Do you plan on counting calories your whole life in order to maintain?
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Is there anything really wrong with getting to where you want to be, then stop logging, trying to eyeball stuff for about the right calories, and if u happen to go up 10 lbs above the weight u wanna be, just spend the next month counting and losing it again? That's kinda what i plan to do...
This is exactly the approach I took in the past and I failed to keep the weight down. This time I made my goal be the max, so even though I am below it, I am still losing a few more slowly. What happened to me is that I would get slack about checking the scale often enough and I would find I was already past the limit or maybe really near it and had a vacation or the holidays or whatever coming up and I would decide that right after that I will diet again and then put it off and the next think you know I was so far above that I would start justifying a new higher weight.0 -
I will probably count calories the rest of my life. I lost 130 pounds a few years ago and stopped counting calories. At first, I was able to maintain my weight fairly well, but slowly my weight began to creep upward. By not actively checking nutritional information and calorie counts, I made poor decisions and ate more than I should have. One of the great things about measuring and counting calories is the visual reminder of what a portion looks like. Ultimately, I view counting calories as a tool to ensure I stay the course. To those of you who can maintain without counting calories, that's terrific; to those of you who still count calories and weigh foods to stay in balance, good for you as well. Whatever works for you.5
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amusedmonkey wrote: »Is there anything really wrong with getting to where you want to be, then stop logging, trying to eyeball stuff for about the right calories, and if u happen to go up 10 lbs above the weight u wanna be, just spend the next month counting and losing it again? That's kinda what i plan to do...
There is nothing wrong with that if it feels like something you would maintain better than calorie counting. Personally, I would rather avoid regaining if that's an option outside of natural fluctuations because knowing me, that would probably lead to a slow creep up. Losing 10 lbs means about 3 months of dieting at this point, and when I'm at maintenance it would mean half a year of dieting just to re-lose. The idea of accepting a slightly higher weight would sound more appealing to me than having to lower my calories again since I don't mind being heavy. So for me personally this wouldn't work, but it might for you.
Are you down to a very low body fat? Does it really take that long to get down that much? I'm at like 18% right now still pretty easily losing 2lbs a week. If that is the case i could definitely see not wanting to slack... We all want those abs!
Is there anything really wrong with getting to where you want to be, then stop logging, trying to eyeball stuff for about the right calories, and if u happen to go up 10 lbs above the weight u wanna be, just spend the next month counting and losing it again? That's kinda what i plan to do...
Couple of potential problems that I can anticipate:
1) If you don't keep track of your cals/wt daily, it's easy to let them get away from you and, if you're not paying attn, you could easily gain more than 10# in very little time.
2) It can be more demanding and stressful mentally, emotionally and physically to yo-yo diet than to just maintain your cal intake/weight at a set point.
These potential problems presume that you will gain the weight back w/o logging BUT a lot of people claim that they have been able
to maintain by just eyeballing it.
You won't know if you're one of those lucky people or not until you try it. If you're successful, congratulations!
However, there are many others who have tried this and failed and who know, based on their experience, that daily logging for life is the only way that they can insure that they won't ever get fat again.
I am one of those people.
It's just too easy for me to go over on cals and to make excuses for not exercising. These 2 tendencies always make me prone to gain weight.
I worked too hard to lose weight and to get my body looking the way it is now and it's not too much trouble to me to just log my food and weigh myself daily to maintain it.
What would be worse to me would be to fail to keep my weight in check and then have to go through the whole process of trying to lose weight (potentially over and over) again. That would just be too discouraging and stressful for me.
Once and done is much better IMO.
Good thoughts...
1) I weight myself twice a day it's extremely easy (wifi scale) so ill probably do that the rest of my life so i don't think it'd get away from me that bad.
