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Is counting calories/macros destroying our enjoyment of food?
Replies
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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!
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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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I find the opposite to be true; I had reached a point of binge eating where I wasn't even really enjoying the food I was cramming into my face. It had become routine, habit as well as compulsion.
Now I am taking notice of what I'm eating I am enjoying my food more. I don't feel ashamed when I go shopping any more, and I actually take the time to enjoy whatever I choose to use my calories for. I haven't excluded anything from my diet. It is difficult to fight the urge to binge but that's not really to do with counting. It's no bother for me.
Also I suppose it actually helps me to mend my relationship with food. Before I would feel guilty about everything I ate being "bad" (I mean, it often was due to the quantity!) but now that is taken away from me since I am eating within the amount of calories set for me. One less thing to worry about really.4 -
For me the opposite is true as well. Before I would eat way too few calories and too many foods I thought were healthy but didn't actually help make me full (lettuce for example). I felt like if I wasn't hungry I wasn't doing it right. Now I can relax and eat without guilt and without having the feeling I need to be hungry in order to lose weight. My relationship with food has improved a lot because of this and because I now know what foods help me feel good because of the macro ratio.8
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leanitup123 wrote: »Interested in hearing your thoughts on this.
I'm learning to not focus on calories and focus more on what my plate looks like. I'm learning to go off these questions my nutritionist suggested to me
(1) is this the best choice I can make
(2) does it fit through the filter - WFs / sugars? / protein(s), fats & carbs
(3) how am I programming myself to feel and function - what's the biggest/loudest message on your plate
I'm not gonna count calories for the rest of my life because it's not realistic and calories doesn't tell you a lot about the nutrients of the food which is what I'm focused more on. But I enjoy food and make some super tasty dishes in the process and therefore look forward to eating.
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I think it has for me. I am fine when I am in control (e.g. cooking at home or eating a prepared lunch) but I definitely get more stressed in social situations where food and alcohol are involved. I can't relax and just enjoy the event as much as I used to because I am making all these mental calculations and I end up looking like someone who is no fun because I've opted for a water rather than a beer or I don't want to join in on the group nachos.
A good example was a few weeks ago where I was going out for dinner with a group of friends. We meet up monthly and take turns in choosing the activity. This time my friend chose to eat at TGI Fridays. This really stressed me out because TGI Fridays in the UK does not include a calorie count and I know that the majority of food there is very high calorie and not even that tasty. I didn't enjoy my time with my friends as much as I should have because I was annoyed that I had to make sacrifices (doing some cardio earlier in the day, no alcohol, no dessert) to fit this pretty rubbish food into my goal. In the past, I would have just appreciated the fact that I was with my friends and not worried about the food.7 -
It has changed how I eat and most days I view food as fuel but sometimes I work in indulgences. I find its better to do that than totally denying myself, struggling with binge eating. Example, I enjoyed a piece of REALLY good cake yesterday, and for dinner I had a grilled piece of chicken with a measured amount of spicy mayo. Had I not had the cake I may have had something like a cheeseburger. I've been at this for a while, I have lost weight, I'm still finding balance as I get the last bit off it off, but life doesn't stop just because I'm over weight.1
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I don't count macros, I just try to keep them in balance, and I don't count kcal, the app does it for me. If I want a cake, I will eat it, and work on burning more kcal or eat some lower kcal meals after. My aim is to lose extra fat, not to make life miserable.1
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Yes, but there comes a point, after counting calories for a long time, where you can eyeball things and just use common sense to gain and lose weight. Some people want to be exact and know exactly everything, but I'll only track if I'm not getting where I want to be.
But once at that point, I eat what I want, but everything in moderation... just a common sense approach.4 -
I reject the presupposition that food needs to be something that is primarily for pleasure (which is fundamental to the question OP asked). CAN food be a source of enjoyment? Definitely. Should our primary focus be of food as a source of pleasure? That seems unhealthy to me, personally.6
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princess0lexi wrote: »it has and it helped start and make a eating disorder worst, a lot of things are very high in calories and if i had the higher calorie things i may still be hungry but used up all my calories or have very few left for later. i try to eat lower calorie foods so i can eat more for the same amount which means i don`t eat a lot of different cereals because they go over 110 and i know thats silly but its what i go through with and i really don`t like to drink things with calories because i feel that i will not be full and that could of been used on food and there are a lot of other foods i can`t or will not eat because of the calorie count, just to sum it all up its not fun but i can`t stop and life just is not the same.
