Is there a way of keeping track of food that isn't calorie based?

You could just eat smaller servings of things. When i started out, I would only half of what I use to and that cuts down calories. You could also try intermittent fasting. So you choose certain hours of the day where you don't eat and then certain where you do. Say 18hours of the day you don't eat food, 6 hours when you can eat food. I found that to be pretty easy too. I would usually skip breakfast and lunch but I'd eat dinner as that's when I usually go out to eat with friends. Or you could try something like 5:2 and eat very little 2 days a week, eat normally 5 days. Which reduces your total calories for the week, thus you lose weight, well hopefully if you created a deficit.

I've tried all of these but none were sustainable for me, which is what we should really aim for. At the end of the day it does come down to how many calories you put into your body and how much you use but you don't need to measure them to lose, it's just easier for some people to count calories and you're more likely to be accurate when you weight your foods and count... but it's not 100% necessary to monitor exactly how many calories. As you get closer to goal you might want to count.

In college I was successful at losing weight by allocating 500 calories per meal and then making choices at each meal that I was fairly certain would fall below that number. A cheese burger, or one slice of pizza, or a salad. I never spent much time measuring calories in any of it, but I had a rough idea. If I was off a little, no big deal. Once that meal was done, it was forgotten. If I found myself getting extra hungry between meals I would grab a snack. It wasn't so much about calories but I let hunger be my guide. As long as I was getting hungry before the next meal then I was satisfied that I was eating light enough. If I wasn't hungry before the next meal then I had eaten too much. I weighed myself twice a week with about two pounds of weight lose per week. I would weigh on Saturday as my "official" weigh-in, but I would also weigh on Wednesday to see if I was on track to lose two pounds that week. Now, I wouldn't recommend being as aggressive at weight loss as I was then, but the method worked well for me, even better than tracking calories.

I am dealing with the same thing right now as I am fed up of logging. Some things which work for me are
1. EAT SLOWLY. When I was overweight I used to finish my meal in less than 5 minutes . Due to eating fast , I did not listen to my body when it was full and so I didnt stop eating until I ate everything on the plate. I used to eat a whole pizza by myself , now I realize that 3-4 slices is enough for me.
2. Something which I found very useful is a sort of intermittent fasting. Basically in the morning I just have tea , A fruit for lunch and then just a small packet of crisps until dinner where I eat whatever I want ( Mindfully of course )
3. I also suggest buying a fitness tracker. It is very helpful and motivates you to move more and thus burn more calories.
4. Last one is the scale. Basically weigh yourself 2-3 times per week and if your weight remains the same over the week , it means you should eat less .

If you need any more help or anything just add me

fabricatedinwonderland wrote: »

I struggle with counting the exact calories in food as for an example, I work in a nursery looking after children and I am allowed to eat with them as long as I eat what the children are having - I only have 1 or 2 serving spoons of their meals but I don't know how much calories are in there.

I also get demotivated when counting calories so I was wondering if there's another system that doesn't involve counting calories? I don't have much money and trying to loose weight cheaply so I can't afford SW or WW fees.

Thank you in advanced

You could just write them down. That's what I did years ago before MFP was a thing (or at least before I knew about it, this was around 2002). For me just being mindful and writing stuff down is helpful, and I was able to make specific changes from that.

"I only have 1 or 2 serving spoons of their meals but I don't know how much calories are in there" Can you try searching for the foods that you've eaten, on the database, take a rough guess as to how much your few spoonfuls weigh and then let MFP tell you how many calories the lunch was? I often eat out, but in cafes and restaurants not tracked on this site, so I choose the nearest equivalent or 'homemade' that I can find via the search tool. It's almost certainly not 100% accurate, but it's going to be a lot closer than me trying to guess how many calories I ate.

Unless you start eating a lot more vegetables and lean proteins in your diet, it's going to be challenging for you.
Also, do a lot more investigation on the 5:2 diet. The 2 reduced calorie days are not consecutive so doing that on weekends isn't how its done. Also, those reduced calorie days really need to be planned out in advance knowing exactly what you are going to eat, otherwise trying to wing it, is ridiculously hard. You have to eat low calorie, yet filling and satiating foods.