I stopped counting!

I won't ever be able to do that. I view my eating as similar to how I budget my money. I can't just intuitively just not spend money, and find myself in trouble down the road. At some point, my cards will stop working and the ATM will stop dispensing cash, so at least with money, I can only go so far before I'm cut off.

Calories are not as forgiving. I ended up fat in the first place for that very reason. I have just accepted that I will always have to log my food if I want to never gain weight again.

I hope this works ok for you. I think most of us here will have a different experience.

I count. All of the time.

Sorry for posting on a zombie post!! But I just wanted to say it's been just slightly over a year when I stopped counting and commented on this thread and I'm still going strong! Didn't gain weight back, and am not counting anymore. Having obsessively logged all food eaten for over a year kind of helped reset my body to be stable at where I ended up at goal weight. I'm glad I don't have to log things anymore it is freeing I was a bit afraid that I would be gaining back some weight, but I don't vary more then 4-5 lb in a monthly cycle and am still at 115-120lb

Just posting this because some people said that you can't stop counting and you'll gain it all back but it's not true, I think you can reset your body and stay at a good healthy weight without logging anymore. I do think about what I eat and try to eat healthily which is definitely needed still

Counting is a pain in the butt and just makes me more obsessed with food when I do it. My workaround has been to plan all my meals in advance so I don't need to count anything during the week. I've developed a system for myself, which I call "modular meals" - every part of my meals (protein, vegetable, etc.) has 2-3 possible choices of food item which are equal in calories, fat, protein, carbs, etc. so I can just mix and match and It'll still be the same numbers. Let me demonstrate by showing my meals:

My breakfast contains one 70-gram serving of fruit, half a cup of cottage cheese, and 1 meat. That fruit could be papaya or cantaloupe, which are equivalent, and the meat could be one egg, or two turkey breakfast sausage links, or three strips of center-cut bacon, all of which are also equal. A 12-oz cup of coffee with a tablespoon of regular creamer and a packet of Splenda completes breakfast.

Dinner can be 4 oz of chicken tenderloin or a fish fillet (usually tilapia; it's inexpensive), and this week I'm adding lean pork tenderloin to the menu. All of those are equivalent. Dinner also includes leafy green salads of various kinds with 6 grape tomatoes and 2 tbsp of a lite dressing of my choice. The dressings in my collection range from 40 to 60 calories per serving, all under 3 carbs, so they are fairly interchangeable as well.

Snack is a negligible-calorie vegetable (a few spears of cucumber or zucchini, or two medium stalks of celery) with a tablespoon of lite ranch-type dressings for dip.

So because all my meals are modular like that, I never have to count. The only time I count anything anymore is when adding a new food option to my menu, which isn't often. Also no meal planning and analysis = no need to think about food almost ever. That's helped me break the cycle of a food-centric life more than anything I've ever tried.