Calorie counting vs. Intuitive eating.

Chunkahlunkah wrote: »

So if intuitive eating doesn't work for you...At which point do you think it's off? I tend to think that people have their own set appetite. So if your appetite is an amount of calories that with a "light/moderate" level of activity equals an overweight number, then intuitive eating can't work for maintaining a healthy weight. (Unless you can up your activity *and* not experience an increased appetite that outweighs the additional burn.) That's a tough hand!

Do some of you feel like you naturally have a large appetite? Or for you, is it more eating when not hungry and eating past fullness that takes its toll? Or something else?

I don't get the "you're full/satiated/whatever you want to call it" signal until well past when I should. So, I need to make sure I only put the right amount of food on my plate because if I put too much food on the plate, it'll get eaten.

Chunkahlunkah wrote: »

I find these different answers very interesting. Intuitive eating has generally worked for me for maintenance because I'd eat when I'm hungry, and then I'd stop when I'm starting to feel full. I'm lucky because the point when I feel full happens to be the amount of calories needed to maintain my weight (so long as I'm at least "lightly active"). I'd eat like that maybe 90% of the time. The other 10%, I'd eat when not really hungry or eat past fullness. It didn't do enough damage overall, I guess, to alter my weight much.

So if intuitive eating doesn't work for you...At which point do you think it's off? I tend to think that people have their own set appetite. So if your appetite is an amount of calories that with a "light/moderate" level of activity equals an overweight number, then intuitive eating can't work for maintaining a healthy weight. (Unless you can up your activity *and* not experience an increased appetite that outweighs the additional burn.) That's a tough hand!

Do some of you feel like you naturally have a large appetite? Or for you, is it more eating when not hungry and eating past fullness that takes its toll? Or something else?

Not to hijack. I could start a separate thread about this, OP, if you'd like. I'm just really curious to learn about what it's like not being able to rely on IE and why that is.

First of all my actual hunger signals are erratic and bear more relation to habit than to actual need for food. When I'm habitually eating more, I get hungrier. When I'm habitually eating less, I get less so. Just now I habitually have lunch at 12, so I get hungry at 12. In past years I used to eat lunch at 1, and that's when the hunger started.

Obviously I also get more hungry if I undereat or eat things that aren't filling, but the basic hunger signal is not that reliable. And at the other end of the scale, I will stop feeling hunger at times when I really need to eat, ie I am feeling faint or nauseous from not eating.

So I don't trust hunger signals. My granny and Auntie were also significantly overweight, so I believe there's a genetic component to this. I've inherited an unreliable appetite. It's not environmental in my case, as my parents and brothers do not tend to the same problem and were all normal weight as I was growing up. They have all become a bit overweight as they got older, but in a much more limited way - overweight but never obese, normal middle aged spread - whereas I was overweight early on and obese from my early thirties.

The other aspect of it is psychological, or philosophical. I've never liked the phrase "eat to live" or "food is fuel". To me it seems a bit like saying sex is only for procreation and art exists to cover holes in the plaster. I love food. It isn't just fuel, and I could never see it that way. It's a profound joy, a sensual pleasure. To me, intuitive eating means cutting off that whole aspect of food and transitioning to a mindset which ignores the pleasure aspect and never allows me to eat something just because it is delicious, without also having the excuse of being hungry. And that idea makes me sad. It's not just a question of whether I can make that change - it's a question of whether I want to.

I started at more than 300 pounds. I'm dropping about half my weight. It's not possible for me to intuitively eat nearly half the calories I've been eating for most of my adult life. How people eat intuitively depends on several factors including, but not limited, to their well rooted eating habits. People feel real physical hunger at higher than appropriate calorie levels if they are used to eating a lot, and that's only the physical part of it, on which intuitive eating often focuses.

Like @CattOfTheGarage, I believe food is more than fuel and it always has been. Otherwise, culinary arts and food rituals wouldn't have developped. I don't want to feel bad for eating something I want when I'm not hungry. I tried that, and it was as limiting for me as restriction diets. It sucked the joy out of food, and food is a joy for me.

I do employ some parts of intuitive eating, but it works more like an adjunct not a replacement for calorie counting. Sometimes when I'm not hungry and don't have any particular food wishes, I allow myself to have a low calorie day. It works nicely because there will always be another day where I'm more hungry and/or want something particularly calorific, so I can use these extra calories there.

