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Is counting calories/macros destroying our enjoyment of food?
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I enjoy food more because I eat what I enjoy instead of just grab something & eat till i'm full. I also eat more slowly & savor it. I've eaten more of a variety of foods that I haven't tried before. It's an adventure1
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Looks like I am in the minority. Any time I start tracking what I eat and how much, I find it to be a chore, and I don't like it. Just tonight, I pre-logged food for tomorrow, and spent almost a 1/2 an hour figuring out how much of what I could have, and messing with # of servings, etc. That to me is tedious and I don't like it. I don't like numbers, so that might be part of it. It makes me just want to eat the same thing all the time so I don' t have to put so much time and effort into it. It does seem to make eating less enjoyable because I often change what I want to eat, just so I can stay at my calories. To me, eating is much more enjoyable if I'm not worried about the calories. But then I'm someone who doesn't get a lot of calories, being 5'0" tall and fairly sedentary.9
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leanitup123 wrote: »Geocitiesuser wrote: »My constant obsession with calorie counting, hitting protein grams, and avoiding things I feel are not part of a "healthy" diet, are *borderline* unhealthy, and borderline ruin eating for me.
Only borderline. It's a little obsessive but it's nothing that's not controllable and definitely not damaging to me. But it definitely removes a lot if not all of the enjoyment of eating.
But in the same breath I HAD to remove the enjoyment of eating. Enjoying eating is what got me fat. It was comfort, it was reprieve from emotional and sometimes physical distress. It's how I celebrated and how I grieved. It was emotion. I correlated enjoying food with happiness like a heroin junky associates heroin with being happy. I was literally killing myself thinking I was enjoying what I was eating. When I stepped back, and looked at how all that food made me "feel", I didn't actually ever enjoy it. It did nothing but hurt me in the most horrible ways.
I still splurge. I still fall off track. But if we apply the pareto rule, I've removed enjoyment from probably 80% of what I eat now. Some of that is intentional.
That's exactly what this post is getting at -- the obsessive nature of calorie counting.
Getting obsessive about a calorie deficit is a requirement to escape from morbid obesity. Staying obsessive about overall calorie intake/output is a requirement to avoid weight regain plus some extra. The 95% who regain lost weight aren't staying obsessive.
The simplest, most reliable way to maintain calorie control for many people is calorie counting. Obsession is what got me where I am (near my goal weight) and I don't want to lose that obsession. I want to nurture that obsession. I want to be buried in a normal-sized coffin when the time comes.
@seska422 somewhere back in the 70's I lost my intuitive eating skills. Counting is a good crutch until we learn the physical/mental reasons that we eat more calories of food than we need. I finally found the macro that works for me that lets me stay stuffed and maintain. Now I eat all I want and just push back when I feel full unlike the prior 40 years. Calories are never the core cause of obesity for many people. The question that requires to be addressed is WHY we overeat to start with. Typically there is a physical and or mental health issue that triggers eating that can lead to obesity. Finding those underlying triggers and fixing them I found in my case was required to whip and fix the obesity in my case going forward.
Thinking about food all the time is not the freedom to enjoy life in my view. I know some that always will need crutches to walk and that is just fine but if we can heal to the point that intuitive eating kicks in and does our thinking for us it is awesome freedom in my personal experience.4 -
GaleHawkins wrote: »leanitup123 wrote: »Geocitiesuser wrote: »My constant obsession with calorie counting, hitting protein grams, and avoiding things I feel are not part of a "healthy" diet, are *borderline* unhealthy, and borderline ruin eating for me.
Only borderline. It's a little obsessive but it's nothing that's not controllable and definitely not damaging to me. But it definitely removes a lot if not all of the enjoyment of eating.
But in the same breath I HAD to remove the enjoyment of eating. Enjoying eating is what got me fat. It was comfort, it was reprieve from emotional and sometimes physical distress. It's how I celebrated and how I grieved. It was emotion. I correlated enjoying food with happiness like a heroin junky associates heroin with being happy. I was literally killing myself thinking I was enjoying what I was eating. When I stepped back, and looked at how all that food made me "feel", I didn't actually ever enjoy it. It did nothing but hurt me in the most horrible ways.
