Can you lose weight without counting calories?

I'm having the same issue. So I end up counting calories until I get to dinner. I guess it would just be best to not have more than one serving.
Sorry. I hope someone with a better answer then this.

You can enter your meals into the recipe builder and log it from that.

Plenty of people do lose and maintain without counting. I can't offer much advice as I didn't do so hot without it myself. There are helpful threads about a lot of things, like the recomp thread in the maintenance section. Is there one for losing without counting?

Lots of people have lost weight and some have even kept it off without counting calories.

They probably don't hang out at MFP, which happens to be a predominantly calorie counting site ;-)

That said, you can always use the recipe builder and log your recipes based on raw ingredients and final cooked weight.

I tend to enter the ingredients based on raw weight and call it a 2 portion recipe. Then I edit the recipe once I've weighed the final product and make it out to whatever number of 10g (or 100g) portions I weighed out.

So I call 1.2kg of final product 120 x 10g portions. Then I measure the amount of cooked product I've put on my plate and go on from there.

Of course the most common solution is that people guess their portion sizes based on cups and log based on that. I tend to do this only for restaurant meals.

Precision will be hard to find. Small deficits difficult to keep. Weight loss may go in spurts or stall at times. A lot of people have lost weight this way.

If the weight loss is too fast or to slow you adjust by eating more or less in general.

DreamCatcherGirl wrote: »

Can you lose weight without counting calories?
I find it kind of hard to count calories because I eat mainly home cooked meals and I cook for the whole family (bigger sizes). I find it that it is hard to count the calories exactly especially with soups, stews, meat, etc.
What are your healthy substitutions for not so healthy products? How does you plate looks like? How often should I eat? Portion sizes? Please help
I try to log things I eat but it's hard sometimes.

First of all yes, it's possible to lose weight without counting calories. I think many people benefit from counting calories at least for a little while because it teaches you a great deal about calories and macronutrients and it's valuable information that carries over into methods of eating that don't use tracking.

Whether or not it's a good fit long term is really going to depend on how you feel about it after giving it some time.

As far as the home cooked meals thing, that's actually ideal for tracking since you're in control of all of the ingredients in the dish. People who eat out at restaurants or college campuses have a much harder time of it because they are guessing at ingredients entirely.

There's a recipe builder feature that you can use, or you can just estimate.

As far as meal frequency goes I'd select whatever frequency allows you the best appetite control and fits best with your lifestyle. Assuming of course, that you stay within your calorie goal.

DreamCatcherGirl wrote: »

Can you lose weight without counting calories?
I find it kind of hard to count calories because I eat mainly home cooked meals and I cook for the whole family (bigger sizes). I find it that it is hard to count the calories exactly especially with soups, stews, meat, etc.
What are your healthy substitutions for not so healthy products? How does you plate looks like? How often should I eat? Portion sizes? Please help
I try to log things I eat but it's hard sometimes.

That's a LOT of questions, lol.

No, you do not have to count calories. Tons of people have lost weight without counting calories. There are many ways to lose weight. You'll find that most people here (a calorie-counting site!) are counting calories. But if you find some other way to eat less than you burn, you'll lose.

I don't have a lot of substitutions. I make my own stuff, like peanut butter, so I can have a little of that now and again without eating the Jif. But mostly, I changed my diet. Started eating healthy stuff and let the less healthy (or unhealthy) stuff go, for the most part. It's easier, for me, to commit to something and stick with that. If I try to keep up the old ways by substituting...it will always seem like a compromise. So I just found new stuff to like. That sounds like it was so easy, doesn't it? It wasn't.

My plate looks different all the time. I eat a lot more often now, because I eat lots of little meals. Easier to eat a wide variety of food that way and I never feel stuffed like I would if I only ate 2-3 times a day. But everyone is different. You have to try different stuff and see what you like.

If you don't like counting calories, maybe Weight Watchers would be a better fit. Or just eating healthy in smaller amounts. Whatever.

