 2-3 times the recommended servings of pretty much everything (except for the vegetables); additionally, they cook with a lot of oil and use a lot of salt to make the food taste good. Unless you're eating off a 500 calorie or less menu you can pretty much count on most restaurant entrees to clock in anywhere from 800 - 1200 calories and that adds up pretty quick. To boot, the meals don't tend to be very balanced nutritionally speaking.

I still eat out...about 2-3 times per month vs 5-6 times per week that i was eating out before.

5) Move more. You don't have to fly around balls to the wall, but you're going to have better luck losing and maintaining weight if you're moving more. When I first started out, I just made it a point to go walking for an hour every single day...deliberately getting off my butt and moving beyond my day to day stuff. Eventually that turned into more intense exercise (which is about when I started counting calories because I didn't know how much I needed to fuel actual workouts)

As others said just lower your portions. But it would be wise to get the ingredients and about how much they are using because you will be surprised to see how much calories some things actually have! Some things have ridiculous amounts of calories, and knowing that will help you with proper portion control.

Lowering your portions and eating more satisfying foods (high in protein and fiber) can help you watch calories without counting calories, but it will be guess work at best.

I became over weight in the first place because there is a lot of temptation and calorie counting helps keep me in check. I don't have to be afraid of food or have an unhealthy relationship with food if I calorie count and keep myself accountable. With calorie counting I can have my cake and eat it too.

Maybe work out what exactly they have cooked and then list ingredients in your diary individually.

Try entering what you eat on MFP because chances are, the meal will be listed.