2) The point of doing this would be to be less stress mentally XD, however i could see how it may be more if i am unable to relax about it a little. Which may very well be the case cause i am pretty anal about it right now, my graph is literally a straight line of 2lbs lost a week for 3/4 of a year now. So relaxing could very well be a problem! =\CarvedTones wrote: »Is there anything really wrong with getting to where you want to be, then stop logging, trying to eyeball stuff for about the right calories, and if u happen to go up 10 lbs above the weight u wanna be, just spend the next month counting and losing it again? That's kinda what i plan to do...
This is exactly the approach I took in the past and I failed to keep the weight down. This time I made my goal be the max, so even though I am below it, I am still losing a few more slowly. What happened to me is that I would get slack about checking the scale often enough and I would find I was already past the limit or maybe really near it and had a vacation or the holidays or whatever coming up and I would decide that right after that I will diet again and then put it off and the next think you know I was so far above that I would start justifying a new higher weight.
I haven't decided yet how the best way to go about it is, perhaps i will set a max and diet if i ever reach that, however idk how hard it is to maintain a low body fat yet so there may not be much wiggle room to slack.
Vacations and holidays are the worst! XD It's hard not to dread them...
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amusedmonkey wrote: »Is there anything really wrong with getting to where you want to be, then stop logging, trying to eyeball stuff for about the right calories, and if u happen to go up 10 lbs above the weight u wanna be, just spend the next month counting and losing it again? That's kinda what i plan to do...
There is nothing wrong with that if it feels like something you would maintain better than calorie counting. Personally, I would rather avoid regaining if that's an option outside of natural fluctuations because knowing me, that would probably lead to a slow creep up. Losing 10 lbs means about 3 months of dieting at this point, and when I'm at maintenance it would mean half a year of dieting just to re-lose. The idea of accepting a slightly higher weight would sound more appealing to me than having to lower my calories again since I don't mind being heavy. So for me personally this wouldn't work, but it might for you.
Are you down to a very low body fat? Does it really take that long to get down that much? I'm at like 18% right now still pretty easily losing 2lbs a week. If that is the case i could definitely see not wanting to slack... We all want those abs!
I'm at a high body fat, but I'm a woman and I like food. With a sedentary maintenance of 1900 calories, I would need to net 900 calories to lose 2lb which isn't gonna happen. At my goal weight, I will be looking at a sedentary maintenance of about 1500-1600 which means no more than 1/2 pound a week.1 -
Is there anything really wrong with getting to where you want to be, then stop logging, trying to eyeball stuff for about the right calories, and if u happen to go up 10 lbs above the weight u wanna be, just spend the next month counting and losing it again? That's kinda what i plan to do...
I have done just this since I've been in maintenance and it has worked for me. 3+ (now going on 4 years) and so far so good. Never have I gone up 10lbs either.1 -
I am pretty sure i will have to log or count calories. The minute i dont is when i loose focus and slowly weight always comes back on. As , I still have a long way to go.0
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Is there anything really wrong with getting to where you want to be, then stop logging, trying to eyeball stuff for about the right calories, and if u happen to go up 10 lbs above the weight u wanna be, just spend the next month counting and losing it again? That's kinda what i plan to do...
I have done just this since I've been in maintenance and it has worked for me. 3+ (now going on 4 years) and so far so good. Never have I gone up 10lbs either.
I am in the process of finding that happy medium now having just stopped logging in January after a little over a year of tracking in Maintenance. I gained a little weight at first, but I am slowly finding my groove in how to eat more mindfully. My hope is that I won’t ever have to count in the app again (though I do loosely track in my head some days).
I find that staying vigilant on the body weight scale and truthful on the internal hunger scale help a lot. Visiting these forums (especially checking in on the weekly Maintenance thread) reinforces good behavior.
Having family members understand and support the transition to mindful eating help, too. My husband has had to step in a couple times with a “you don’t really need that snack do you?” before I started picking up on the internal cues myself.
You can try it - just have to set parameters for success.... and know that you have this as a tool to rely on if things get out of hand.
