Do I still have to count calories if I eat healthy foods (Fruits, vegetables and protein)

KingDolph340 · February 2017

I really need to know cause I'm confused, I looked it up online and there are so many different answers on how to lose weight, some people say all u need is a calorie deficit, some say a calorie deficit is only short term and others say stop counting calories and eat healthy/exercise. I'm going to go with the "eat healthy " way but do I still have to count my calorie from healthy natural foods? I'm confused af

Unknown · February 2017

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Muscleflex79 · February 2017

a calorie deficit is all you need to lose weight...do that eating what you choose...

KingDolph340 · February 2017

Has anybody lost weight just counting but eating whatever they felt like eating?

Muscleflex79 · February 2017

yes, I'd say thousands upon thousands of people on here alone!

cathipa · February 2017

If they maintained a calorie deficit then yes. Google McDonald's diet and Twinkie diet. Doesn't mean it was healthy, but they lost.

cwolfman13 · February 2017

I eat pretty healthy...I put on 10 Lbs pretty much every winter due to a reduction in activity...calories still matter. There are many healthy foods that are also calorie dense. Also, there's more to "healthy" than just eating veg and fruit and protein. Dietary fat is essential to a proper diet. There are also things like beans and lentils and whole food starches that are very good for you, but also calorie dense.

ETA: I don't calorie count or log and haven't in years...but I did with my initial weight loss. It was very educational.

clambert1273 · February 2017

Yup, I lost previously eating ice cream, pizza, chocolate .. whatever I wanted but I made it fit into my day - not just mindlessly eating it.

estherdragonbat · February 2017

Eating healthy gives is a great way to ensure that your body gets all the nutrients it needs and often plays a role in satiety, but weight loss happens when you eat at a deficit. Counting calories is usually the best way to ensure that you are eating at a deficit. All those weight-loss plans, healthy and unhealthy, come down to that at their core.

I eat healthy on-balance, but I don't feel guilty about a couple of indulgences, and so long as I eat at a deficit, the weight comes off.

estherdragonbat · February 2017

35 lbs and counting!

fitoverfortymom · February 2017

Only if you want to lose weight.

fitoverfortymom · February 2017

60+ lbs.

mph323 · February 2017

<waves hand in the air> ME!

I eat a lot of frozen meals and protein bars because I like them and don't have much time to cook. I supplement my micros with vitamins and have basically reduced my labs from OMG put the woman on meds now to almost normal 30 lbs later (the extra weight was unhealthy, not the diet). I've calculated a calorie limit that's a little less than my CO and continue to lose as expected. I can do this forever now that it's a habit.

girlwithcurls2 · February 2017

Do I still have to look at my checking account even if I'm only paying the bills and not buying anything fun?

Tacklewasher · February 2017

Honestly, feel free to look at my diary. While it is "more clean" (whatever the hell that means) than I ate before I started tracking, it is not clean by anyone's standards. But it is less than I used to eat and I've lost over 70 lbs since Sept.

Others have done better and (and this is the important part) maintained their weight for years with this kind of eating. I hope to be one of them in a few years.

Eating healthy is not enough if you don't eat less calories than your burn. But if you can accomplish that without having to count, then good for you. I can't but that does not mean you can't.

Besdies. I hate most veggies.

malibu927 · February 2017

You can gain weight by eating healthy.

You don't HAVE to count calories, but it's the best way to know you're in a deficit and will lose weight.

MikeGettingSmaller · February 2017

The best things I have done to help me are: #1 bought a digital food scale that 0's out for the kitchen that I can weigh everything going into my mouth easily. #2 learned how to scan the food items from the myFitnesspal app. #3 learned how to find restaurant menus on the myFitnessPal app.

comeonnow142857 · February 2017

If you eat healthy foods and eat above maintenance calories, you'll get fatter.

If you're already comfortably losing weight without counting calories, you don't "have" to do anything (until you stop meeting your goals).

But if you want to *guarantee* weight loss, controlling calorie balance is THE direct way to control weight loss. It's the direct path.

noluckducky15 · February 2017

I lost almost 80 lbs, working on losing more at the moment. I've never made any foods "off-limits", so its made it long-term sustainable to keep the weight off. I started losing weight in 2012!