They key for me is to use an assortment of strategies and not depend on just one. Calorie counting alone without attention to satiety wouldn't work for me. Intuitive eating without calorie counting wouldn't work. Restricting certain foods sometimes because I need to make that choice for the day works, restricting foods as a rule doesn't. Being hungry sometimes is okay for me (a big no for intuitive eating), but other times it's not. I sometimes go through phases of intermittent fasting because it's fitting at the time, but I don't stubbornly try to uphold the rule when it's not fitting. There are days where skipping meals gives me an advantage for calorie control, and days where skipping them sabotages my efforts. There are weeks where a strict calorie number with a known loss prediction gives me structure, but there are weeks where I need to focus on something else so I keep my calorie goal flexible setting it to maintenance and being happy to achieve any kind of deficit with a variable unpredictable weekly loss. Sometimes I do stop logging for some maintenance breaks, but I keep weighing myself daily and have a very low calorie fast day if my weight goes even slightly above a predetermined number.

Basically, I'm more for intuitive strategy deployment based on the situation than intuitive eating on its own. I just have enough experience by now to know what feels easiest for me in most situations.

I don't think I will need to count, measure, and track when I get to where I want to be. Even though I still want to lose some lbs, I do now stop eating when I'm full, which is not necessarily what I counted out or have on my plate. I'll just establish a maintenance range and use that, I think. Calorie counting was helpful to me in the beginning because it reigned me in regarding portions, made me more conscious of the quality of my food / nutrition, and it made me see that sometimes I ate because I was stressed out or even bored. But I don't think I will need the meal-by-meal monitoring to maintain in terms of measuring cups and a food scale.

Chunkahlunkah wrote: »

I find these different answers very interesting. Intuitive eating has generally worked for me for maintenance because I'd eat when I'm hungry, and then I'd stop when I'm starting to feel full. I'm lucky because the point when I feel full happens to be the amount of calories needed to maintain my weight (so long as I'm at least "lightly active"). I'd eat like that maybe 90% of the time. The other 10%, I'd eat when not really hungry or eat past fullness. It didn't do enough damage overall, I guess, to alter my weight much.

So if intuitive eating doesn't work for you...At which point do you think it's off? I tend to think that people have their own set appetite. So if your appetite is an amount of calories that with a "light/moderate" level of activity equals an overweight number, then intuitive eating can't work for maintaining a healthy weight. (Unless you can up your activity *and* not experience an increased appetite that outweighs the additional burn.) That's a tough hand!

Do some of you feel like you naturally have a large appetite? Or for you, is it more eating when not hungry and eating past fullness that takes its toll? Or something else?

Not to hijack. I could start a separate thread about this, OP, if you'd like. I'm just really curious to learn about what it's like not being able to rely on IE and why that is.

I think it is more complicated than feeling full. There is an interpretation of the way your body is feeling that may be false.
I was sleep deprived and had headaches for years. I felt better when I ate something so I concluded that I was probably feeling hungry and should eat more. That interpretation of the feeling was wrong. I really needed more sleep or to drink more water not eat more food. I was never a binge eater but it doesn't take a lot of extra food every day to gain weight when you are sedentary.
If I see the calorie numbers in my food diary I can say to myself that yes I have eaten enough, drink some water, wait 20 minutes and move on. I'm not guessing if I am hungry or not. I'm not undereating or overeating.

Chunkahlunkah wrote: »

So if intuitive eating doesn't work for you...At which point do you think it's off? I tend to think that people have their own set appetite. So if your appetite is an amount of calories that with a "light/moderate" level of activity equals an overweight number, then intuitive eating can't work for maintaining a healthy weight. (Unless you can up your activity *and* not experience an increased appetite that outweighs the additional burn.) That's a tough hand!

I would eat until I'm sick. And have done so, repeatedly. I don't trust my body's signals - they tell me to eat and eat. Perhaps I could do some exercises to try to recalibrate, but to be brutally honest I'm not interested in doing that.

endlessfall16 wrote: »

It's futile to match appetite with hunger. My "intuitive eating" is that, when I need to cut back, I just eat enough to feel ok with my hunger (not the same as to feel full). Overweight comes from a lot of time eating for fun and eating past this "I am ok with this hunger feeling" point. Feeling fullness most of the time you eat is way too much since it can take a lot to feel full.

endlessfall16 wrote: »

I eat like that and plan to do that for the rest of my life to not gain weight as the first goal. I'm already within my healthy weight range and feel no urgent to lose much more but generally if I can try a bit harder to create more deficit -- lose 5-10 lbs over months, good for holidays, that's never a bad thing.