I still splurge. I still fall off track. But if we apply the pareto rule, I've removed enjoyment from probably 80% of what I eat now. Some of that is intentional.
That's exactly what this post is getting at -- the obsessive nature of calorie counting.
Getting obsessive about a calorie deficit is a requirement to escape from morbid obesity. Staying obsessive about overall calorie intake/output is a requirement to avoid weight regain plus some extra. The 95% who regain lost weight aren't staying obsessive.
The simplest, most reliable way to maintain calorie control for many people is calorie counting. Obsession is what got me where I am (near my goal weight) and I don't want to lose that obsession. I want to nurture that obsession. I want to be buried in a normal-sized coffin when the time comes.
@seska422 somewhere back in the 70's I lost my intuitive eating skills. Counting is a good crutch until we learn the physical/mental reasons that we eat more calories of food than we need. I finally found the macro that works for me that lets me stay stuffed and maintain. Now I eat all I want and just push back when I feel full unlike the prior 40 years. Calories are never the core cause of obesity for many people. The question that requires to be addressed is WHY we overeat to start with. Typically there is a physical and or mental health issue that triggers eating that can lead to obesity. Finding those underlying triggers and fixing them I found in my case to whip and fix the obesity in my case going forward.
Thinking about food all the time is not the freedom to enjoy life in my view. I know some that always will need crutches to walk and that is just fine but if we can heal to the point that intuitive eating kicks in and does our thinking for us it is awesome freedom in my personal experience.
I refuse to feel inferior for using a handy and convenient tool to lose and maintain weight. Intuitive eating is not superior to calorie counting, just a different way to manage things. If you can eat intuitively, that's great. If I can't, that's not a negative in my life, it's just a difference from people who eat intuitively. There is no one right way for everyone.
I don't belittle people when I see them pulling out a calculator to do math. I don't tell them that, as long as they put in the introspection and practice, they'll eventually get the hang of doing math in their head. We are both getting valid answers even though we use different ways to get there.15 -
For me right now food has become a chore. I was recently put on Metformin for insulin resistance and EVERYTHING makes me sick except for a few things. So coming up with a days worth of food that I can stomach and can easily also become a meal that my fiance will eat with few additions, is taking all the fun away from being a foodie. I have had some fun experimenting with substitutions and pre planning and figuring out macros and all that has really kept me on track. but I miss just grabbing and going. Or my work is adding a bunch of new items to the menu a bunch are actually my idea. But I wont get to try any of the new items because I know they will make me sick as a dog, and that upsets me because we are FINALLY getting my favorite bar food on the menu and I can't have it.
I also saw a comment about mandatory nutrient facts at all restaurants. I swear to all the big guns upstairs if I have to do that at the kitchen I run I will quit. I've had a few customers ask about calories or carbs and it drives me BSC. Its a bowling alley and you've drank 6 26oz beers since you've got here. Please eat a burger before you attempt to get in the car and go home. Now I do take extra care with allergies I have a menu of all items that are safe for people with milk, egg, wheat/gluten, nut, fish, and soy allergies and have all of my employees trained on how to safely prepare these items. But even as someone who does pay attention to calories and carbs I have no desire to figure out the calories on everything we sell to put on our menu.3 -
GaleHawkins wrote: »leanitup123 wrote: »Geocitiesuser wrote: »My constant obsession with calorie counting, hitting protein grams, and avoiding things I feel are not part of a "healthy" diet, are *borderline* unhealthy, and borderline ruin eating for me.
Only borderline. It's a little obsessive but it's nothing that's not controllable and definitely not damaging to me. But it definitely removes a lot if not all of the enjoyment of eating.
But in the same breath I HAD to remove the enjoyment of eating. Enjoying eating is what got me fat. It was comfort, it was reprieve from emotional and sometimes physical distress. It's how I celebrated and how I grieved. It was emotion. I correlated enjoying food with happiness like a heroin junky associates heroin with being happy. I was literally killing myself thinking I was enjoying what I was eating. When I stepped back, and looked at how all that food made me "feel", I didn't actually ever enjoy it. It did nothing but hurt me in the most horrible ways.
I still splurge. I still fall off track. But if we apply the pareto rule, I've removed enjoyment from probably 80% of what I eat now. Some of that is intentional.