Reaverie · February 2017

You don't have to count if your diet is 100% vegetables.. I doubt you could eat enough to go over a deficit. YES you need to count calories! It's good practice if you aren't use to eating healthy. And many ppl think they are eating healthy but don't consider oils or volume (nuts add up Fast). Until you have trained yourself to eyeball portions and memorize calories in a tsp, tbls, quarter cup... etc.. of the foods you intend to keep on hand, you need to be careful.

kgirlhart · February 2017

Yes. I have lost 70 pounds. I think I eat healthy, but I do have treats regularly and eat out regularly too both in sit down or digest food restaurants. All you need to lose weight is a calorie deficit. How you create that deficit is up to you.

fitoverfortymom · February 2017

I was SUPER confused before I joined MFP. I was like, "What in the hell is in a carb that makes it so eating less of them makes you lose weight." Well, the answer is nothing. There is nothing in any particular food that makes it more possible to lose weight with or without it.

What makes you lose weight is eating at a calorie deficit, which means figuring what a calorie deficit is for you.

That's where MFP comes in because there are great tools and calculators to help you figure out how much to eat each day to maintain a calorie deficit to lose at a certain rate. MFP gives you the tools you need to track your weight and your food intake to give you a certain degree of confidence that you are "doing it right."

Healthy foods (like fruits and vegetables) and exercise are GREAT for your health, but eating 1500 calories of celery is still 1500 calories. I could just as easily eat 1500 calories worth of cheeseburgers with relatively the same weight loss expectation. However: I can get a lot more bang for my 1500 calorie buck if I fill that 1500 calorie budget with things like fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and other "healthy" foods. I like to eat a LOT of food, so I tend to eat a lot of those types of foods. I also love tacos and pizza, so I work my calorie budget to make sure there are room for those foods, too.

It takes planning and forethought to manage your calorie budget to get the weight loss results you want.

If you look in each forum, there are some pinned threads at the top. Look specifically in the Getting Started forum. It's laid out pretty clearly on how to get MFP up and running with reasonable accurate expectations. I spent the first few weeks on MFP just logging my food and getting used to using a digital food scale to weigh everything I ate to the gram. It was clunky and time consuming at first, but 6 months in and 60lbs later, it is second nature to me and I have worked food planning and weighing into my life routine. Honest to God this works.

If you can put all the mumbo jumbo the world has imparted on the weight loss industry aside and focus on finding your calorie budget and meeting that calorie budget by weighing your food on a food scale (barring any kind of medical or metabolic disorder) you will lose weight.

JohnnyLowCarb · February 2017

Yep, you have to keep counting. The calories will get away from you if you dont.

lemurcat12 · February 2017

It depends and could change.

If you are eating a not very nutritious or filling diet now, it is likely that you will cut calories (even enough to lose weight) by changing what you eat and eating a "healthier" diet -- usually meaning more vegetables and lean meats and fish and legumes and whole grains, basically foods that tend to be filling. Also, if you tend to overeat foods like sweets or chips that many people can consume lots of, cutting them out or way down will also tend to reduce calories. The point is that this is NOT because calories don't matter or that you can't get fat on those foods. It's because you have found a way to cut calories without counting.

The problem is that often people are able to overeat on even so-called healthy foods, and the ability to do this increases as you become used to eating those foods. If you cut out a bunch of things you were eating it takes a while to find other things you are likely to overeat and if you aren't that used to lean meat and vegetables you might think they are impossible to overeat. They are not. Many of us who rarely ate packaged junk food or fast food, etc., still found it easy to overeat on whole foods in the context of a nutritionally dense diet. The more you already eat a pretty healthful diet and lots of veg, etc., the less likely it is that just "eating healthy" will be sufficient, IMO.

You don't have to count calories if you don't want to. Many people find it's easy to lose in other ways, and whether you like counting calories or not tends to vary by person. What you do have to do is find a way of eating that controls and reduces calories somewhat. For me, if I stick to 3 meals (usually homemade or otherwise where I don't have to worry that there are way more calories than I assume -- occasional dinner out is fine), no snacks, am active, and cut down on extras, I can lose, but that's in part because I have a good sense of how much I should be eating for that to be the case.

That said, it's easier for me and more efficient to count and tends to allow for more freedom in what I choose to eat--I'll see that I have room for some cheese or more oil or nuts or some ice cream, for example.