@endlessfall16 I'm fascinated by this! It's so different from how I experience hunger. When I'm maintaining, I truly do feel full each time I eat. Not stuffed, but a "starting to get full" feeling. The distance between that feeling and being uncomfortably full isn't that far for me, so it's like a built-in check against overeating. It doesn't feel good to eat too much, so I don't. And when I did overeat, what would usually happen is my body would send out "less hungry" signals for a day or so after, so I'd eat less those days.

What you describe reminds me so much of my brother! He was progessively overweight/obese/morbidly obese from the ages of 10-20. He started losing weight when he was around 19. In about 2 years, he'd lost over 100 pounds. He's kept it off for almost 15 years now. Not long ago we were talking about hunger and eating, and he said something similar to you. He doesn't eat until he's full, because the point when he starts to feel full would be far too many calories and would cause him to gain weight. Instead, he eats what he's learned is the amount of food that creates the weight he wants.

That experience is profoundly different from mine. I get impatient with "normal" weight people who act like losing and maintaining weight should be easy for the obese. They're extending their own experience of hunger/satiety signals. Maintaining a healthy weight is more challenging, imo, when it's about eating "intellectually" (i.e., "I know this is the amount I need to eat for my weight") than when it's about eating "intuitively" or viscerally (mindless because the body tells you stop eating). The intellectual method requires constant vigilance. Or, if not vigilance, at least a constant adherence to self-constructed habits.

Thanks to everyone who responded to my inquiry. Thoughtful responses, each that I'd like to respond to. Right now I'm behind on a deadline though and need to attend to that first. I really need to develop better time management skills. It might sound odd, but I'm taking inspiration from you guys and have decided I must take a "doing what works" mindset towards time management. Left to my own devices, I procrastinate way too much. My mind's reaction to "time pressure" appears to be dulled, with it not really kicking in until very late in the game!

Chunkahlunkah wrote: »

endlessfall16 wrote: »

It's futile to match appetite with hunger. My "intuitive eating" is that, when I need to cut back, I just eat enough to feel ok with my hunger (not the same as to feel full). Overweight comes from a lot of time eating for fun and eating past this "I am ok with this hunger feeling" point. Feeling fullness most of the time you eat is way too much since it can take a lot to feel full.

endlessfall16 wrote: »

I eat like that and plan to do that for the rest of my life to not gain weight as the first goal. I'm already within my healthy weight range and feel no urgent to lose much more but generally if I can try a bit harder to create more deficit -- lose 5-10 lbs over months, good for holidays, that's never a bad thing.

@endlessfall16 I'm fascinated by this! It's so different from how I experience hunger. When I'm maintaining, I truly do feel full each time I eat. Not stuffed, but a "starting to get full" feeling. The distance between that feeling and being uncomfortably full isn't that far for me, so it's like a built-in check against overeating. It doesn't feel good to eat too much, so I don't. And when I did overeat, what would usually happen is my body would send out "less hungry" signals for a day or so after, so I'd eat less those days.

What you describe reminds me so much of my brother! He was progessively overweight/obese/morbidly obese from the ages of 10-20. He started losing weight when he was around 19. In about 2 years, he'd lost over 100 pounds. He's kept it off for almost 15 years now. Not long ago we were talking about hunger and eating, and he said something similar to you. He doesn't eat until he's full, because the point when he starts to feel full would be far too many calories and would cause him to gain weight. Instead, he eats what he's learned is the amount of food that creates the weight he wants.

That experience is profoundly different from mine. I get impatient with "normal" weight people who act like losing and maintaining weight should be easy for the obese. They're extending their own experience of hunger/satiety signals. Maintaining a healthy weight is more challenging, imo, when it's about eating "intellectually" (i.e., "I know this is the amount I need to eat for my weight") than when it's about eating "intuitively" or viscerally (mindless because the body tells you stop eating). The intellectual method requires constant vigilance. Or, if not vigilance, at least a constant adherence to self-constructed habits.

So, how many of the meals that you truly feel full do you have in a day? And how many days in a week? This number is important though.

I only eat large, carefree meals on Friday, Sat, Sun and Thursday lunch. These meals are large but short of making me sick, of course. In the other time I eat "artificially" to get rid of uncomfortable hunger.