That's exactly what this post is getting at -- the obsessive nature of calorie counting.
Getting obsessive about a calorie deficit is a requirement to escape from morbid obesity. Staying obsessive about overall calorie intake/output is a requirement to avoid weight regain plus some extra. The 95% who regain lost weight aren't staying obsessive.
The simplest, most reliable way to maintain calorie control for many people is calorie counting. Obsession is what got me where I am (near my goal weight) and I don't want to lose that obsession. I want to nurture that obsession. I want to be buried in a normal-sized coffin when the time comes.
@seska422 somewhere back in the 70's I lost my intuitive eating skills. Counting is a good crutch until we learn the physical/mental reasons that we eat more calories of food than we need. I finally found the macro that works for me that lets me stay stuffed and maintain. Now I eat all I want and just push back when I feel full unlike the prior 40 years. Calories are never the core cause of obesity for many people. The question that requires to be addressed is WHY we overeat to start with. Typically there is a physical and or mental health issue that triggers eating that can lead to obesity. Finding those underlying triggers and fixing them I found in my case to whip and fix the obesity in my case going forward.
Thinking about food all the time is not the freedom to enjoy life in my view. I know some that always will need crutches to walk and that is just fine but if we can heal to the point that intuitive eating kicks in and does our thinking for us it is awesome freedom in my personal experience.
I refuse to feel inferior for using a handy and convenient tool to lose and maintain weight. Intuitive eating is not superior to calorie counting, just a different way to manage things. If you can eat intuitively, that's great. If I can't, that's not a negative in my life, it's just a difference from people who eat intuitively. There is no one right way for everyone.
I don't belittle people when I see them pulling out a calculator to do math. I don't tell them that, as long as they put in the introspection and practice, they'll eventually get the hang of doing math in their head. We are both getting valid answers even though we use different ways to get there.
I had to track miles I had driving when my fuel gauge was broken on a car to make sure I did not run out of gas. When my internal fuel gauge healed and started to manage my weight without math it was a plus.
Any way one can lower the risks of a premature death is just fine. Successful intuitive eating is superior because it means our health is better in most cases because our internal fuel gauge is working again. I am sure some people are born with their sense of getting full gauge broken. Recently I saw a picture of a 8 month old baby that was at the weight of a normal year old child.
metro.co.uk/2017/04/14/morbidly-obese-baby-weighs-same-as-a-four-year-old-6574102/
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leanitup123 wrote: »Love reading everyone's opinions on the subject. Though many of you are saying that counting calories has no negative influence on your enjoyment of food, do you think it has had an effect on your relationship with food (example: looking at 2 choices on a menu and seeing only numbers, choosing the lower calorie option, etc.)?
Nope. When that happens I either pick the one I want more and take some home for later, pick the one I want more and try to budget it in, or pick the one I want more and say "screw it" and make sure I spend a few extra minutes excercising over the next few days.1 -
Looks like I am in the minority. Any time I start tracking what I eat and how much, I find it to be a chore, and I don't like it. Just tonight, I pre-logged food for tomorrow, and spent almost a 1/2 an hour figuring out how much of what I could have, and messing with # of servings, etc. That to me is tedious and I don't like it. I don't like numbers, so that might be part of it. It makes me just want to eat the same thing all the time so I don' t have to put so much time and effort into it. It does seem to make eating less enjoyable because I often change what I want to eat, just so I can stay at my calories. To me, eating is much more enjoyable if I'm not worried about the calories. But then I'm someone who doesn't get a lot of calories, being 5'0" tall and fairly sedentary.
I'm kind of weird maybe, because even though I love numbers and tracking, I dislike pre-logging and never do it. Being that precise in preplanning what I am going to eat immediately makes me feel like I don't want it, and I find it tedious. I've tried planning out weekly meals and cannot do it, it ruins cooking for me.
What I do is plan in my head, roll around things that sound good AND fit with the things I have on hand, that's enjoyable, and then I cook and note things down when doing it. I have some calories to work with (I'm cutting now, but still am reasonably active), but did this even at 1250. The only thing I log in advance are leftovers or meals I am taking for lunch.