You have to find what works for you. Might take some trial and error, but if you're determined, you'll get there.

DreamCatcherGirl wrote: »

Can you lose weight without counting calories?
I find it kind of hard to count calories because I eat mainly home cooked meals and I cook for the whole family (bigger sizes). I find it that it is hard to count the calories exactly especially with soups, stews, meat, etc.
What are your healthy substitutions for not so healthy products? How does you plate looks like? How often should I eat? Portion sizes? Please help
I try to log things I eat but it's hard sometimes.

Yes. The easiest way to lose weight without counting calories in my opinion is to plot your daily weigh ins on a trend graph, like libra or trend weight or happy scale, and then eat fairly consistently for a week or two. If you aren't losing, reduce your intake and repeat until your weight is going down at the speed you want.

All of these programs will tell you what your deficit is - which is the only thing that matters for weight loss. Counting calories is a means to an end - it is one way to be confident you are creating a deficit. But make no mistake, the final arbiter is your weight, and the trend graph will quickly show you when something is wrong.

Here are my last 4 weeks:



It's plain to see when I'm losing and when I'm not. Data points above the line occur the day after I've overeaten so there's immediate and harsh feedback when I do something wrong.

So weigh in daily, get your weight on a trending graph, and eat less until you are seeing results (or exercise more, it amounts to the same effect - but it is much harder to exercise enough than it is to restrain yourself at dinner time).

To answer your questions:

- healthy substitutions: water substitutes well for anything, or eat nothing. It is easier to eat nothing than to have a limited quantity of something bad or to have a reasonable quantity of a not as good alternative.
- plate size: try aiming for a small bowl or side plate size, barely filled. small portions make a big impact
- how often you eat: as often or rarely as you like. the more often, the more important it is to eat very healthy foods like vegetables so that you aren't just piling on the calories all day
- portion size: I guess I didn't distinguish this from plate size. I guess what you meant by what your plate looks like as "what proportions of what food". It really doesn't matter what you eat from a weight loss perspective, as long as it's much less than you think is reasonable in terms of quantity.

Once you've started losing, watch your deficit number and keep it between 250 and 1000 kcals/day. 1,000 would cause you to lose 2lbs/week which I think is quite difficult to sustain; 250 is only 0.5lb/week and might not be fast enough to satisfy you. Somewhere in the middle is a happy medium of quickly visible results that isn't completely impossible to live with.

Good luck
Osric

DreamCatcherGirl wrote: »

Can you lose weight without counting calories?
I find it kind of hard to count calories because I eat mainly home cooked meals and I cook for the whole family (bigger sizes). I find it that it is hard to count the calories exactly especially with soups, stews, meat, etc.
What are your healthy substitutions for not so healthy products? How does you plate looks like? How often should I eat? Portion sizes? Please help
I try to log things I eat but it's hard sometimes.

Absolutely, you do not have to count calories to lose weight. But it is a good idea to know how many calories in different types of foods that you commonly eat so it is good to use for a while, even if its to get a sense of what's what.

But what i have done thorugh my most of journey over the last 20 months is keep a food diary and in combination with daily weighing, i can easily monitor whether I need to cut back a bit more or can eat more.

If you do it this way, what i suggest you do is measure your portion sizes accurately. Weigh your meat portion before you eat or at least measure it in some way. You can measure vegies as diced in a cup. Use measuring spoons too. But for cups and spoons its important to make them level so that you have consistency.

There are also simplified systems of portioning out food eg for meat and three veg it was 1/3 plate for meat, 1/3 for starchy vegetable or rice or wahtever and 1/2 the plate is for vegies.

Another check is to stop eating when you are satisfied and before fullness. AVoid hunger. Eat when you get hungry. Do not leave the table hungry. Do not leave the table full. I find if i go to bed wiht a little bit of very mild hunger, i will usually lose weight overnight. If you eat after dinner you will probably not get this feeling and so risk missing yoru chance to lose weight without much pain.

