Why is it hard to maintain weight for years through intuitive eating?

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  • LivingtheLeanDream
    LivingtheLeanDream Posts: 13,342 Member
    edited May 2019
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    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    SuzySunshine99 wrote: »
    I've been maintaining for years without counting/logging. But, from the experience of logging on MFP while I was losing weight, I got an education on portion size, calorie counts, and what foods are/are not worth the calories to me.

    These things are still in my head every day, and while I don't log in the app, I'm still kind of logging in my head. I know my maintenance calories and try to roughly stick to that.

    So, probably "mindful eating" is a good term for this. It's definitely not intuitive...my intuition says to eat all the cookies in the break room.

    Exactly. And yes, I always have a loose tally going in my head.

    and me too, I keep a rough tally in my head (6 yrs in maintenance).
  • stricklee11
    stricklee11 Posts: 218 Member
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    SuzySunshine99 wrote: »
    I've been maintaining for years without counting/logging. But, from the experience of logging on MFP while I was losing weight, I got an education on portion size, calorie counts, and what foods are/are not worth the calories to me.

    These things are still in my head every day, and while I don't log in the app, I'm still kind of logging in my head. I know my maintenance calories and try to roughly stick to that.

    So, probably "mindful eating" is a good term for this. It's definitely not intuitive...my intuition says to eat all the cookies in the break room.

    This is how I hope to be once I hit maintenance. I think this is part of what we learn using MFP/logging calories. If I go to a restaurant that has no calorie count, I can already guestimate which dishes will have more and which ones won't. This is especially true when you use the recipe calorie count option for homemade meals. I also think keeping a daily log teaches us how to tell if we're eating because we're hungry or {FILL IN THE BLANK}. It even teaches us to stop eating when full to "save" calories for later.

    Like OP, I don't want to have to log food in my diary forever. But I do expect to have to continue for at least a year or two after reaching my goal weight.
  • reversemigration
    reversemigration Posts: 168 Member
    edited May 2019
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    This is how I hope to be once I hit maintenance. I think this is part of what we learn using MFP/logging calories. If I go to a restaurant that has no calorie count, I can already guestimate which dishes will have more and which ones won't. This is especially true when you use the recipe calorie count option for homemade meals. I also think keeping a daily log teaches us how to tell if we're eating because we're hungry or {FILL IN THE BLANK}. It even teaches us to stop eating when full to "save" calories for later.

    Like OP, I don't want to have to log food in my diary forever. But I do expect to have to continue for at least a year or two after reaching my goal weight.

    So true. It's also good for thinking about portion sizes when eating out, particularly given how much upward creep there has been over the last few decades. I can reach satiety and quit, rather than just eat it because it happens to be on my plate.
  • staticsplit
    staticsplit Posts: 538 Member
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    I log as guesswork a lot of the time, because I tend to eat sandwiches in cafes, or go out to eat with friends, or whatever. If I can make an informed guess that the tuna melt sandwich I had was probably around 500ish calories, then I know vaguely how much to budget for the rest of the day.

    I logged for like 50 days and then took a little over a week off counting for curiosity's sake. Almost immediately I started shifting back into bad habits--not eating until 1 or 2 pm (which for me is an eating disorder mindset rather than IF per se, it doesn't set me up well mentally), grabbing random fast snacks from the cupboard rather than having something more balanced (having 2 muffins for dinner is fine now and again, but for 3 days in a row?), snacking and nibbling and a couple of quasi-binges. Because I didn't know how much I was eating, in my head I'd start spiralling and thinking I ate 4000 calories, even when I probably didn't.

    Much as calorie counting can be a mild annoyance, I seem to be a lot more even when I'm counting, even if I take a day off here and there or I'm very loose with my logging. It's enough to keep me mindful.
  • HoneyBadger302
    HoneyBadger302 Posts: 2,000 Member
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    I "intuitively" maintained my weight well into my early 30's. Ate what I wanted, when I wanted, and in quantities I wanted. If I was putting on a couple extra pounds, I'd just trim back on the known "bad" things like fast food.

