Calorie deniers

estherdragonbat wrote: »

Sorry, but intuitive eating took me to obesity-level III. Calorie counting has taken off 107lbs. And along the way, I've learned the foods that keep me satiated, and pace myself so I don't run out of calories. I'm not sure where you get the idea that those of us who count calories don't want to eat healthy or want to cut out "more tempting foods". I can only speak for myself, but I find ways to eat both, all keeping to a calorie deficit. So far, so good.

And I am so happy that this is working for you! It’s amazing how different people are and somethings may work for you and something don’t work for others. I’m simply stating what research shows. Personally, I have lost weight by calorie counting. I haven’t been able to fully commit to an intuitive eating lifestyle.

learners0permit wrote: »

L1zardQueen wrote: »

koppimaggie wrote: »

I think calorie counting is another form of dieting. It may work short term, but research doesn’t show it to be sustainable for long term weight loss.

How so? Lots of long term successful people here on MFP.

I’m more speaking of what research shows. I’m not sure the statistics of how many people keep off the weight for 5+ years just on this app.

Research shows around a 20% success rate for all forms of weight loss per attempt.

That's a better success rate than smoking cessation per attempt. Ponder that.

learners0permit wrote: »

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

learners0permit wrote: »

L1zardQueen wrote: »

koppimaggie wrote: »

I think calorie counting is another form of dieting. It may work short term, but research doesn’t show it to be sustainable for long term weight loss.

How so? Lots of long term successful people here on MFP.

I’m more speaking of what research shows. I’m not sure the statistics of how many people keep off the weight for 5+ years just on this app.

Research shows around a 20% success rate for all forms of weight loss per attempt.

That's a better success rate than smoking cessation per attempt. Ponder that.

I’m not sure where you’re getting your research from? I’m finding a 5+ pound weight gain from their original weight after each diet a person goes on after about a year. I’m not denying weight loss methods short term, but long term.

There's a fair amount of information at the National Weight Control Registry:

http://www.nwcr.ws/

kimny72 wrote: »

learners0permit wrote: »

janejellyroll wrote: »

koppimaggie wrote: »

I think calorie counting is another form of dieting. It may work short term, but research doesn’t show it to be sustainable for long term weight loss.

Given how daunting the statistics on long term weight loss are, what do you determine has been found to be sustainable?

Intuitive eating is the seemingly best approach to a healthy life. While a diet focuses on weight, inituive eating focuses on healing an unhealthy relationship with food. This means no denying yourself food when you’re hungry, even if you’ve “run out of calories for the day”, but it also means choosing healthy foods most of the time, and those more tempting foods sometimes. There’s plenty of books if you’re sick of dieting and want to look at a long term approach to loving and honoring your body!

That sounds a heck of a lot like how I got 20 lbs overweight in the first place

I didn't have an unhealthy relationship with food. I just ate a little bit too much, every day, over 10 years or so. Calorie counting helped me stop eating that little bit extra. It helped me see where I was wasting calories. It helped me see I was accidentally eating pretty low protein, and sometimes low fiber. It made it easier to correct that.

I was hardly ever hungry while I was losing weight here. And I eat much "healthier" now that I can see everything in black & white.

I don't have an intuitive relationship with my bank account either. I have to keep track of that stuff or drift off course.

I think we may be losing sight of what intuitive eating is. Look at children, if you give them options to healthy foods and unhealthy foods throughout their childhood they will chose what they need to grow. They will also eat as much as they are hungry for and not much more. This is the basis of intuitive eating. While intuitive eating sounds like an easy concept to grasp, it’s not when you’ve disabled yourself from listening to your body.

learners0permit wrote: »

janejellyroll wrote: »

koppimaggie wrote: »

I think calorie counting is another form of dieting. It may work short term, but research doesn’t show it to be sustainable for long term weight loss.

Given how daunting the statistics on long term weight loss are, what do you determine has been found to be sustainable?

Intuitive eating is the seemingly best approach to a healthy life. While a diet focuses on weight, inituive eating focuses on healing an unhealthy relationship with food. This means no denying yourself food when you’re hungry, even if you’ve “run out of calories for the day”, but it also means choosing healthy foods most of the time, and those more tempting foods sometimes. There’s plenty of books if you’re sick of dieting and want to look at a long term approach to loving and honoring your body!

"Seemingly" is a pretty important word in there.

Who says calorie counters deny themselves food when they're hungry? And in what way are "healthy foods" not "more tempting"? And if healthy/tempting are opposites, why would someone practicing "intuitive eating" choose healthy foods over tempting ones: Pursuing pleasure is pretty intuitive for me, though maybe I'm just extra weak.

The last time someone argued with me speaking against calorie counting because of what was in "plenty of books"** she was still fat, and I was already thin, after decades of obesity. It's been a couple of years since that conversation. AFAIK, she's still fat, and I'm still at a healthy weight 3 years after losing weight, and still counting calories. (** She said she'd read "all" of the books all Winter, and they all said we have to cut carbs in order to lose weight).

If I'm extra hungry, I eat, even if I've "run out of calories for the day". Same if I'm low on some nutrients I figure are important. The books have to balance, broadly, over a period of time. I think you're visualizing us a bunch of calorie misers in a garret, hoarding our little carefully-counted calories, when it's really more like working in a common-sense way within a known budget, instead of blowing your whole paycheck on Louis Vuitton or something.

Keep in mind that "diet" has at least two meanings in English. One is "the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats" (credit: Oxford Dictionaries).