Your choices don't sound disordered to me - they sound smart
I too have given up or reduced foods like cereal and beverages that don't provide much satiety for the calories. "One serving" of cereal is a joke - I want at least two and possibly three, and that's just too many calories.2 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »my question would be how could it ruin our enjoyment of food.
Calories and macros are numbers that is it...enjoyment of food comes from tactile senses like taste and smell...
If you find you are not eating the food you love due to calorie restrictions you are doing it wrong....just eat a smaller portion or exercise to allow for it.
For me it lessened (not destroyed or ruined) my enjoyment of food because I my enjoyment of food comes from cooking as much as from eating. But I don't cook from recipes and don't measure ingredients. There isn't much point in logging if you don't measure and having to measure made cooking a lot less enjoyable for me.
Along these lines, I don't mind the measuring and recording, but struggling with the new and old recipe builder does suck a lot of the enjoyment out of cooking for me.2 -
Not at all for me. Calorie tracking is a tool that works for me. I haven't changed the foods that I eat, I just control the portions and I've hit my weight loss goal every week since I restarted. I enjoy my bedtime ice cream more knowing that I have the calories for it.
As for eating out, I have no anxiety about eating at restaurants that don't have calories on the menu or going to events with food trucks/concession stands. I order what I want and enjoy it without stress or guilt. Calorie tracking is extremely helpful with keeping me on track, but it doesn't rule my life.4 -
I love food and eat all kinds of things, but still count my macros/calories. I am not sure why one is related to the other. Just my two cents.. My answer is no, I love food and count.5
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I hate every second of it but it works so I do it...mostly. I do backslide a lot because I get lazy and just want to eat what I want without thinking about what the food is "worth" in calories but I can't argue with the results and am trying to be more consistent with tracking. I miss the days when food was just food..8
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I enjoy eating now more than ever. I create things in the kitchen that I find so flavourful and tasty and can't believe how much I am allowing myself to eat while still meeting my goals. I never realized until recently just how much guilt I must have been carrying while eating. I feel free now, like I've been unchained and my passion for food and creating in the kitchen has grown with it.10
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I love food! I love to count calories and fit things into my diet too! Its all in how you view things I guess~
3 -
Limiting something you enjoy should increase, rather than decrease, your enjoyment of that thing, because you look forward to it and savor it more.3
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Like others have said, I think it has increased my enjoyment. I don't waste my time/money/calories on food that just doesn't taste as good or fill me up (cheap grocery store cookies- why did I used to eat those? Not worth it at all). I have learned new foods and seasonings, and I feel like I can reasonably accommodate for most food situations including eating out or caloric indulgences. I can satisfy sweet cravings with options low calories and more nutritious than others. And when I want to go all out, I will for very special occasions (Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday, etc). My favorite Mexican place? I discovered that they make killer fish tacos with great macros. Before I would have just ordered my "usual" calorie bomb, gone over, and ignored the other options.
A note about calorie counting- like others have said, it is not inherently obsessive but it can be for some. I don't find it taxing to log my meals, and has become a regular habit.5 -
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.
I got overly obsessive and in my personal case, it turned into a binge/restrict, all or nothing mentality for me unfortunately (which resulted in a ton of yo yo dieting) I wish I can go back to intuitive eating and how I ate before I found mfp 8 years ago. I was never "overweight" but I got to an uncomfortable weight for me when I was 25. From then on I've been yo yo dieting, tracking obsessively or never tracking at all. I'm happy to say i'm now at a comfortable weight but still trying to go back to basics before I found mfp. It's tough. I find that I don't wanna bother cooking meals in bulk because I don't want to measure everything so I just get pre packaged meals which are easier to track. I hope one day I get to the point where I don't need to track anything but maintain my weight.4 -
Going back to the financial budget analogy does knowing you have a balanced checkbook, increasing IRA/401k, and future plan diminish enjoyment of what money enables us to do?
Being exposed to this process I'm increasingly convinced that counting is simply a necessary exercise for the successful.8
This discussion has been closed.
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