Not only is it useful to know how many calories in foods roughly, its also useful to know that processed food is less satisfying in both the short and longer term. So its good to lean about the glycaemic index. This is pretty easy but you need to find a copy of the index and udnerstand what it means. This will teach you that most cereals are not worth eating and oats are. That white bread is not very sustaining while wholegrain bread is. While some rice is better than others. It does not mean you ahve to give up the unsustaining ones completely , i would not recommend giving up potatoes but be moderate with these foods and increase your more sustaining carbs such as vegetables and legumes.

How often you eat depends on how active you are and your daily routines. My life is fairly sedentary so i can easily eat only three meals a day. The key for me is to eat my meals close together. Only about 3-4 hours between breakfast and lunch adn then 4-5 hours between lunch adn dinner. The thing is with this scenario i am usually hungry before dinner so i have a glass of wine and generally sorts me but a piece of fruit is fine too. ON active or busy days i may need an extra meal. But the thing is the bigger your meals generally the fewer snacks you need. Providing your meals are comprised of whole foods and not processed foods.

If i worked in an office, i know from past experience that i would need to eat something at the end of my work day so that i could resist eating junk on the way home. And i know that i would be too tired to cook when i got home so i'd try to be organised so that dinner would be quick and easy together.

With regards to cooking for you and your family. IN mfp, you can put in recipes eg stews and stuff and measure a serve as 1 cup or whatever, thsi way you would know how many calories you'd eaten but yes it is time consuming and probably really a bit difficult if you are cooking for a family all the time. So i'd go mainly with food diarising, daily weighing and accurate measuring. A spreadsheet is good for this.

When you weigh yourself, it is important to udnerstand that your weight will fluctuate often and for a variety of reasons. Therefore you should not be upset when the scales jump suddenly and vice versa. What you should do if this bothers you a bit is to calculate the weekly average and use that number as the one you watch over time. I never needed to do that becuase i ahve a pretty good idea of why my weight fluctuates and i do not get upset by it.

Only fad diets that are severely restrictive on what you can eat would, e.g. keto, bananadiet,... (and so you simply can't 'stomach' eating excess calories) save you from needing to watch portion sizes and count calories - I think they are really bad unbalanced diets to follow, but a lot people swear by them and I'm sure I'll get shouted down for saying they are rubbish. However you're in the position of not wanting to inflict whatever diet you do on the rest of your family In this case, assuming your weight is stable and not increasing I would suggest taking the following steps in this order:

1. Examine the calorie content of your usual drinks. I lost my first 5kg by simply reducing to one fruit juice per day, cutting out all other calorie laden drinks completely (except for 1 sugar in two/three cups of coffee a day). I didn't have to fiddle with my food at all.

2. Reduce the quantity of what you currently eat by 10% - just visually.

3. Stop eating when you feel satisfied, not stuffed.

I would judge portion size of typical foods to be about and handful e.g. a handful of cooked rice and a handful of chilli-con-carne would be a reasonable meal if you're aiming to stay at a healthy BMI.

The best way to track calories is to eat mostly home cooked meals, as you know exactly what's in there. It just takes a few minutes weighing the ingredients, the final product, and using the recipe builder.

But yes, a lot of people have successfully lost weight without counting calories... I'm just not one of them.

You can use tricks like - dessert only once a week, no seconds, avoid alcohol, fill up your plate with half veggies, 1/4 protein and 1/4 grains/starches.

Personally, I'd rather take the extra 10 minutes a day to weigh my food and log so I don't have to cut out anything just to make sure I'm not eating too much.

yes you can. I know this is a calorie counting website, but I am not a fan of long term counting as a means of weight loss/control. I think its great for an eye opener of how much you are currently eating, or if you need to be very much on top of your macros and calories for a specific goal, but otherwise calorie counting is not a mindset that i can grasp long term.