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Yep. I think I’ll have to track with this app or something similar forever. Or at least, occasionally tracking to make sure I don’t get off track...1
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I think I probably will. I have been "pretty much" in maintenance for almost 3 years now, by that I mean within a 10 lb range (sounds like a big range but after losing ~130 lb I don't think it's too bad). Anyway, I feel like I still don't have great hunger & satiety cues. I could undereat or overeat without realizing it a lot of the time...and of course, overeating would be more common when eating with others and in restaurants. So for me I feel like calorie counting is going to be a long term thing, whether using a site like this or some other method.
I have a handful of tried and true meals that are go-to's (especially for weekdays) and when I'm combining 2-3 of those in most days I do feel like I could stop counting calories and do just fine. They tend to fall right into the calorie goals I have, like 1400 calories split 200/500/700. But for me it's not realistic to eat at home every day and make the same meals every week.
When I go on vacation (a few weeks of each year) I make an effort to eat sensibly but do not count calories. I do think I have gotten lazier with tracking, and sometimes skip a day or two, but for me that's because I kind of "know" I'll stay within my usual range unless I just go nuts with junk (and gain or retain water because of sodium, and feel blah) or skip a lot of meals (and lose too rapidly, and feel shaky and weird).2 -
Are you down to a very low body fat? Does it really take that long to get down that much? I'm at like 18% right now still pretty easily losing 2lbs a week. If that is the case i could definitely see not wanting to slack... We all want those abs!
It took me 22 months to drop from 20+% down to 8.3% BF (as measured by hydro).
Most of my weight loss occurred in the 1st 6 months (196 down to 160). Have been in maintenance for the following 16 months. My weight was fairly constant at 158 +/-3# during the 1st 14 months of the maintenance period but dropped a couple extra pounds in the past 2 months down to 156 which further reduced my BF to 8.3%. The slight increase in my LBM during maintenance also contributed to the decline in BF%.
As a result, I have developed visible abs and a level of muscular definition that I seldom see in others in the gym.
My initial rate of weight loss was quite rapid; as much as 4# a week. I did not plan it that way. It just happened that way and it was not a problem for me. After the initial weight loss, my weight plateaued where I wanted it to plateau due to my ability to balance my calorie intake in conjunction w/my weight lifting and exercise activities.
FYI: Attached below is a copy of my Libra weightloss graph.
All of this should explain why I plan to continue to log and weigh myself daily for the rest of my life.
BTW: Bruce Lee is pictured in my avatar but one of the reasons I chose this pic for my avatar was because I look a lot like he does in the pic. I did post a pic of me a while ago on page 3 of my "Ready to Recomp" thread that you can find here:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10462715/ready-to-recomp/p3
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Yeah, pretty much. Count my calories to stay in shape. Count my money to make sure my budget is on point. Y’know, same principle applies there.5
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Not planning to count the rest of my life, but if I need to then I will1
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I’ve been maintaining for 5 years and don’t bother with calorie counting unless I go over 5 lbs. or I’m changing something in my diet.3
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I'm not sure how long I will count calories, at least until I feel confident about my weight loss. If I have to log for the rest of my life it would be OK.0
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nope! Until I get into the habit and routine of meal prep, eating at home and being consistent with my workouts0
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I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to. Maybe not as dilligently as I do now but I’ll still need to be aware.3
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I keep coming back to one point - if I had to pick a single thing to do that would keep me from repeating the failures of the past, continuing to track would be it. The only other thing that might be in the discussion would be watching the scale closer, but that would likely keep me in a yoyo cycle.4
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Yup.
I balance my checkbook too.
There is absolutely nothing intuitive about weight management - believe otherwise at your peril. At some point I won't be as active as I am today and I will need this tool to maintain.8 -
no. it is a goal of mine to never have to count caloires. i think it is as achievable as losing weight. so.. i choose not to count as a i lose my weight and it is working.2
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Yup. My coaches count calories and macros in order to stay at healthy weights and functionality and they are buff. If they need to, then someone who has a tendency to gain weight should also be mindful of how much and what they are eating.1
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Does anyone have easy ways to estimate the calories without the tracker, especially for the carb sources? I can't keep up this kind of tracking after the first few months, be it for food or finance. I'm especially lazy with food because of the variety of the components, so I thought I should just be careful with the carbs.0
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I wouldnt say I neccesarily plan on doing it my whole life - too far ahead to make such a sweeping statement.
