Tracking Paleo

If you want to lose weight, you need to eat at a caloric deficit. The easiest way to do that is to track your calories - no matter which diet you are eating.

You can gain, lose, or maintain weight on ANY diet.

As someone with A I issues, controlling weight for me personally has been incredibly hard. It was not because of calories (I ate a boatload as I was trying to gain weight) , but because I wasn't absorbing nutrients. I am on a specific paleo diet. my labs are much better, and I'm starting to gain again even though I eat at maintenance or even at a deficit a lot. It could very well be different for you, but from my experience, calorie intake doesn't matter as much.

Why did your doctor suggest you not log? Is she afraid you will find it too difficult or obsess about calories?

I did paleo for a bit (didn't find it helpful for me, but I didn't have any particular issues before), and I logged. I actually think logging while doing it would be a good idea, as you can also write down when you have symptoms and how you feel each day to see any patterns, and it makes it easy to spot if you are accidentally choosing foods with particular ingredients (for example, some things have soy but it's not obvious, stuff like that).

Perhaps your doctor wants you to get the autoimmune issues straightened out before going a restrictive diet, and that's probably sensible -- maybe figuring out maintenance and then cutting only a moderate amount from that rather than trying to hit something like 1200?