Is tracking necessary?

I used to think I did not eat very much but I could never lose those last twenty pounds. Why? I was eating more than I thought.

Tracking helped me lose my 20+ pounds and now I don't really need to track because I know what real portions look like. I also stopped snacking between meals, that was my biggest downfall.

Yes for me otherwise I eat a lot more than I think I have

When I have an active job and/or lifestyle, and am surrounded by lower calories foods, I can lose weight or maintain a healthy weight without tracking.

Now that I have a desk job and am living with someone who likes higher calorie foods, tracking makes losing weight ever so much easier.

For me, yes it is very important. When I stop tracking, I stop losing weight.

In my opinion, almost anyone who is interested in weight loss could benefit from at least initially tracking their intake. It helps identify problem areas, how certain things affect you, what reasonable portions look like, what effect the changes you are introducing have, what contributes to a weight stall if it happens...etc. It helps build a solid plan for the future. Some people can successfully shed the training wheels later, unfortunately I'm not one of them, at least not comfortably.

For me, it's absolutely necessary. I'm very prone to calorie amnesia (I can eat things and forget I ate them) +and portion distortion (the same portion can look smaller or larger to me based on my hunger and satisfaction).

If I want to lose, gain or maintain my weight, then yes it is necessary.

For me- Yes. Otherwise, my portion sizes are too large by 25-50ish percent.

No, but it works very well.

Oddly enough if I'm trying to lose weight (like now trying to lose baby weight) yes, but once I hit my goal I can maintain for years (until another pregnancy happens ) without tracking. I'm great at maintenance, but suck at losing it intuitively.

When I went from chubby teenager to normal weight adult 27 years ago, I didn't keep track of food consumed. When I became an anorexic adult (5'4" and 95lbs), I still didn't count calories, just avoided eating. My sister did the same, except she went down to 87 lbs at her skinniest (and turned orange, since she ate a pound of carrots a day), with no food tracking required. Now, at 46, I need to keep track of food to lose weight healthily. The only other way I know is avoiding food, especially carbs. Tracking food is a bit tedious (actually, very tedious), but it lets me eat whatever I want since I can rely on a food diary to keep total calories at my goal. It's not necessarily more effective in terms of weight loss, but it's a good idea to do it at some point, whether or not you're trying to lose weight, for better nutritional awareness.

No, I didn't need to track in order to lose.

I lost 28 pounds in 3 months without tracking.

Then my weight loss slowed down, perhaps to a full stop. At that point, I joined MFP, started meticulously logging/tracking what I ate, and lost another 35 pounds in about the next 8 months.

I didn't need to track in order to lose weight. But I did need to track in order to lose all the weight that I wanted and needed to lose.

And for now, I definitely need to track in order to maintain.

I found it very necessary. I love food, I am a comfort eater and if I don't log I find that I'm often over calories. I need to be aware of what I'm eating overwise I will overeat. I realised recently that even when I reach my target weight, I'm probably still going to need to track otherwise I am probably going to start gaining again :-(

No its not.. in my house hold I am the food weigher/logger and my husband is not. He lost 70 pounds with out logging one ounce of food and has been maintaining without logging one ounce of food.