Weening off Logging - Good or Bad????

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jimbodwarf
jimbodwarf Posts: 16 Member
in Goal: Maintaining Weight
I managed to lose 13Kg and reach my goal just over 6 weeks ago. I have managed to maintain my Goal weight by logging and monitoring my calories against my exercise. Sometimes I wonder am I now a slave to the monitoring or should I try and maintain without. What are your thoughts

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  • Sabine_Stroehm
    Sabine_Stroehm Posts: 19,263 Member
    edited September 2017
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    I think, if it works, it's a GREAT thing.

    How long have you been losing/logging? If only a short time, you might want to keep doing it for just a while longer, then:
    Maybe start by mentally logging all day, and then adding the calories at night at the end, like pre-logging, but post-logging.
    If you weigh/measure your food: eyeball it and then measure after for a while.
    Then try just mentally logging, while keeping an eye on the scale and measuring tapes.
    And if it does well, try and wean off that.
    It's probably easier to do if you eat the same things day after day.

    One thing I do: if I'm eating the same thing every day I DON'T tend to log, but I'll use the app to help me select foods at chain restaurants, and use it when I add a new meal to my routine.

    Good luck.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
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    The fairly relaxed logging style I used to lose weight became even more relaxed at maintenance.

    Then because it's not exactly the most thrilling of activities I experimented with maintaining just by my usual daily routine of weighing myself and casual mental note of my weight trend. Really not a problem as I'm still calorie aware and have a few strategies to correct an upward drift by cutting some calories.

    After injury and Christmas over indulgence I manged to lose the excess baggage at a consistent 1lb/month.

    After an all inclusive holiday and another back injury managed to lose the rapidly gained weight rapidly too - so I'm comfortable I can maintain or manipulate my weight without logging.

    Certainly don't think there's any reason not to experiment if you find logging tedious or unnecessary - you can always restart if it doesn't work out. Just set an intervention limit then any weight gain (or loss if that's an issue) can't get out of control.

    I only log food now on days of extreme cycling events - that's the only time the precision of logging is really necessary and beneficial for me.

  • sofchak
    sofchak Posts: 862 Member
    edited September 2017
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    I am in the process now of weaning myself off MFP logging daily - I am doing much of what @Sabine_Stroehm suggested. My steps so far:
    1. Downloaded a weight trend app so I could see the trend of my maintenance progress and set a high bar on weight to say "okay, this isn't working. Time to use MFP for a while to get back on track."
    2. Starting with breakfast and lunch, stopped using the scale to weigh ingredients - eye ball method for a couple weeks.
    3. Weight trend was still good so expanded to include dinner and snacks - no scale used unless it's a new food that I don't quite know an appropriate serving size by eyeballing.
    4. Current step: Logging breakfast and lunch in advance like always, but leaving dinner and snacks open to log at end of the day. If this step goes well, I can start doing the same for lunch then breakfast. Then the next step will be to stop logging.

    Good luck!
  • Need2Exerc1se
    Need2Exerc1se Posts: 13,576 Member
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    I think this is a question only you can answer. I gave up on logging long before I reached goal because it was just so tedious and time consuming that it was making me sad. I also don't long in maintenance (about 1.5 yrs now).

    But some people swear by it and seem to need it in order to maintain.

    I think you just have to give it a try and see if it works for you. @Sabine_Stroehm has some good suggestion above.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    4.5 years maintenance... haven't logged in that time. But this really depends on you. I live an all around much healthier lifestyle than I used to to include a much healthier diet and regular exercise. Some people can swing it and others fall back into old habits and eating patterns.

    For me, it's pretty easy...
  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,890 Member
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    It depends. Do you need to log? Will you regain if you don't log? Is not logging going to be a carte blanche, or will you eat appropriate amounts anyway? Try for a couple of weeks, keep monitoring your weight, and see.