    THEN, I got the "dreaded" (but much better paying) desk job. Done with school, and no more hiking around a campus. Sitting on my bum all day, and still having to go home at night and take care of "life" stuff. Any workouts had to be now added to my day, and were no longer a part of what I was already doing, but ANOTHER thing on my to-do list.

    The weight crept on and up.

    Basically, what it boiled down to, was my appetite and "hunger" levels were well tuned to my (then) active lifestyle. Once I got the professional job and the life that went with it, my activity levels plummeted (comparatively) but my appetite and hunger signals did NOT change.

    In fact, I think they have yet to change....now, I have to keep an eye on things, and if I want to lose, I need to track things, because my body still sends signals that were in line with my old lifestyle, not my current one. "Intuition" doesn't work anymore, that's basically all there is to it for me.
  • DX2JX2
    DX2JX2 Posts: 1,921 Member
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    I'm a little more strict in maintenance than some as I still weigh out my lunch and snacks but beyond that I just keep a running tally of intake in my head. It helps that my maintenance program has been to generally only consume 50% of my maintenance needs through late afternoon (gross of exercise calories).

    This means that I don't usually have to bother counting or tracking anything I eat for dinner/dessert because I have enough calories left to cover whatever, especially once exercise calories are factored into the mix.
  • MadisonMolly2017
    MadisonMolly2017 Posts: 11,136 Member
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    vollkornbloedchen wrote: »
    alondrakar wrote: »
    I don't want to count calories forever.

    I'm quite sure that no one does.
    For me it has been 50 years of (more or less intense) malnutrition, which lead to more than 100 lbs overweight.

    Never expected that my journey would be over as soon as I reached the "goalweight-zone", never expected that 5 decades of "doing it wrong" get miraculously erased and replaced by "intuitively correct".
    After three years of maintaining I finally seem to get a grip ... Don't really trust my body, yet. But it's getting better.
    Hopefully in another two years I will finally be able to switch to (what I call it) "Intuitive counting" ... I will see.

    The only thing I know for sure:
    There is no way I will ever go back to obese. I'd rather count calories for the rest of my life.

    @vollkornbloedchen
    This is a very inspiring quote.
    I want to make sure I understand what you’re doing. Could you explain “intuitively correct”? Is this being mindful of what you eat & tracking all?

    And how does “intuitively correct” differ from “intuitively counting”?

    I have had a similar journey ~50 years obese. I was getting nutrition tho, but way to much of it & was sedentary.

    Down 75, BMI 23

    I track all, weigh daily, exercise significantly daily, and I always eat a big healthy breakfast, and almost no snacks, but the timing & composition Of the 1-2 meals after breakfast vary based on hunger, timing of exercise, and things on my calendar.

    Look forward to learning more about your experiences, methods, and mindsets.

  • Diatonic12
    Diatonic12 Posts: 32,344 Member
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    Speaking in general, intuitive eaters come by it naturally. We all know people who don't have to regard portions or calories. They just know how much they can eat, throw their hands in the air and walk away. We are not magically fixed once the weight is gone. If we had couldn't practice IF before the weight loss, chances are slim we'll be able to do it after the weight loss.
  • vollkornbloedchen
    vollkornbloedchen Posts: 2,243 Member
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    MadisonMolly2017 wrote: »
    I want to make sure I understand what you’re doing. Could you explain “intuitively correct”?
    The OP mentioned "maintaining through intuitive eating". My term “intuitively correct” is just the attempt to use another expression for this and that I did (and do) not expect this to happen by miracle, but that it is going to take time and a lot of discipline and hard work.

    “Intuitively counting” now will be the next big step on my journey.
    It is the point when I can roughly estimate what I will be allowed to eat today by guessing how much calories still are in my budget and how much of these my next meal is going to have, without having to track the whole bunch with MFP.