My current thing is that I can't make myself log meals I purchase. I was just traveling (affected dinner yesterday, and then breakfast-dinner today), and I ate well and am pretty sure I was within my calories, but just the idea of trying to deconstruct and log it all seems depressing, so I'm not going to (granted I had a super stressful day and am exhausted -- if I wasn't so tired it might seem more worth it, but probably not).
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Some people with OCD turn lights on and off repeatedly. Some will wash their hands dozens of times.
There's nothing obsessive about turning a light on or off, or with washing your hands routinely. It would be absurd to suggest that a person might be having their life ruined because they don't like leaving lights running, or practice good hygeine.
Same thing with calorie counting. The act is not inherently obsessive, but people with obsessive personalities may focus on that thing.12 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »Looks like I am in the minority. Any time I start tracking what I eat and how much, I find it to be a chore, and I don't like it. Just tonight, I pre-logged food for tomorrow, and spent almost a 1/2 an hour figuring out how much of what I could have, and messing with # of servings, etc. That to me is tedious and I don't like it. I don't like numbers, so that might be part of it. It makes me just want to eat the same thing all the time so I don' t have to put so much time and effort into it. It does seem to make eating less enjoyable because I often change what I want to eat, just so I can stay at my calories. To me, eating is much more enjoyable if I'm not worried about the calories. But then I'm someone who doesn't get a lot of calories, being 5'0" tall and fairly sedentary.
I'm kind of weird maybe, because even though I love numbers and tracking, I dislike pre-logging and never do it. Being that precise in preplanning what I am going to eat immediately makes me feel like I don't want it, and I find it tedious. I've tried planning out weekly meals and cannot do it, it ruins cooking for me.
I never pre-log. In fact, most of the time I don't even have an idea of what I'm going to eat at the next meal until I walk into the kitchen and see what strikes me. I have a lot of "go to" foods and a pretty good idea of the calories/macros for each of them, so I can throw things together on the fly according to my needs. If my wife is cooking dinner, I just let her cook whatever she has in mind (she generally leans toward pretty well-balanced meals anyway, usually a meat/protein and a vegetable) and it almost always works for my calories/macros. If we're planning on going out to dinner at night, I go a little easier the rest of the day to make room in my calories so I don't have to sweat it at dinner. To be honest, I'm pretty laissez-faire about the whole thing, but it works for me.4 -
It's an interesting question - and the answer is complicated. I think I enjoy food more when I prepare high quality food. Touching the ingredients, seeing the colors, smelling them, thinking about what works in a dish, all these things are deeply satisfying to me and I do them more when I eat well.
On the other hand, eating out - whether with friends or at a restaurant - just plain stinks now. My options are terribly limited. Even restaurants with "healthy" options very rarely provide actual healthy options, and for ones that don't pretend to be healthy all bets are off. I went out with friends to a sports bar and ended up eating literally the only thing on the menu that wasn't 2000 calories - the grilled fish sandwich - with no bun, because the bun was more carbs than I could handle, and no special sauce because the sauce was sugar and mayo based. And no sides, because there was not one side that wasn't breaded and fried on the menu. In another city the situation might be better - there's a reason we constantly top the fattest cities list. Eating less of the same food is not an appealing option - my sad measly excuse for a meal at that restaurant was 700 calories which is more than I would have eaten by choice, and left me hungry all evening.
I'm a diabetic, so not considering ingredients and counting macros is never going to be an option for me. Carbs are a matter of life and death - blood sugar spikes or lows can literally kill me. I have a bit of wiggle room, but small mistakes can add up over years and cause damage.5 -
GaleHawkins wrote: »GaleHawkins wrote: »leanitup123 wrote: »Geocitiesuser wrote: »My constant obsession with calorie counting, hitting protein grams, and avoiding things I feel are not part of a "healthy" diet, are *borderline* unhealthy, and borderline ruin eating for me.
Only borderline. It's a little obsessive but it's nothing that's not controllable and definitely not damaging to me. But it definitely removes a lot if not all of the enjoyment of eating.
