Anyone maintaining without counting calories

In your other post, you are struggling to eat enough calories to maintain. Why not try eating without counting but keep an eye on your weight? If you keep up on it, it's not that big of a deal to count calories here and there if your weight creeps up.

I have given up calorie counting after 30 years and for once am maintaining my weight. For me, counting leads to restriction, which leads to binges. Learning how to eat intuitively around a macro plan has allowed me to stay pretty constant scale-wise while still dropping body fat over the last year.

I guess make sure you get lots of water, lean protein, and veggies...that's what's worked for me while not counting.

I wish.....

I count estimates in my head. Log every so often to make sure I am keeping in control.

I have been maintaining for about 4 years and come back to calorie count once maybe twice a year if I feel as though I am a bit off ( up or down).
By the time I had finished a year or weight loss counting calories I had a good idea of how much I should eat and how many calories were in the majority of foods I eat.
Right now I am changing my exercise routine and losing the 4 lb I put on over the summer so back to counting my calories for a few weeks to make sure I am eating enough and getting enough protein.
Once I have my calories worked out for my new routine ( upped from 3 to 5 days a week) I will not have to count until I change something else.

cliffodom1 wrote: »

Since I started using Myfitnesspal I can pretty much tell how many calories the food I eat have. I don't eat many new foods so I can tell when I eat 2000 calories close enough. I don't count calories, I eat what I want and stop when I get to about 2000 calories.

yeah, I agree with this. I think it's probably easier to ensure you're not gaining if you continue to log everything, but even if you don't log, you'll have a pretty good idea of calorie estimates from the good habits you learned whilst using mfp.

If you don't drastically change your diet or suddenly start eating a lot of packaged foods, you should know what you usually have for breakfast etc and how much that usually comes in as.

as always though portion control/good choices are the key to stop it creeping back up!! keep weighing grains and having smaller portions of these, and only have treats two or so times a week.

After over a year I log... or not. It depends on the day. Like yesterday. I automatically started logging and then thought, what am I doing? So I stopped.

I maintain very easily, I just make better choices the majority of the time and eat the junk in smaller portions and not as often. However when I cut then I have to track my calories very closely

I have stopped counting for over a year and actually lost another 6 pounds over this last year. I stopped because I know from counting on MFP what each meal is I eat for the most part. When I am unsure I check, but MFP taught me to read labels and eat portions sizes that are meant to be eaten, not enlarged because it tastes good.

I'm losing, but I could probably stop counting. Most foods I eat are routine, and amount and calorie content are known. If I wanted to stop counting, I would still check out calories in foods that aren't part of my routine.