But I do plan to do it for the foreseeable future. Have done it for the 4 years I have been in maintainence and no plans to discontinue.
Having said that, I do have times of not logging at all - eg when on vacation - and all my logging is very "lazy logging" = every banana, mandarine, egg, slice of bread, cappacino etc is the same, I accept foods are the weight the label says they are, I guestimate a lot etc.
Only things i weigh are calorie dense unpackaged things like loose dried fruit, cheese, chocolate.0 -
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Does anyone have easy ways to estimate the calories without the tracker, especially for the carb sources? I can't keep up this kind of tracking after the first few months, be it for food or finance. I'm especially lazy with food because of the variety of the components, so I thought I should just be careful with the carbs.
Why do you feel you need to track and restrict carbs? Do you have a medical need to do so? Weight management comes down to calories. They can come from any combination of macros but in order to lose weight you must be in a calorie deficit and in order to maintain weight you must not eat above your maintenance calories, or TDEE.
why specifically do you feel that logging here or tracking calories is too burdensome? It’s a free site so I’m not sure how financials play into it, and you’re in control of the foods you choose and how much you choose to consume.
If you don’t like to cook, you really don’t have to. You don’t need to eat complicated home cooked meals to lose weight, you just need to be in a calorie deficit.0 -
paperpudding wrote: »I wouldnt say I neccesarily plan on doing it my whole life - too far ahead to make such a sweeping statement.
But I do plan to do it for the foreseeable future. Have done it for the 4 years I have been in maintainence and no plans to discontinue.
Having said that, I do have times of not logging at all - eg when on vacation - and all my logging is very "lazy logging" = every banana, mandarine, egg, slice of bread, cappacino etc is the same, I accept foods are the weight the label says they are, I guestimate a lot etc.
Only things i weigh are calorie dense unpackaged things like loose dried fruit, cheese, chocolate.
This is pretty much my approach. In fact I recently took a two week logging break - the first official one I’ve taken in more than 5 years on this site. I was going on vacation to an all inclusive, followed by Easter and a work trip/Sales Meeting where I knew I would be totally guessing about food intake. I figured it would be a good experiment to see how I felt not logging and what the short term impact would be.
The results - I’m toward the top of my 4 lb maintenance range but also impacted by TOM. I felt ok not logging while I was on my trips but since I also abstained for the last few days I’ve been home I felt off. I missed the comfort of knowing whether I had room for Oreos in my day yesterday, if I was hitting my protein goals, etc.
For me, having the data, even when it’s just a ballpark guess, is reassuring. Today is my first day back in my normal routine - exercise, tracking, etc. I’m looking forward to it and glad I did the experiment to reinforce my theory that I’m going to be a calorie counter for the foreseeable future.2 -
I do because since starting with MFP I've realised that I eat like a sparrow roflol. Before MFP I was getting 80% of my "nutrition" from soft drinks (soda). Ouch.
Edit: My daily goal is 7500kj (to lose 1kg a week) and I struggle to reach that although I'm getting there. I think my stomach shrunk or something from eating mostly just soft drinks and no where near enough solid foods beforehand0 -
Weighing daily and logging have been the easiest part of maintaining for me. After 3 years, all I can say is that it beats that little book Weight Watchers wanted me to use. It keeps me honest, and it is usually eye-opening to see what I have consumed. If MFP folded, for whatever reason, I'd find another app to use. If they started to charge for everything, I'd pay it. It's just so simple! Will I do it for the rest of my life? It is as much a part of my day as other rituals such as brushing my teeth, or putting on clothes.2
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