But in the same breath I HAD to remove the enjoyment of eating. Enjoying eating is what got me fat. It was comfort, it was reprieve from emotional and sometimes physical distress. It's how I celebrated and how I grieved. It was emotion. I correlated enjoying food with happiness like a heroin junky associates heroin with being happy. I was literally killing myself thinking I was enjoying what I was eating. When I stepped back, and looked at how all that food made me "feel", I didn't actually ever enjoy it. It did nothing but hurt me in the most horrible ways.
I still splurge. I still fall off track. But if we apply the pareto rule, I've removed enjoyment from probably 80% of what I eat now. Some of that is intentional.
That's exactly what this post is getting at -- the obsessive nature of calorie counting.
Getting obsessive about a calorie deficit is a requirement to escape from morbid obesity. Staying obsessive about overall calorie intake/output is a requirement to avoid weight regain plus some extra. The 95% who regain lost weight aren't staying obsessive.
The simplest, most reliable way to maintain calorie control for many people is calorie counting. Obsession is what got me where I am (near my goal weight) and I don't want to lose that obsession. I want to nurture that obsession. I want to be buried in a normal-sized coffin when the time comes.
@seska422 somewhere back in the 70's I lost my intuitive eating skills. Counting is a good crutch until we learn the physical/mental reasons that we eat more calories of food than we need. I finally found the macro that works for me that lets me stay stuffed and maintain. Now I eat all I want and just push back when I feel full unlike the prior 40 years. Calories are never the core cause of obesity for many people. The question that requires to be addressed is WHY we overeat to start with. Typically there is a physical and or mental health issue that triggers eating that can lead to obesity. Finding those underlying triggers and fixing them I found in my case to whip and fix the obesity in my case going forward.
Thinking about food all the time is not the freedom to enjoy life in my view. I know some that always will need crutches to walk and that is just fine but if we can heal to the point that intuitive eating kicks in and does our thinking for us it is awesome freedom in my personal experience.
I refuse to feel inferior for using a handy and convenient tool to lose and maintain weight. Intuitive eating is not superior to calorie counting, just a different way to manage things. If you can eat intuitively, that's great. If I can't, that's not a negative in my life, it's just a difference from people who eat intuitively. There is no one right way for everyone.
I don't belittle people when I see them pulling out a calculator to do math. I don't tell them that, as long as they put in the introspection and practice, they'll eventually get the hang of doing math in their head. We are both getting valid answers even though we use different ways to get there.
I had to track miles I had driving when my fuel gauge was broken on a car to make sure I did not run out of gas. When my internal fuel gauge healed and started to manage my weight without math it was a plus.
Any way one can lower the risks of a premature death is just fine. Successful intuitive eating is superior because it means our health is better in most cases because our internal fuel gauge is working again. I am sure some people are born with their sense of getting full gauge broken. Recently I saw a picture of a 8 month old baby that was at the weight of a normal year old child.
metro.co.uk/2017/04/14/morbidly-obese-baby-weighs-same-as-a-four-year-old-6574102/
You keep trying to make this a standard which all of us should meet, but you have no basis for it.
You are also misusing the term intuitive eating.
And frankly, how you think having an innate ability to regulate you appetite signals will extend your life baffles me.12 -
We don't have an internal fuel gauge. We have hunger signals and they are easily thrown off by things like hormones or fatigue.GaleHawkins wrote: »GaleHawkins wrote: »leanitup123 wrote: »Geocitiesuser wrote: »My constant obsession with calorie counting, hitting protein grams, and avoiding things I feel are not part of a "healthy" diet, are *borderline* unhealthy, and borderline ruin eating for me.
Only borderline. It's a little obsessive but it's nothing that's not controllable and definitely not damaging to me. But it definitely removes a lot if not all of the enjoyment of eating.
But in the same breath I HAD to remove the enjoyment of eating. Enjoying eating is what got me fat. It was comfort, it was reprieve from emotional and sometimes physical distress. It's how I celebrated and how I grieved. It was emotion. I correlated enjoying food with happiness like a heroin junky associates heroin with being happy. I was literally killing myself thinking I was enjoying what I was eating. When I stepped back, and looked at how all that food made me "feel", I didn't actually ever enjoy it. It did nothing but hurt me in the most horrible ways.
I still splurge. I still fall off track. But if we apply the pareto rule, I've removed enjoyment from probably 80% of what I eat now. Some of that is intentional.