And I'm pretty happy with my body, and honoring myself is no problem (both of which were already true when I was obese, BTW).

edited: missing word, typo

learners0permit wrote: »

kimny72 wrote: »

learners0permit wrote: »

janejellyroll wrote: »

koppimaggie wrote: »

I think calorie counting is another form of dieting. It may work short term, but research doesn’t show it to be sustainable for long term weight loss.

Given how daunting the statistics on long term weight loss are, what do you determine has been found to be sustainable?

Intuitive eating is the seemingly best approach to a healthy life. While a diet focuses on weight, inituive eating focuses on healing an unhealthy relationship with food. This means no denying yourself food when you’re hungry, even if you’ve “run out of calories for the day”, but it also means choosing healthy foods most of the time, and those more tempting foods sometimes. There’s plenty of books if you’re sick of dieting and want to look at a long term approach to loving and honoring your body!

That sounds a heck of a lot like how I got 20 lbs overweight in the first place

I didn't have an unhealthy relationship with food. I just ate a little bit too much, every day, over 10 years or so. Calorie counting helped me stop eating that little bit extra. It helped me see where I was wasting calories. It helped me see I was accidentally eating pretty low protein, and sometimes low fiber. It made it easier to correct that.

I was hardly ever hungry while I was losing weight here. And I eat much "healthier" now that I can see everything in black & white.

I don't have an intuitive relationship with my bank account either. I have to keep track of that stuff or drift off course.

I think we may be losing sight of what intuitive eating is. Look at children, if you give them options to healthy foods and unhealthy foods throughout their childhood they will chose what they need to grow. They will also eat as much as they are hungry for and not much more. This is the basis of intuitive eating. While intuitive eating sounds like an easy concept to grasp, it’s not when you’ve disabled yourself from listening to your body.

Hunger cues do work with children if you don't keep them to set meal times. I raised my own children that way. That takes care of how much they intuitively eat. As far as *what* they intuitively eat? Kids need a bit of gentle guidance in that area. My kids have been known to turn down cookies and stop at half a cookie if they weren't hungry because we didn't restrict them, but getting them to eat veggies was a struggle. They didn't intuitively eat them.

However, back to hunger signals... they can be irreparably broken. The idea that your body has some intelligence of its own and that you are getting in the way of its greater wisdom is the highest form of denial of your own intelligence. I have a brain and can apply it to dealing with the matter of my broken hunger cues, my emotional issues with food, and learning how to have better habits with food. I do this using knowledge. I don't give my body mastery over me, I take mastery over my body.

(edited to clarify some things about kids)

estherdragonbat wrote: »

learners0permit wrote: »

kimny72 wrote: »

learners0permit wrote: »

janejellyroll wrote: »

koppimaggie wrote: »

I think calorie counting is another form of dieting. It may work short term, but research doesn’t show it to be sustainable for long term weight loss.

Given how daunting the statistics on long term weight loss are, what do you determine has been found to be sustainable?

Intuitive eating is the seemingly best approach to a healthy life. While a diet focuses on weight, inituive eating focuses on healing an unhealthy relationship with food. This means no denying yourself food when you’re hungry, even if you’ve “run out of calories for the day”, but it also means choosing healthy foods most of the time, and those more tempting foods sometimes. There’s plenty of books if you’re sick of dieting and want to look at a long term approach to loving and honoring your body!

That sounds a heck of a lot like how I got 20 lbs overweight in the first place

I didn't have an unhealthy relationship with food. I just ate a little bit too much, every day, over 10 years or so. Calorie counting helped me stop eating that little bit extra. It helped me see where I was wasting calories. It helped me see I was accidentally eating pretty low protein, and sometimes low fiber. It made it easier to correct that.

I was hardly ever hungry while I was losing weight here. And I eat much "healthier" now that I can see everything in black & white.

I don't have an intuitive relationship with my bank account either. I have to keep track of that stuff or drift off course.

I think we may be losing sight of what intuitive eating is. Look at children, if you give them options to healthy foods and unhealthy foods throughout their childhood they will chose what they need to grow. They will also eat as much as they are hungry for and not much more. This is the basis of intuitive eating. While intuitive eating sounds like an easy concept to grasp, it’s not when you’ve disabled yourself from listening to your body.

Nope. They'll trade their healthy muffins and lean protein sandwiches for cupcakes and fluffernutter. They'll blow their allowance on Twinkies in vending machines. They go for what tastes good. Mom rarely gave me a snack in my lunch that wasn't fruit. So, I'd mooch; I'd spend my allowance; I'd go overboard at birthday parties. Because I wanted what the other kids were having. I wanted to fit in. And I'm sorry, but a Mars Bar tastes a lot better than an apple.

This is my experience as well. I have raised 4 children into adults and not a single one of them would choose veggies/fruit over a sugary snack 99 times out of a 100. They would only choose the 'healthy' snack if one of the adults was around.

learners0permit wrote: »

I think calorie counting is another form of dieting. It may work short term, but research doesn’t show it to be sustainable for long term weight loss.

It stops working if you stop doing it (aka why I gained back the 10 lbs I lost four years ago). If you do it every day it works. But the good news is that unlike many other diets, it doesn't require giving up entire food groups for the rest of your life, or anything extreme like that. It just requires measuring, and spending five minutes a day tracking or meal planning, to make sure you don't accidentally eat more than you intended to (which is very easy to do).