I hate counting Calories- any other methods?

I'm not sure you'll be inundated with responses on a website dedicated to calorie tracking, but Happy Tuesday anyway.

But they're unlikely to be a calorie-counting website, aren't they?

I mean, you probably should think about food more often. So often we eat mindlessly out of emotions, habit. The proportion sizes are also insane.

If anything, not thinking about your food choices will likely not help you.

Have you tried any other methods of losing weight?

I followed a very restrictive diet plan in the 80's. Lost a load of weight, ended up skinny, weak, unhappy and with a dislike of broccoli and boiled eggs. Regained all the weight lost (and more).

I tried to tip the calorie balance with long duration, high intensity exercise. Got fitter, stronger and stayed the same weight as I ate more to compensate.

Tried to increase daily activity to tip the balance by swapping a train journey to work with a long walk. Worked for a while and then I ate more to compensate.

Tried intuitive eating. Weight rocketed upwards to my highest ever weight.

Calorie counting plus 5:2 way of eating worked for me though. Lost weight slowly and steadily, retained/gained lean mass, got fitter/stronger and now maintaining comfortably.

You could try 5:2 in the way people not on a calorie counting site do it perhaps? i.e. only counting calories on the two fasting days and "eating normally" on the other five days a week. Maybe that would reduce the feeling of daily food obsession?

Calorie counting plus 5:2 way of eating worked for me though. Lost weight slowly and steadily, retained/gained lean mass, got fitter/stronger and now maintaining comfortably.

You could try 5:2 in the way people not on a calorie counting site do it perhaps? i.e. only counting calories on the two fasting days and "eating normally" on the other five days a week. Maybe that would reduce the feeling of daily food obsession?

And this ^^

Im low carbing rather well at the moment after spending months just not really managing to log and finding logging counter productive. Not sure how this will turn out long term, Im guessing a slow tack back to logging once Im at a weight I like. But its my fitness pal not my calorie counting pal actually

No matter what diet you choose it still comes down to you need to be in a Calorie deficit. The thing is if most of us on this site were able to do that without counting calories we wouldn't have got fat. Even something like weight watchers is just another way of counting calories

There was this really good diet that I heard about, where you have to eat three pounds of carrots first thing in the morning, then you eat whatever else you want. It didn't really work out for Garfield, but I'm sure you could give it a go.
Seriously, just get over it, calorie counting sucks for the first few weeks but then it's a habit and a good one at that.

One option would be doing a crap ton of cardio and burning a LOT of calories. I did this. I used to aim to burn 500+ cals a day by running. It worked for awhile. If I had been at least estimating calories, I would have lost weight faster.

Another option is coming up with a routine for food. Determine how many calories you need...and eat the same few meal options every single day. I've done this too. Well, just for breakfast. I ate oatmeal every morning for a year and a half. Needless to say, I stopped eating oatmeal for awhile after that.

It took me awhile to lose weight, b/c I wasn't strict with the calories. Now that I have lost the weight...I started strength-training, and that has made a huge difference for me and not having to micromanage my calories.

Hello guys

I have tried counting calories for ages, but I hated it. It makes me constantly think of food.

Have you tried any other methods of losing weight?

JSF. Good luck

Try weight watchers, but that will probably just make you skinny, not healthy. Unless you do it correctly which weight watchers doesn't necessarily promote as far as I can tell. But MFP is free. WW is not.

Weight Watchers is still a calorie counting program. They just assign points based on the number of calories in food.

To answer the OP's original question: no, there is no effective weight loss program that does not involve counting calories by some means or another.

How is this a "Success Story"? Quit cluttering it up with nonsense!!! You dont like calorie counting go somewhere else. Simple

I've lost over a stone by limiting alcohol, eating 3 meals a day and 2 snacks (apples).

I just eat a bit less per portion than before and have a steady weight loss over 3 months.

Snacking and beer were my 2 main problems..

Sometimes when I need a break from calorie tracking, I simply track meal calories or count portions. Meal tracking for a 1500 calorie diet might involve allowing yourself 400 calories for breakfast, 400 for lunch, 400 for dinner, plus 3 100 calorie snacks. Or whatever pattern you wish to use. Instead of logging or tallying for the whole day, just construct a reasonably nutritious meal that fits the meal guidelines and then eat! No writing down or counting, beyond just tallying that meal before you eat it. If you stay on track per meal, it should all add up correctly. I follow this method on vacation or other situations when my daily schedule is busy and I want to stay reasonably on track without actually tracking. The downside is that you can be way off on protein if you have a tendency to choose all carbs for your 400 calories (or vice versa) or consistently skip a food group like veggies.

I count portions of food groups most days, which helps me control the nutritional balance more. For example I might eat 2 portions of fruit, x number of carbs, x of proteins (figure out your number of servings per day based on your macros and total calorie intake.). A serving equals 100 calories, give or take 20. Non starchy veggies are unlimited, with a minimum of 4 25 calorie servings. I don't binge eat veggies so making them unlimited has never been a problem! It is basically like following a meal plan, but the plan consists of general categories of food instead of specific foods. I keep track of it on a spreadsheet but you could also use a paper tracker, basically deleting/crossing out the category once it is eaten for the day. For example, if I ate a 100ish calorie bowl of cereal with a cup of skim milk and a banana for breakfast, I would cross a serving of dairy, grain, and fruit off my list. I learned this method from Nutrisystem and have lost most of my weight this way. I also use myfitnesspal to track some days too. It is more work to track here and I can get a bit obsessive about getting perfect numbers on all my nutrients. But I do like the richer set of data I get about protein, vitamins, etc. So I am mostly following this "portion count" method for my weight loss but doing detailed tracking on occasion to spot check my plan (esp if I make changes to it) to make sure the number/types of portions are adding up to my desired macros/calories/vitamins in a typical week.