Another issue with the "just eat healthy" thing is that if for you it does mean cutting out foods you tend to overeat completely you may end up going totally nuts with them at some point. It often works better to figure out how to include them in your diet in moderation and not make them into some (inaccurate) thing to fear and avoid. It's all just food with different mixes of nutrients and calories.

hookandy · February 2017

There is one way to lose weight, Calories in should be less than Calories out.

However there are lots of ways of getting there. I log on MFP, my wife uses Slimming World with the concepts of free food and syns. To lose weight you have to be in calorie deficit.

If you eat 5 apples in a day that could be 500 calories. If I did not log these I would not be in deficit for that day.

jemhh · February 2017

You do not need to count your calories to lose weight. It is one way to diet but not the only way.

You can simply eat less of what you are already eating. I started out by writing down everything I ate, no calories, with measurements like "1 serving" or "1 spoonful". I lost 30 pounds doing that. I only started calorie counting when I got stuck and decided to be more exact in order to get back into a deficit.

mph323 · February 2017

No, you actually don't. Some people find that after a certain time they're able to estimate accurately and control portions without weighing or measuring. Some of us don't have a good eye for portions and are more comfortable using the tools to keep ourselves accurate.

jennybearlv · February 2017

That would be me. I eat a terrible diet, but since I am eating less than I burn I lose weight. My diary is open if you want to look. I'm down 50 pounds since September. It's also worth mentioning that I gained most of my weight eating a vegetarian diet that was much cleaner than I eat now. Weight loss and gain is really about portion control for me. I do exercise most days of the week, which is not necessary, but allows me to fit in even more junk food.

allison4224 · February 2017

I tried the eat healthy/exercise - along with being happy and positive. It got me nowhere. The scale actually started creeping up. I'm back to - eating flat under 1300 cal. and exercising at least 6 days per week. Just to note - no adjusting for exercise calories. Figure what works for you, take control, and do it.

vnb_208 · February 2017

-61LBS & counting this weekend i wendys & chinese ! as long as it fits in my deficit i eat it lol

reyoflightphoto · February 2017

Yes, but they most likely lost a lot of muscle in the process. There is a balance. You need protein. You need vitamins. You can lose weight eating 1200 calories of snickers all day. True story, but your health will go down in quality.
Here's the deal. 3500 calories is equal to 1 lb of weight on the body. If you eat 3500 more than you burn per week, you will gain 1lb a week. If you eat 3500 calories less than you burn, you will lose 1lb a week. This is a proven science. There is no controversy here.
If you eat protein and veggies a deficit will be a lot easier. You will feel full and get to eat a lot through the day. You are less likely to over eat if you only eat lean protein and veggies. However, you are more likely to go crazy and crave something good!! Unless you are extremely committed, which some people are.
I am not. I don't enjoy eating ONLY healthy foods. So, I get my 120g protein in so I won't lose muscle. Then I get my veggies and fruits (more calories) in for vitamins, and a whole grain or 2. After that, with the calories I have left I have my goodies. This balance works for me. MFP makes it easy to count calories.

If you want to lose weight and keep it off, counting calories is the way to go. This is how you learn about the foods around you and learn to look at them differently. This is how you learn that a tiny bit of peanut butter or mayo packs a 200 calories into your food with less than you think. Or how butter vs olive oil both have the same calories, or grapes are seriously high in calories!! The list goes on, but now I look at food differently. I won't eat a whole bag of grapes because they're "healthy". Moderately is fine, but those babies are packed full of sugar! I no longer think a piece of toast with a nice layer of peanut butter is a great way to get protein. I was eating 400 calories worth of peanut butter on my toast! 400 calories of chicken breast would give me 3-4x the protein and I couldn't eat it all in one sitting. These are valuable lessons.
My point is, counting calories is not a waste of time. It is an investment in your health for life! You learn valuable things about the food around you, so the next time you are at a potluck you think twice about loading your plate with "heathy salads" loaded with mayo or sugary dressings. You start to know what you're doing, change your ways and be fit for life.
I hated the idea of counting calories, but I did it, and I will NEVER regret it. I ain't going back, because now, I know a lot more about food.

Do I still have to count calories if I eat healthy foods (Fruits, vegetables and protein)

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