That's exactly what this post is getting at -- the obsessive nature of calorie counting.
Getting obsessive about a calorie deficit is a requirement to escape from morbid obesity. Staying obsessive about overall calorie intake/output is a requirement to avoid weight regain plus some extra. The 95% who regain lost weight aren't staying obsessive.
The simplest, most reliable way to maintain calorie control for many people is calorie counting. Obsession is what got me where I am (near my goal weight) and I don't want to lose that obsession. I want to nurture that obsession. I want to be buried in a normal-sized coffin when the time comes.
@seska422 somewhere back in the 70's I lost my intuitive eating skills. Counting is a good crutch until we learn the physical/mental reasons that we eat more calories of food than we need. I finally found the macro that works for me that lets me stay stuffed and maintain. Now I eat all I want and just push back when I feel full unlike the prior 40 years. Calories are never the core cause of obesity for many people. The question that requires to be addressed is WHY we overeat to start with. Typically there is a physical and or mental health issue that triggers eating that can lead to obesity. Finding those underlying triggers and fixing them I found in my case to whip and fix the obesity in my case going forward.
Thinking about food all the time is not the freedom to enjoy life in my view. I know some that always will need crutches to walk and that is just fine but if we can heal to the point that intuitive eating kicks in and does our thinking for us it is awesome freedom in my personal experience.
I refuse to feel inferior for using a handy and convenient tool to lose and maintain weight. Intuitive eating is not superior to calorie counting, just a different way to manage things. If you can eat intuitively, that's great. If I can't, that's not a negative in my life, it's just a difference from people who eat intuitively. There is no one right way for everyone.
I don't belittle people when I see them pulling out a calculator to do math. I don't tell them that, as long as they put in the introspection and practice, they'll eventually get the hang of doing math in their head. We are both getting valid answers even though we use different ways to get there.
I had to track miles I had driving when my fuel gauge was broken on a car to make sure I did not run out of gas. When my internal fuel gauge healed and started to manage my weight without math it was a plus.
Any way one can lower the risks of a premature death is just fine. Successful intuitive eating is superior because it means our health is better in most cases because our internal fuel gauge is working again. I am sure some people are born with their sense of getting full gauge broken. Recently I saw a picture of a 8 month old baby that was at the weight of a normal year old child.
metro.co.uk/2017/04/14/morbidly-obese-baby-weighs-same-as-a-four-year-old-6574102/
"Successful intuitive eating" is not superior to any other method that yields good results. Because the result is the measure of success.9 -
NorthCascades wrote: »leanitup123 wrote: »Interested in hearing your thoughts on this.
I spend a lot of time riding a bike. Cycling outdoors has become like a video game in some ways - stay with me here because there are parallels to food. We all use GPS computers to track where we rode, how fast we were, how many miles we did. There are sections of road and trail that have been designated as races, for the most part you don't know where they are until you ride one, which is like unlocking a secret, then you know exactly where to focus your efforts. In the bike world, there's a lot of similar hand-wringing about whether the GPSs are ruining our enjoyment of cycling.
It's funny you mention this because I'm in the group that found logging to be a little obsessive for me. It was necessary for a while to give me insight into the calorie and macros for many of my common foods, but I did have a lot of anxiety around going out to eat, or a social function where I was eating food I didn't prepare myself.
I'm also a cyclist. Nothing hard core, more of a commuter. Anyway, along with calorie tracking, I was also tracking calorie burn and speed, distance, etc. I found myself obsessive over this as well. I had to push myself each day to reach a new PR, to the point that I lost track of the reason I started biking to begin with...to just enjoy being outside when I'm cooped up in an office all day. I was so busy watching my meter that I wouldn't look up and enjoy my surroundings.
