time better spent.

I'm only about half way to my goal weight, but I imagine when I get there I will have to continue weighing myself once a week just to catch an upward trend in time. For now the weighing and logging doesn't bother me, but maybe once I get to your point it will. Somehow I hope that by then I will have a good feeling for what portion size is appropriate. If you try to maintain your weight without weighing and logging food, just make sure you keep weighing yourself so you can counteract right away. Or look at it this way, if this has been the method that got you to succeed in weight loss, why abandon it rather than embrace it.

Do you mean weighing and logging is time consuming? Can you explain what is taking you so much time to do, maybe that would make it easier to make suggestions.

I don't find weighing any more time consuming than taking food out of the pantry and dumping it into the bowl which is already on the scale. And logging takes me maybe 5 minutes a day? Perhaps I eat simpler meals than you do . But more info might help you get better suggestions!

I started to preplan my days and meal prep on Sunday. I know what I'm eating each day and I have it ready to grab and go (for the most part). I cut up my veggies and measure out my spices for the meals I prepare for dinners for the week so this helps with time management as well.

geri1geraldinesuzanne wrote: »

part of my problem is thet my husband and sons don't eat the way i do so although i try to make as many meals as possible that we can all eat (which is less often that more) if i make a large batch of anything i will be eating it for days on end, so i try to make small amoints of meals so i'm not eating the same food more than two days, then it's back to the drawing board again.

Do you eat all of your meals together? My family doesn't eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch, but dinners are the same for us all.

Once you have weighed/logged for several weeks/a month, it shouldn't take that long. Most people eat the same things over and over. For example, I eat eggs and oats nearly every single morning. I have saved "2 eggs + oats" as a meal in MFP and instead of adding each item separately, I add that. The multi-add feature and the feature that shows other foods you often eat with whatever you are logging are helpful as well. I say stick with it and it will get easier, just like anything else.

Meal planning and prep ahead of time is the easiest way to do it.

Depending on how many calories you have to work with, you could try what I do. In maintenance, all you really need to do well is a general awareness of your CICO. Perfect logging isn't necessary.

I don't even bother logging food any more since I don't need that much data about food intake for maintenance. If I see myself gaining weight over a multi-week period, I'll go back to logging in detail until I get back to where I want to be. Specific meal details from the past aren't relevant.

As long as you put some conscious attention towards your daily calorie intake and watch your weight trends while in maintenance/slow loss mode, there's a pretty good chance that you'll be able to keep in under control. If you don't feel like this is the case, then your safest bet is to keep logging.

One way I help myself...I take the easiest meals to prep/calculate ahead of time (usually lunch, breakfast, and snacks if I decide to have them since those tend to be easy to throw together sandwiches or something similar), prep them ahead of time and strictly calculate them such that when combined they only give me 40%-50% or so of my daily maintenance target.

This generally leaves me with a pretty large amount of calories for dinner. Enough that it's pretty tough for me to go over maintenance unless I make some pretty horrific decisions from both a food choice and portion size standpoint. This way I don't have to bother counting up my dinner calories. I can just eat it.

The specific attention to and calorie limitations of the easy to count meals gives me an anchor to not have to bother tracking the meals that might be a little more tedious or complicated. And since the long-term is all that matters, if I happen to go out to eat/drink and go way overboard one day, I'll track/limit my calories for a couple of days afterwards just to make sure that it evens out in the long-run.

geri1geraldinesuzanne wrote: »

part of my problem is thet my husband and sons don't eat the way i do so although i try to make as many meals as possible that we can all eat (which is less often that more) if i make a large batch of anything i will be eating it for days on end, so i try to make small amoints of meals so i'm not eating the same food more than two days, then it's back to the drawing board again.

I freeze in measured portions. It's just me at home. Then I can pull a serving out, heat it- cook a serving of rice or pasta and add veggies if it needs it, log and eat.

I don't see myself stopping because I have nutrients I'm watching for medical reasons.