Do you plan on counting calories your whole life in order to maintain?

It looks like I’ll have to. I don’t like it, and the looks I get... but with only <1400 daily calories at maintenance I’m stuck with lifetime perpetual dieting.

I'm in maintenance now and I'll definitely keep counting, in a relaxed way. I'm prone to portion-creep and don't have very good hunger cues.

Yes. I'm a type 1 diabetic, and have to count carbs to dose my insulin. Even with all of the errors, the MFP database is still the most comprehensive database I've found.

Plus, I don't trust my body enough to know that I'll ever just be able to eat normally. I know that's part of the ED recovery that really needs work, but at this point in time, I can't fathom not tracking. Because even if it's not in a restriction standpoint, my TDEE seems (to me) so high -- I know I'll need the checks and balances, once I get to that point, to make sure that I'm actually eating up to it on a regular basis.

I've lost 112ish pounds and would like to lose 10-15 more. I'm definitely planning on logging for life.

I stopped logging last year. What I WILL do for the rest of my life is weigh myself daily. I was away for the month of January with no access to scales and found it difficult. Not surprisingly, my weight was up when I got home. It's a rougher guide than calorie counting because of water weight changes but it's close enough for me.

Yes and no. Truthfully, I don’t count accurately as some on here. I eat out a lot and estimate. And even when I eat in, I’m too lay to constantly weigh food. I do sometimes, but not a lot.

BUT, I like tracking food. It is a meal planner for me to look back and see what I ate and what to recook. And also to have an idea of calories and general weight ups and downs.

So, do I like generally tracking? Yes. But it’s very easy going and non specific. Otherwise it would annoy me and definitely wouldn’t do it forever.

What I’ve found maintaining over the past 7 months is that when I go over, like gobbling down a few pieces of candy like I did tonight, if I log it I often find it wasn’t as disastrous as I’d thought. In my two previous (but failed) attempts at maintenance over the past 4 years I’d stop logging, then have some bad days and be afraid to look at the red, and eventually get worse and worse with logging, and regain the weight. Now, no matter what, I log it and try to lower my red for the day. So that I slip by 200 calories, rather than 800. That’s been working to allow me to maintain in a 5# range.

I've never logged here or used any other calorie counting service, but I plan my meals ahead of time and track what I've eaten in my written food/exercise journal. I also weigh/portion items out with that's easy for me to go crazy on or high calorie things like unsalted cashews.

Doing both has helped me lose a lot of weight, keep it off and I haven't experienced any yo-yoing with my weight loss.

Also this keeps me in control and planning keeps me prepared at meal times.

If I want to keep those 80+ pounds off, I'm completely fine with planning, tracking and weighing/portioning some items out for the rest of my life. It just takes minutes a day, it's not hard to do and it's totally worth the effort.