Then my phone holder broke and instead of replacing it, I just started throwing my phone in my bag (still tracking). Then my Premium Cyclemeter membership ran out for the year and I decided, screw it and stopped tracking at all. It's been freeing...but I admit I do still get the itch on a good day to see just how fast I was going. Just like I will occasionally log now and then to make sure I'm staying on track with my intuitive eating.3 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »Looks like I am in the minority. Any time I start tracking what I eat and how much, I find it to be a chore, and I don't like it. Just tonight, I pre-logged food for tomorrow, and spent almost a 1/2 an hour figuring out how much of what I could have, and messing with # of servings, etc. That to me is tedious and I don't like it. I don't like numbers, so that might be part of it. It makes me just want to eat the same thing all the time so I don' t have to put so much time and effort into it. It does seem to make eating less enjoyable because I often change what I want to eat, just so I can stay at my calories. To me, eating is much more enjoyable if I'm not worried about the calories. But then I'm someone who doesn't get a lot of calories, being 5'0" tall and fairly sedentary.
I'm kind of weird maybe, because even though I love numbers and tracking, I dislike pre-logging and never do it. Being that precise in preplanning what I am going to eat immediately makes me feel like I don't want it, and I find it tedious. I've tried planning out weekly meals and cannot do it, it ruins cooking for me.
I never pre-log. In fact, most of the time I don't even have an idea of what I'm going to eat at the next meal until I walk into the kitchen and see what strikes me. I have a lot of "go to" foods and a pretty good idea of the calories/macros for each of them, so I can throw things together on the fly according to my needs. If my wife is cooking dinner, I just let her cook whatever she has in mind (she generally leans toward pretty well-balanced meals anyway, usually a meat/protein and a vegetable) and it almost always works for my calories/macros. If we're planning on going out to dinner at night, I go a little easier the rest of the day to make room in my calories so I don't have to sweat it at dinner. To be honest, I'm pretty laissez-faire about the whole thing, but it works for me.
Pre-logging is mostly helpful if you only have a smaller number of calories to work with...for instance Thursday, for me, means weight training rather than cardio and tango rather than swing or salsa - so much fewer calories burned and I want to have calories left over for a snack or meal after dancing and a glass of wine at tango- so I might have to juggle stuff around for lunch (250 calories versus 350) and time lunch to not need quick carbs before lifting. (But I'm also a 4'10" female)3 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »
We don't have an internal fuel gauge. We have hunger signals and they are easily thrown off by things like hormones or fatigue.GaleHawkins wrote: »GaleHawkins wrote: »leanitup123 wrote: »Geocitiesuser wrote: »My constant obsession with calorie counting, hitting protein grams, and avoiding things I feel are not part of a "healthy" diet, are *borderline* unhealthy, and borderline ruin eating for me.
Only borderline. It's a little obsessive but it's nothing that's not controllable and definitely not damaging to me. But it definitely removes a lot if not all of the enjoyment of eating.
But in the same breath I HAD to remove the enjoyment of eating. Enjoying eating is what got me fat. It was comfort, it was reprieve from emotional and sometimes physical distress. It's how I celebrated and how I grieved. It was emotion. I correlated enjoying food with happiness like a heroin junky associates heroin with being happy. I was literally killing myself thinking I was enjoying what I was eating. When I stepped back, and looked at how all that food made me "feel", I didn't actually ever enjoy it. It did nothing but hurt me in the most horrible ways.
I still splurge. I still fall off track. But if we apply the pareto rule, I've removed enjoyment from probably 80% of what I eat now. Some of that is intentional.
That's exactly what this post is getting at -- the obsessive nature of calorie counting.
Getting obsessive about a calorie deficit is a requirement to escape from morbid obesity. Staying obsessive about overall calorie intake/output is a requirement to avoid weight regain plus some extra. The 95% who regain lost weight aren't staying obsessive.
The simplest, most reliable way to maintain calorie control for many people is calorie counting. Obsession is what got me where I am (near my goal weight) and I don't want to lose that obsession. I want to nurture that obsession. I want to be buried in a normal-sized coffin when the time comes.
@seska422 somewhere back in the 70's I lost my intuitive eating skills. Counting is a good crutch until we learn the physical/mental reasons that we eat more calories of food than we need. I finally found the macro that works for me that lets me stay stuffed and maintain. Now I eat all I want and just push back when I feel full unlike the prior 40 years. Calories are never the core cause of obesity for many people. The question that requires to be addressed is WHY we overeat to start with. Typically there is a physical and or mental health issue that triggers eating that can lead to obesity. Finding those underlying triggers and fixing them I found in my case to whip and fix the obesity in my case going forward.
