Do you allow yourself a day off?

tracyannk28 wrote: »

OK - so for those of you who log every day: Is this something you are planning to do for life? Or just until you lose all your weight? Or until you've been at maintenance for a while?

Yes, I'll continue logging on maintenance forever. I'm very bad at eyeballing portions and it's so helpful to know that I'm meeting my calorie and nutrient goals. As others said, I like looking at the data, and it's like balancing my checkbook.

Only special occasions, like Christmas.

segacs wrote: »

Giving up that strict control -- that crutch of the food scale -- and learning how to eat within your calories in any and all situations -- vacations, social events, travel, restaurants -- is one of those key, important life skills that will allow you to maintain the lifestyle change and weight loss for life.

One of my goals is to be able to maintain (or slowly lose or slowly gain, as I see fit) without logging. Logging is frequently inconvenient for me, and I find it difficult to sustain. Instead of logging every meal, every day, I'm using logging to calibrate my sense of "enough" or my sense of moderation. I'm also using it to calibrate my sense of what "works" for me - what makes me feel full or hungry at meals.

As the gif says - my body keeps a more relevant journal than I do. Can I ride my bike far enough? Can I kick hard enough in a martial arts class? Do I make my step counts? Is my weight trend doing what I want it to? Those are the milestones that keep me mindful.

I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty good and I'm getting better. I'm aiming at maintenance, with a preference to lose instead of gain if I don't maintain. In the last month, I've lost .75lb, which means I was under my TDEE by ~ 90 calories per day. Given that I logged about 5 days in the last month - I'm pretty ok with that. In the next month I'll try consciously adding some treats to each week - a mocha instead of black coffee, a couple glasses of wine, etc.

yup

I don't log food or exercise when I am holiday. I realise that I am probably gonna have gained when I get home, but hey that's fine. I just get back to my normal lifestyle and any temporarily gained weight is gone within a few days.

I can't see the point of logging only if you are eating like a bird. The whole point of this is knowing how many calories you have when you eat normally, understand how much you can eat to maintain and how much you need to eat to lose. Otherwise it's just a big fat lie to yourself.

I always count everything each day because it is not what you do daily but what you do overall that matters. From Mayo Clinic: "Because 3,500 calories equals about 1 pound (0.45 kilogram) of fat, you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in to lose 1 pound. So if you cut 500 calories from your typical diet each day, you'd lose about 1 pound a week (500 calories x 7 days = 3,500 calories)." So if you don't track one day, you could eat so much (3500 calories) that you actually gained a pound just because of that day. If it is a holiday meal, I track each item, but I may allow myself a few hundred extra calories (and then possibly reduce my calories by some amount each of the other days to make up for it).

No....I use to but now if I go over I try to make it up either with exercise or whatnot. I do eat what I feel I crave so I'm not depriving myself but I'll eat it in moderation (a serving of m&ms and not the whole bag).

I didn't log for about two weeks during the holidays. I ate well, mostly, but didn't log the food. And yes I gained, but only 5 pounds, which surprised me. My goal is to lose 1.4 pounds a week, so the re-gain definitely set me back but I'm slowly catching up to where I would have been if I had stayed the course. Along the way I'm learning to have a better relationship with food, which is priceless and will hold me in good stead for the rest of my life. No food is off limits, but I make a conscious decision when to have it and how much. I don't sweat the calories etc, because this is a marathon, not a short race. I DO try to plan for my extravagance instead of being caught by surprise, but I don't short my calories the day before or after. I just get back on track as soon as possible. So, to answer your question, yes I've taken time off from logging my food, but I won't do that again for a while. The accountability is something I need for right now.

No.