Unlike many people, I do not look for any kind of hunger/full signal. I rely on my thinking and reasoning. If I have a very large meal on Sunday night, there's no way I can get into any health issue from eating too little on Monday.

Getting rid of the hunger feeling in short term can be easily done, too. A simple sandwich or a couple of hard boiled eggs will sooth the hunger for a few hours, but intellectually I know that it's not enough if I am to do heavy activities. If I'm worried I can always bring along a couple trail mix bars. Bottom line: no need to get full every meal; no signal necessary.

"The intellectual method requires constant vigilance. Or, if not vigilance, at least a constant adherence to self-constructed habits."

Interesting that you think so. Maybe for the first few weeks when I was still discovering the rough estimate of the amount of my eating that equalizes my activities, I needed to be conscious of the meals and meal time. But now it is default that I eat light on Monday, Tue, Wed and so on. I don't need to think about it. My body isn't asking, per conditioning, like you are conditioned not to get up at 1am to grill a steak or a breakfast skipper not eating in the morning.

The amount of calorie consumption and expenditure don't have to be precise. I can err in either direction a little. So what. If I see that I gain a lb or two (over the course of weeks), I just need to reduce my full meals a little (or skip one) and that should be enough. There's no adverse effect on the body when the weight fluctuates within a few lbs.

JustDoIt987 wrote: »

I know that many of us are here because intuitive eating does not work for us ( eating whatever you want when hungry and stopping when full ) and I agree , calorie counting is great and I lost weight easily , BUT do you guys really do it for the rest of your lives ? Checking out restaurants menus, thinking about calories etc? I am maintaining now and I literally spend 85% of my day thinking about calories / food. I get nervous when I cant find calories of a particular restaurant online and make a big deal out of it. I am thinking about switching to intuitive eating
What works for you guys ? Intuitive eating or calorie counting ?

I think you should do it. This is exactly where I’m at right. I was thinking about food every moment of my life and that can’t be healthy. You can do both if you think that would be better. However, I know I don’t want to track calories my whole life

I failed in the past with intuitive eating. I am only two months into maintenance after a 64 pound loss, but so far I have continued tracking like I was when losing. At some point maybe I will try watching the scale and only counting when necessary but not too soon. I do have a pretty good handle on common foods I eat and would probably mentally count calories roughly if I were to try not logging. But I am not risking it in the near future. Too many times I have failed at maintenance.

Intuitive eating doesnt work for me because I'm always hungry. I have tried to just eat in moderation and have gained weight over the years.

CSARdiver wrote: »

Calorie counting. Just as I don't know anyone with wealth who doesn't live by a budget I don't know of anyone who is in top shape and does not manage calories/exercise.

There are too many variables for this to be intuitive.

^^ well put!

neugebauer52 wrote: »

I do not trust calories advertised on restaurant menus. Food suppliers change, kitchen staff changes, kitchen scales are not always used for every single meal portion. And than there are those add - ons. A little extra sauce here, some "creamy" salad dressing there, a couple of extra olives with the appetizer - and a couple of hundred calories later...

I agree the calories on menus are generally underestimated. It's a good starting point, though. You know for sure that skinny-sounding salad isn't going to be less than the shocking 900 calories listed on the menu

sardelsa wrote: »

CSARdiver wrote: »

Calorie counting. Just as I don't know anyone with wealth who doesn't live by a budget I don't know of anyone who is in top shape and does not manage calories/exercise.

There are too many variables for this to be intuitive.

Does tracking my weight in a trend app count or are you referring to calorie management in the form of tracking and logging?

I am an non-tracking bulker/cutter.. I did track for my first bulk but since then I've done it just by feel and using my weight as reference. Not gaining enough, eat more. Gaining too much, eat less.

I will say, what I do is very rare though and is typically not recommended especially for someone starting out.

ETA: Unless of course I don't fit your criteria for top shape

Of course. There are several methods to achieving the same goal and there is no superior method other than the one that works for you.

Borrowing from the financial analogy if you're pulling in a high income and have spending under control you've essentially developed habits that make saving seem intuitive whether or not you consciously implemented these. Just as people who devote time to fitness are ensuring their deficit/maintenance is achieved by providing another positive feedback loop.

I'm a very lazy logger and eyeball many of my entries, but as I originally logged in great detail I know if I'm off an oz on lean chicken breast it isn't going to matter much in my budget. As long as I hit my weight and bodyfat % goals I can slack off other details.