Has anyone stopped counting calories and still lose
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kissedbythesunshine
Posts: 416 Member
I've been here for over a year. Counting calories, weighing everything. At this point I'm just tired of it per say. I just want to cook dinner for my family and not worry about my portion being exactly calculated to the tee. In reality it only takes a few mins out of my day but I'm wondering do people actually do this....forever? At some point doesn't our bodies know when enough food is enough without having to count calories. I'm thinking of just not counting for a few weeks and I'm wondering how that worked for others.
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has counting been working for you?? if so, not sure why you would want to change that. but if you do, stop counting and see what happens. let us know.1
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Maybe stop counting for a month and see how it goes. If you were counting for over a year you'll probably know reasonable size portions. If it goes wrong you can always go back to counting.12
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True, you can try eating and implementing everything you've learned. I don't count calories or weight and mesure everything, lost over70 lbs and still losing. Sometimes i check the weight of certain things, just to make sure my estimations are ok, so basically eyeball everything. So it can be done. I don't feel too restricted, eat out time to time, just limit portions depending on what i eat. So i use sort of intuitive way of eating , although all credit goes to mfp, i learned so much here. Op, you can try and adjust as you go. I weigh myself every morning, weight fluctuations don't generally bother me, and i don't have cheat days or meals.5
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Sure, there are people here in maintenance who have stopped counting.
When I've had active jobs or was only cooking for myself I didn't need to count - it's the combination of a sedentary job and cooking higher calorie meals for others that makes MFP necessary for me at this time.
I've just moved and was considering not logging for a few weeks but couldn't stop, lol.5 -
I too get bored with the logging and counting, been doing it off and on since 200something. I think that's why I mainly eat a lot of the same things, it's just easier to know ahead of time and to not have to worry about it for a change.5
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I was only counting calories for the first month, the last 4 months I've not bothered and I've gone on to lose 72Ibs.10
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I counted on here for a very long time. I do not count anymore but still look at calorie content and avoid things with high calorie/sodium, etc and just try to make good food choices. I have lost 14 more pounds doing this. They key word is picking healthy food and not eating junk or huge amounts. Do not eat things out of bags, still put it in bowls and on plates and keep your portions down to the sizes they are when counting. I believe the time I spent counting set me up for a healthier lifestyle showing me portion control and other things I was seriously failing at.5
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When I get tired of logging and stop counting calories I always end up gaining. I've done that twice since I joined MFP in April of 2015. The first time I stopped logging I really didn't pay much attention to what I was eating though because it was during the holidays last year.1
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I'll stop counting when you take the food scale from my cold dead hands.22
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Yes I've done it and other people have too.
I think you should give it a shot, HOWEVER I think it would be wise to have some systems in place so that you're not just totally winging it.
Here are a few potential considerations you could make and please know this is not a complete list. These are just things that I've implemented with myself and others with some degree of success.- Keep a somewhat regular meal schedule from day to day.
- Consume protein with each meal, somewhere in a range of 20-40g per meal on average. More or less depending on your number of meals and protein needs. You don't need to track this, just eyeball it or use palm sized servings as a guideline. You can use the PN method which I'll link here, but I should mention that I don't agree with them on their rather negative slant on calorie counting which they also present in this article. I DO think the alternative they present is quite good and so that's why I posting this article: http://www.precisionnutrition.com/calorie-control-guide
- Minimize restaurant food or keep it to a controlled frequency like once per week. Restaurant food will generally be higher in calories on average.
- Consume mostly nutrient dense and minimally refined foods when possible. Include large quantities of vegetables and moderate quantities of fruit as part of your regular diet.
- Consider eating larger meals with little to no snacking between meals. This does not work for everyone but my experience has been that most people achieve greater satiety this way.
- Identify individual food items that promote satiety and try to consume those more often. This is not always intuitive, for example the white potato ranks VERY high on the satiety index and I find it true for many people. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15701207_A_Satiety_Index_of_common_foods
- Manage your food environment carefully. In short, make foods you want to eat more often, more visible and convenient in your environment and make foods you want to eat less often, less visible and convenient in your environment. Do not underestimate the potential impact that this has on food consumption habits and decision fatigue. Here's an article I wrote for Andy Morgan's site on this topic http://rippedbody.com/mindless-eating/
- Keep weighing yourself and decide ahead of time when it's time to go back to logging. I would keep a log of daily weigh ins and then average them out to establish a weekly average. Watch from week to week what your AVERAGE weight does and use that as a guideline to determine whether you're successfully maintaining or losing. If you start gaining, I would establish an end point, such as if you gain 5lbs you decide to go back to tracking or you implement some strategies to address it.