    I currently am somewhere in between.
    When preparing my meals I take a look in the fridge and try to prepare a meal that comes as close as possible to a value I allow it to have (Lets say 650 calories), without checking in advance.

    In the beginning I more often than not got it totally wrong, nowadays I get it quite well.


    Probably a strange and very complicated way.
    But it works for me and that's all that matters (for me).

    Your way will, most likely, be completely different
  • psychod787
    psychod787 Posts: 4,088 Member
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    I go with the idea that the more rewarding a diet, the easier it is to overeat. I might play with more days of IE once I hopefully recover some more.
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
    edited May 2019
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    She has a history of disordered eating IIRC so her version of IE comes from a past intense focus that would still influence her day to day choices. I am currently flirting with logging intermittently and it's working well. The days I do freestyle it are still absolutely and positively governed by awareness of the kind of calories I'm taking in and expending, even if I didn't write them down or enter them in an app. IE is a fairly useless label, as far as this all goes. What I mean to say is, coming to IE after successfully dieting down just means weaning off the physical act of logging, there's no way to separate what you know from your choices.
  • lalalacroix
    lalalacroix Posts: 834 Member
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    zeejane4 wrote: »
    sijomial wrote: »
    But the options aren't just intuitive eating or calorie counting.

    I eat mindfully, calorie aware but in a general sense rather than a precise sense - I simply don't need precision and food logging. I weigh myself regularly and make adjustments based on trends.

    My assumption would be that this style of conscious eating is more common amongst people who have never been significantly overweight, the demographic on MyFitnessPal isn't entirely representative.

    If I seriously screw up at some stage in the future then counting is of course still there as a tool in my tool box.

    This.

    Op, I've been in maintenance for over 6 years now. In that time I've had periods where I've tracked calorie and then other times where I haven't tracked them. I was looking at my bloodwork/health screenings history earlier today and in the past 5 years (what I have data from), my BMI has fluctuated very little. I keep on track by having a weight management plan in place, that I've created over time through some trial and error.

    -I weigh-in every.single.day-NO exceptions. (I track my weigh-ins on a trending app). There were a few months last year where I got overly confident in myself and stopped the weigh-ins. I promptly re-gained some weight. I know better now

    -I'm mindful of my food choices. I've experimented with various styles of eating (currently playing around with lower carb), but throughout all of that I still am intentional about what I eat. I plan out my day in advance and rarely stray from that plan. I stay away from certain foods that I know I'm not good at moderating. I haven't eliminated any of the foods that I like, but I don't eat some of them daily, or even weekly

    -I pay attention to portion sizes and use my food scale almost every day, along with other measuring utensils

    -I do log periodically over on cronometer, to get an idea of where I'm at. Usually 1-2 times a month

    -I rarely eat breakfast or eat later at night. Setting parameters for when I eat has cut out extra calories that I don't even miss

    This is my weight management plan, yours will be different and tailored to your specific needs. The important thing is to have a plan in place that you can use to keep you on track. That may or may not include daily calorie tracking.

    I'm getting closer to maintenance and have been a bit worried. I just wanted to thank you for your enlightening share because it's given me many things to consider. So thank you. 🙂
  • ceiswyn
    ceiswyn Posts: 2,256 Member
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    GaleHawkins wrote: »
    alondrakar wrote: »
    I'm just looking for thoughts. A watched a video by Natasha Oceane on YT who is a huge advocate of IE. Not going to lie, it is disheartening watching someone eat whatever they want in moderation and know that is something I can't do myself without watching the weight creep back up. I don't want to count calories forever.

    @alondrakar the only way IE works for me (5 years running) is to have a low carb high fat Way Of Eating which I have been doing since 2014 when I was 63 years old. About once a year I will guesstimate my calories but before Google found MFP I had made a commitment to never count calories least I forget how to count someday and get obese again. My family knows the macros I need of automatic weight control to work in my case.

    Obesity is generally preceded by one or more health system failures. Truly healthy people do not become obese the best I can from reading the science. IE does require good general health.

    Cites, please.

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