    I don't log in my food diary anymore, but in a spreadsheet. I don't think I'm going to stop that. My logging is basically just the byproduct of meal planning now, and I love meal planning.
  • StarBrightStarBright
    StarBrightStarBright Posts: 97 Member
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    I regain if I don't check in at least weekly and I keep my weight super consistent when I log daily. I was all right through the end of the summer but winter comfort food is my weakness so I'm starting to log again in preparation for the cool weather food.
  • Jruzer
    Jruzer Posts: 3,501 Member
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    There's a decent discussion going on here about this topic:

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10596227/you-dont-need-to-calorie-count/p1
  • STEVE142142
    STEVE142142 Posts: 867 Member
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    Congrats on your success. Part of this journey is you have to figure out what's best for you. My suggestion would be try for a month or two without weighing yourself or logging and see what happens.

    As far as myself I plan on logging for the rest of my life. It's a small price to pay for what I achieved and more importantly I don't want to go back to where I was before.
  • richardgavel
    richardgavel Posts: 1,001 Member
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    In my mind, I look at it as "What do I gain by not logging?" And to me, the answer is...very little. I don't have a significant variety of foods, I am single and so food at home is cooked and measured by me. And being an engineer, I like the precision permitted with measuring and logging. If I didn't log, I feel it would be easier to be ignorant of eating more than I burned.
  • sosteach
    sosteach Posts: 260 Member
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    I plan to log for life.
  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,675 Member
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    I have spent a lot of my life yoyoing. My weight went up and down over and over. Although I know why I gain weight, after a while of not paying attention I always slip into bad habits. I'm tired of it. Just by logging, I think twice about what I'm eating and often end up refraining from eating more than I should. ATM it's easier to keep logging than to wait 6 months and need to start another diet.
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
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    To each their own but I'll say that I don't log. I found that I had a tendency to lie in the log and I didn't like doing it anyway. The only time I go back to logging is when my weight starts to climb and I need to make sure I am in a calorie deficit.
  • SummerSkier
    SummerSkier Posts: 4,800 Member
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    spiriteagle99 wrote: »
    I have spent a lot of my life yoyoing. My weight went up and down over and over. Although I know why I gain weight, after a while of not paying attention I always slip into bad habits. I'm tired of it. Just by logging, I think twice about what I'm eating and often end up refraining from eating more than I should. ATM it's easier to keep logging than to wait 6 months and need to start another diet.

    you and I are twinsys... LOL... ditto the weighing thing. There are actually 2 conversations going on this subject about quitting logging and quitting weighing. I am most successful when I do both, but I have over the years done just weighing and no logging. I have definitely been more successful when I log as well. I yo yo a lot and like to pretend I am normal when I am done, but with age hopefully comes a little wisdom and for ME personally I know if I want to continue to manage my health I really probably will need to log and weigh daily for the rest of my life. It's not that big a deal or time consuming.
  • victoria_1024
    victoria_1024 Posts: 915 Member
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    I used to think I would log forever. I lost 90 lbs and did not want to gain it back. I was at maintenance for about a year while logging everything when I realized I was more obsessive logging in maintenance than I was even while losing weight. Like a previous person said, I was living in fear of gaining the weight back. It was no way for me to live anymore.

    So I stopped logging in April. It was hard at first because I felt so out of control. It was a big change so at first not a good one because I was so worried about weight gain. But now that some time has passed, I'm so much happier. To be honest I don't even weigh myself very often. Just often enough to know where I'm at. I was doing awesome for a while and have recently gained a bit but some of it is probably water weight from major overeating.
  • girlgroves
    girlgroves Posts: 235 Member
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    I view logging as a tool - a really useful tool that helped me become aware of what and how much I was eating, and enabled me to adjust that to lose weight. I was never very strict with precisely weighing everything, but I was consistent and honest about logging everything for the entire time I lost the weight... and for about 10 months into maintenance. Until I realised that it was becoming a bit of an obsession. Without the goals associated with weight loss I began to depend excessively on logging daily, when what I ultimately wanted was to be able to happily maintain my weight without having to log everything I ate.

    It was challenging at first (the fear of losing control, the worry about weight gain or the resurgence of bad habits) but I have progressively made myself loosen up about logging, at first only logging through the week and not on weekends, then not whilst on a week-long holiday, and now not at all. I've been maintaining perfectly well without logging for the last 5/6 months, but I still weigh myself regularly and I know that it's always there as a really useful tool if my weight starts to go back up.

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