- Another method you could use that I find quite helpful as an intermediate step is to simply write down what you're eating in a notebook without weighing or measuring anything. Log it at the end of the day. The benefit of doing this is that it will make you less likely to be thinking strictly about every gram of food at the time you're eating the food, but you can log it on the back end to observe where your intake was at (roughly). Doing it this way gives you a greater chance of letting your habits dictate your food choices rather than numbers dictating your food choice, but it still allows you a method of getting a rough estimate on energy intake. It's obviously going to be less accurate but it may be a valuable method.
- Finally, realize that if you fail it does not necessarily mean that you must log for the rest of your life. It simply means that right now, the methods you implemented didn't work and they need to be adjusted.
Good luck!
Patrick27 -
I think that if you can lose/maintain without counting calories, you should do that. If not, you could count calories. If you can't eyeball proper portions, or can't stick to a proper portion unless you have weighed it out, calorie counting, however tedious, is far better than not losing weight, or gaining weight, in my opinion.
I have counted calories before, and regained. So it can't be enough just to learn how to count calories. To me, MFP ended up being a tool to learn how to eat like a normal person. But I was also determined to eat and think like a normal weight person. I started to pay attention to what I eat and how it affects me, what hungry and full feels like, how normal portions and normal meals looks like. I started to trust myself and my appetite. I also started weighing myself every day as I entered maintenance (2 years ago). This was particularly helpful when I messed up and forgot to take number of meals per day into consideration
I still weigh certain foods, but that's for meal planning purposes, not for the calories.2 -
SideSteel said everything I would have said much better than I could have said it. I know that for me the act of logging keeps me accountable as does the act of weighing myself.
I do have breaks where I don't log because I feel like I need them or just can't be bothered. But I keep systems in place like SideSteel mentioned to guard against weight regain because I know it's going to be a life-long battle for me.4 -
I got tired of counting after about 3 weeks. Actually after about 3 days but I continued for about 3 weeks before stopping. I lost almost all of my 30 lbs without counting.
I think your idea of not counting for a few weeks sounds like a good one.4 -
Thanks everyone for your responses. I think I'm going to not count for the rest of this month and see how it goes. If it doesn't work in my favor then I'll go back to weighing and counting. Definitely don't want to regain my weight back.2
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kissedbythesunshine wrote: »I've been here for over a year. Counting calories, weighing everything. At this point I'm just tired of it per say. I just want to cook dinner for my family and not worry about my portion being exactly calculated to the tee. In reality it only takes a few mins out of my day but I'm wondering do people actually do this....forever? At some point doesn't our bodies know when enough food is enough without having to count calories. I'm thinking of just not counting for a few weeks and I'm wondering how that worked for others.
I haven't logged in over 3.5 years...mostly that has been maintenance but I tend to put on about 8-10 Lbs every winter because I'm just less active overall and I've managed to be able to take it off every spring. The thing is, you still have to be mindful of what you're doing...I don't weigh every little thing, but I'm pretty good with estimating a proper portion or whatever it is.
My diet also consists of lots of home cooking and meals prepared with scratch, whole ingredients. I don't eat a lot in the way of "junk" food or highly processed food goods because it's too easy for me to overeat with these things. Also, dining out tends to be an occasion rather than a regular occurrence.
I exercise regularly and monitor my weight...if I'm trending up, I try to cut back a little on my food or up my exercise. I have a bit of a tough time in winter largely because I'm less generally active (i.e. a movie or football game on Sunday afternoon vs. strolling around the zoo for a few hours, etc) and I'm also not out on my bike as much. I did get an indoor trainer for this winter so I'm sure that will help.4 -
I don't have to count calories in maintenance. But I use the bathroom scale to weigh myself and quickly cut back if I see a gain.
During "active" weight loss I do have to weigh food using a kitchen scale , journal, prepare, and log calories.2 -
I stopped counting about two and a half weeks ago and have been maintaining my weight (which is my intent). I try to stick to the same way of eating as before which includes being conscious of protein choices, staying well hydrated, moving frequently, and eating mindfully.0
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I keep losing for a couple weeks after I stop counting, then I slip into old habits and gain. This has happened about four times now. It even happens when I weigh myself daily. I don't think I'm one of those people who could ever lose or maintain without counting.1
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Yes I've done it and other people have too.
[*] Finally, realize that if you fail it does not necessarily mean that you must log for the rest of your life. It simply means that right now, the methods you implemented didn't work and they need to be adjusted.
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Good luck!
Patrick
Well said Patrick - one of the best summaries I have seen - I'm printing this off to put in my journal
Jeff
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