Counting Calories Sanely???

I don't do cheat meals exactly but that works for some people. I suggest setting your goal to about half a pound per week and then add in exercise of some kind most days. Try to aim for close to your calorie goal but focus more on your weekly numbers instead of daily. Try not to do a total 180 with the types of food you eat but do try to incorporate more nutrient dense foods and cut back (not cut out) the other stuff. Good luck to you!

Yeah, you just have to do it and keep it as a routine. I've struggled with an ED so although I obsess about consistent logging, it's 1000x better than eating sporadically and going into starvation mode then eating junk then overcompensating with hours of exercise or purging. I think logging consistently helps put each day into perspective and makes it easier to project long term eating habits.
For me, understanding that one or two totally off the rails days (say, a super drunk night out ending in a McDonald's second dinner at 3am) is not going to make me balloon over the course of 5 weeks if I all other days I am active and eating around 1600 cal/day. I essentially stopped weighing myself during university, I only take my measurements every few weeks so that cut out a huge stressor for me.
Do what you need to do to be sane and happy though, if you feel like the urge or necessity to log is disrupting your day-to-day functioning and thoughts, then talk to someone.

This is a tough one. I went through it myself..

As per my name you can imagine me being a real control freak when it came to my food. Once we put a number to something we tend to go a tad overboard and don't even get me started about how they make your calories go RED after going over! You'd think your first born just died..

Honestly, I've heard this time and time again .. (from non professionals, mind you) You just have to find what works for you.

Some people macros, some use MFP to a T, some eat within their numbers per day, some per week..

Eat well and work hard is my best advice. It's simple and absolutely not professional, but honest.

Sounds like me -- I find a lot that when I'm tracking calories and especially logging exercise calories, I end up focusing too much about what else I can/can't fit into the day. Sometimes when I burn a decent amount through exercise I won't even be especially hungry but I'll think, 'Well, I COULD eat back more of those exercise calories'. Which is what normally ends up happening.

I notice I didn't actually struggle as hard to lose weight back when I never counted calories. I do think it might be better to eat intuitively and keep a general tab on how much you're eating for the day w/o obsessing over the exact number.

Our family enjoys varying degrees of OCD-ish tendencies, and we encountered some of the same difficulty. I've also noticed a lot of folks have the same kind of experience with the scale (people scale, not food scale!)

Anyway, our little herd of 3: we each tackled things differently.

A. One weighs/measures food, logs amount/what on paper...but does the calories & macros later. A few DAYS later, after her personal "I can't eat more/less to compensate" timepoint.

B. One uses phone/barcode scans, and makes food in mass quantities divvied up into portion sizes, to avoid having to deal with thinking too often about everything. He doesn't bother looking at macros more than once a week, btw.

C. One logs meticulously, but flails about stalls, even when calories & macros have been within 10 cals consistently. Because that *tiny* discrepancy must be causing a problem, right? RIGHT?? *sigh* Yeah, that's me.

Anyway, I think A might actually be worth trying for you - as an experiment. Oh! I should say that we're all making progress, even though we're using slightly different approaches. Totally YMMV. I mean, this has to actually work for you, yanno? Good for you, for looking for creative options!

ETA: the point of A looking at the log later is to make changes (or not) to her approach to say, breakfast or whatever. Hmmm, really high on fat ever day. Guess the Latte Experiment is a no-go...

when I count calories, I get really nuts about food and start to obsess.

In my opinion it has to be this way. My wife told me the other day that I'm getting obsessive with how/what I eat, and I told her it has to be that way.

When people lose focus they start to lose their way and eventually fail.

At least while you're losing the weight. Once you're doing maintenance then it's OK to relax..... a little bit.

Maybe what you can do is learn more about your own habits all while compiling a list of "safe meals". It takes some work and time before you start losing again. Here is what you can do:

- Use the pen and paper trick to write down your intake throughout the day and then enter it for calorie counting purposes at the end of the day. You don't need to restrict anything yet, just observe. Do that for a couple of weeks.

- Now go back and look at your days and their calories. What foods do you eat most often? Where do most of your calories come from? Are there things you could probably downsize or substitute? When do you tend to eat the most calories? Are there certain moods that make you eat more? Which meal is your biggest? What things make you hungry soon after eating them? Are you a small meal or a big meal person - that is do you feel more satisfied eating multiple small meals or fewer big meals? Any other observations you can come up with. write all of this down.

- Using the observations above compile a list of "absolutely must have" foods and "downsize/substitute" foods, in addition to plotting down strategies to combat the things you notice made you eat more like maybe stress, boredom, etc..

- Using the lists above build "safe meals", that is meals that would be within your allowed calorie range.
Example: You have noticed that you tend to eat a good breakfast, small lunch and big dinner, as well as 3 snacks and that your calorie allowance is 1500. You would do 100 calories for each snack, 400 calories for breakfast, 200 for lunch and 600 for dinner:

1. Put together a list of 100 calorie snacks mentioning amount including the things you eat often: example 3 cups of air popped popcorn.
2. Put together a list of meals you eat often, but tweak them to fit into your calorie limit for the meal. Example: use smaller amount and opt for reduced fat cheese in mac and cheese.
3. Make sure you have at least 10 pre-written meals to choose from for each meal category.
4. Only eat from your pre-defined list, adding to it every now and then until you have a variety of calorie controlled choices without having to log a single calorie.
5. If you happen to have something new or went out with friends and family, log that to see how much calories it has then decide if it's worth adding to your regular meals, if so tweak it and write it down.

This way you will only need to log when you have something new, and will be within range without obsessing or counting.

You can actually use the "meal" option in the diary to form your meals and choose meaningful meal titles that allow you to see quantities at a glance like "Oatmeal: 1/3 cup oats, 1 cup milk, 1 tbsp raisins" or use the "recipe" option with the same meaningful titles if you prefer not to have a big list of ingredients in your diary. This will allow you to log things to keep track at the end of the day without being obsessive, plus it makes things faster instead of having to log every single ingredient.

You could skip logging altogether if you wish too.