Counting calories forever

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healthy491
healthy491 Posts: 384 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Maybe a silly question , but out of curiousity , once you get to your goal weight , do you plan to keep counting calories everyday for the rest of your lives? I mean its a little hard to keep track of everything you eat especially if you have an active and busy life
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Replies

  • NayeemDaDreame
    NayeemDaDreame Posts: 3 Member
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    I think it's possible to wean off the tracking once you become real familiar with different foods, or become a creature of habit and eat the same stuff in the same portions. Otherwise, it's just a great tool to use to allow for eating a variety of things.
  • dia_nruf
    dia_nruf Posts: 112 Member
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    I plan on counting calories (weighing my food) for the rest of my life. If I don't I will end up back where I started. It is just to easy to play those tricks with myself.
  • _Waffle_
    _Waffle_ Posts: 13,049 Member
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    NayeemDaDreame wrote: »
    I think it's possible to wean off the tracking once you become real familiar with different foods, or become a creature of habit and eat the same stuff in the same portions. Otherwise, it's just a great tool to use to allow for eating a variety of things.

    Yup yup. That's me. I generally eat a lot of the same things so I basically know about where I am based on what I ate.
  • persephpom
    persephpom Posts: 17 Member
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    Honestly, if I don't maintain total control, I will completely lose control. So, yes, I think I'll be counting calories for the rest of my life if I want to keep the weight off.
  • Bananahat
    Bananahat Posts: 9 Member
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    My boyfriend lost 25kg in 6 months and tracked everything in those 6 months. He is maintaining for a year now and still counts his calories. The difference with when he was losing weight is that now he knows how much calories there are in food without looking it up. So he is still tracking calories, but without the scale and app.
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
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    healthy491 wrote: »
    Maybe a silly question , but out of curiousity , once you get to your goal weight , do you plan to keep counting calories everyday for the rest of your lives? I mean its a little hard to keep track of everything you eat especially if you have an active and busy life

    Maybe. I hope not to have to but I will if need be.

    It's not really that hard. The majority of people eat the same foods over and over again. It might take me 10 minutes a day to count my calories.
  • paulbrttn
    paulbrttn Posts: 72 Member
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    No. After a 15 week "break" (a run of birthdays, weddings and parties) where I ate what I wanted I had only gained 4lbs. The time before where I was logging everything had given me a completely different mindset where I better gauged portion control and the "good" foods.
    Once I hit my goal I intend to follow a similar pattern and weigh monthly so I can go back to tracking if the weight creeps up.
    It's nice to know that the weight I put on it 3 months came back off in 3 weeks of tracking again.
  • seska422
    seska422 Posts: 3,217 Member
    edited August 2016
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    I have to watch my money closely so that I don't overspend, why not my calories? Modern nutritional labeling and technology make calorie counting easy once you get the hang of it.

    I want to keep the weight off once I lose it. That's always been the harder part for me. I'll happily spend a few minutes per meal logging if that will help me maintain my weight after I reach goal.
  • rankinsect
    rankinsect Posts: 2,238 Member
    edited August 2016
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    Absolutely. I plan to continue not just tracking calories, but preplanning and prelogging my meals. It's incredibly simple, and it has been so overwhelmingly successful. My entire day is actually planned as I brush my teeth for bed - after that, I just read the plan when I am going to prep or pack a meal.

    I definitely need a level of structure and organization around what I eat, and planning my meals the night before gives me just what I need to be successful while not feeling deprived.
  • gothchiq
    gothchiq Posts: 4,598 Member
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    Yes because otherwise I will get fat again.
  • middlehaitch
    middlehaitch Posts: 8,484 Member
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    I tracked while losing and for a few months into maintainance to establish a base range of both weight and calories.

    For the past 6 years I have tracked for a couple of weeks a couple of times a year just to reestablish my portions.

    MFP was my training wheels. Once I knew how much to eat as a base, and my average calorie burn for exercise I had no problem maintaining.

    I do have a 5lbs weight range.
    I don't worry about the odd high calorie day as I know it will even out over time.

    My maintenance calorie goal satisfies me so I don't have the urge to over eat on a daily basis, or binge occasionally.

    I think that last point is important when looking at what weight one wants to eventually be. It is a good idea to look at the maintenance calories for your goal weight and decide whether that is realistically maintainable, or if aiming for a few pounds more will give a calorie goal that is easier to adhere to.

    Cheers, h.
  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,890 Member
    edited August 2016
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    Not a silly question :D I imagined I would be counting calories forever, but nine months after I reached goal weight, I noticed that I didn't need to nor want to anymore. I still plan and log my meals, and weigh and count, but I have learnt what proper portions are (so the planning is mostly to make sure my meals are real meals and not just scrambled together, and to avoid waste), I eat most of my meals at home or prepare them at home, I mainly eat at meals and don't drink my calories, and I buy and eat foods that don't trigger overeating, so it's very easy to maintain. It took another nine months before I stopped worrying about regaining, but my new habits were formed very fast and I enjoy living like this.

    I weigh myself every day and watch the trend. If I get close to the upper end of my range (58 kilos), I get stricter, and when I get closer to the lower end (55 kilos), I add more treats.

    I walk, but I don't exercise.
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
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    I don't know if I'll log all my food forever, but i can't see myself giving up weighing everything. I think portion creep would get me if I stopped weighing my food.
  • Mentali
    Mentali Posts: 352 Member
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    I feel like MFP has taught me the tools to be able to estimate, more or less, my food. I'm sure I'll have to make adjustments all my life to make sure everything stays in check, but I'm still losing weight without counting now and I'm very aware of what issues led to the weight gain to begin with, so I believe once I reach maintenance level I'll be capable of not counting while staying roughly the same weight.
  • Timshel_
    Timshel_ Posts: 22,841 Member
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    healthy491 wrote: »
    Maybe a silly question , but out of curiousity , once you get to your goal weight , do you plan to keep counting calories everyday for the rest of your lives? I mean its a little hard to keep track of everything you eat especially if you have an active and busy life

    Having been doing this for many years now, it really does become more intrinsic. You know when you are over eating. I don't log too consistently except when I feel I getting too off track. Then I log a whole week of days just to remind myself.

    But yes, in the back of my mind I am almost always counting calories. I think that is the way it should be.
  • afatpersonwholikesfood
    afatpersonwholikesfood Posts: 577 Member
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    Yes.

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