Thinking about food all the time is not the freedom to enjoy life in my view. I know some that always will need crutches to walk and that is just fine but if we can heal to the point that intuitive eating kicks in and does our thinking for us it is awesome freedom in my personal experience.
I refuse to feel inferior for using a handy and convenient tool to lose and maintain weight. Intuitive eating is not superior to calorie counting, just a different way to manage things. If you can eat intuitively, that's great. If I can't, that's not a negative in my life, it's just a difference from people who eat intuitively. There is no one right way for everyone.
I don't belittle people when I see them pulling out a calculator to do math. I don't tell them that, as long as they put in the introspection and practice, they'll eventually get the hang of doing math in their head. We are both getting valid answers even though we use different ways to get there.
I had to track miles I had driving when my fuel gauge was broken on a car to make sure I did not run out of gas. When my internal fuel gauge healed and started to manage my weight without math it was a plus.
Any way one can lower the risks of a premature death is just fine. Successful intuitive eating is superior because it means our health is better in most cases because our internal fuel gauge is working again. I am sure some people are born with their sense of getting full gauge broken. Recently I saw a picture of a 8 month old baby that was at the weight of a normal year old child.
metro.co.uk/2017/04/14/morbidly-obese-baby-weighs-same-as-a-four-year-old-6574102/
"Successful intuitive eating" is not superior to any other method that yields good results. Because the result is the measure of success.
And of minimal help if you are eating something on the order of 100 calories/biteful (rare in the very olden days, but very easily done now).4 -
I actually wrote a forum post some time ago - I think it was on the "Unexpected Results of Weight Loss" thread - about how much more I enjoy eating after undertaking this kind of weight loss process.
It's more fun planning, selecting, preparing and eating food when eating is purposeful, conscious and selective, rather than just just indiscriminately shoveling arbitrary quantities of stuff into my mouth.
Logging is not an obsession, but a fun sort of science fair project that helps me balance several potentially-competing goals: Enjoyment, nutrition, satiation, social factors, celebration and healthfulness (which includes energy balance).
And being thin on top of it? Wish I'd done it decades ago, all of it.18 -
It isn't an issue for me. It was at first, when I finally got serious about changing my WOE for good. It was more of a hassle than having anything to do with enjoying my food, though. For the past 3 years, I have eaten better than ever in my life, and I enjoy making new dishes or de-carbing old favorites. Some things can't be made acceptable (like genuine Louisiana pralines or Middle Eastern style baklava, for instance. (A Frankenstein version of either, made with ingredients from the local health food store, low carb gluten free sugar free odd-tasting, yada yada... no thanks. I'm fine without em.) When I think about it, I rather like juggling macros. As others have said, it's like solving a puzzle or playing Tetris--without the frustration when I lose the game!
3 -
I actually wrote a forum post some time ago - I think it was on the "Unexpected Results of Weight Loss" thread - about how much more I enjoy eating after undertaking this kind of weight loss process.
It's more fun planning, selecting, preparing and eating food when eating is purposeful, conscious and selective, rather than just just indiscriminately shoveling arbitrary quantities of stuff into my mouth.
Logging is not an obsession, but a fun sort of science fair project that helps me balance several potentially-competing goals: Enjoyment, nutrition, satiation, social factors, celebration and healthfulness (which includes energy balance).
And being thin on top of it? Wish I'd done it decades ago, all of it.
This is what it's become for me too. Instead of getting bored logging, I'm alot more relaxed about it and I eat quality. I refuse to eat food that doesn't taste good. Now you may think by saying that that I don't eat fast food---you'd be wrong. Sometimes I just want it, and it hits my taste buds just right. I enjoy it and go on to home cooking everyday. I love watching my macros, and hitting my protein goals. At 62 my body has transformed. I'm still 62 with OA, but nobody would guess it to look at me.6 -
Calorie counting in and of itself doesn't affect my enjoyment of food. The fact I am in traction/enforced inactivity where I need to count calories hinders my enjoyment of food. I much prefer to eat intuitively. It served me well for forty years. So I'm missing that even though I know it's best for me right now to count calories so I do not balloon up like that kid Violet on Charlie and the Chocolate factory.5
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