Why is it hard to maintain weight for years through intuitive eating?
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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.
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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.3
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I used to have a goal of not logging anymore. I changed my mindset instead. It's not that much work to log, and it's so useful to figure out what's going on when I see changes. Almost nothing in our modern lives is "natural." If I lived on a farm commune and was able to sleep as much as I want, maybe.
Logging/tracking and mindfulness can definitely go together, though! You can practice removing all distractions and fully experiencing your meals. You could unplug and not log on the weekends, or one day per week, or one meal per day. I don't log when I have family visiting or I'm on vacation.
Don't let other people's experience make you feel like you're not succeeding. You have no idea what their lives are really like.6 -
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.MadisonMolly2017 wrote: »I want to make sure I understand what you’re doing. Could you explain “intuitively correct”?
“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 different2 -
I overeat because it is pleasurable. I love to sit in front of the TV or with a book in the evening and snack, or grab a sweet during the day just because someone has it easily available. I’m not hungry, it just tastes good and is relaxing. I have to fight this impulse every day while losing. If I stop logging, this impulse takes over again. I tell myself a few snacks are okay, and then that one night of too much snacking is okay, and because the scale does not immediately go up again I keep up the snacking until it becomes a habit again and suddenly my weight is back up. So intellectually I know how to eat intuitively but it’s also REALLY easy to lie to myself and go back into denial about how much I am actually eating.11
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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.1
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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.3
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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. 🙂1 -
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.5 -
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.4 -
Whatever works for you! Kudos to all you intuitive, mindful, tally-in-my-head eaters out there. Of all the ways I've maintained, and it has always involved some effort, calorie counting is by far the easiest, quickest and simplest for me. Cheers :drinker:5
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Whatever works for you! Kudos to all you intuitive, mindful, tally-in-my-head eaters out there. Of all the ways I've maintained, and it has always involved some effort, calorie counting is by far the easiest, quickest and simplest for me. Cheers :drinker:
And I think this needs to be the biggest takeaway-we each need to figure out what works for us individually and then go with that. It's so easy to get pulled in a bunch of different directions but it's important for each of us to take a step back, reflect on what works and what doesn't work for us, and then from that come up with our individualized plan. If we can do that then I believe our chances for long term success will be really good
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I've been on MyFitnessPal for 8 years and on maintenance for 7. I still can't just do this intuitively. It's because my hunger is more than just physical. If I'm at home doing office work, I'm hungry all the time. As soon as I leave the house and become active, hunger ceases even if I haven't eaten. I don't like it but people have far worse problems than that so I don't worry about it.11
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snickerscharlie wrote: »I'm intuitively hungry.
All the time.
This is me. My husband will skip meals if he's involved in something. He simply forgets to eat. He will leave half his dinner on his plate, because he's not in the mood for it or he's had enough. I have never forgotten to eat. I never leave food on my plate. I am always aware of my next meal, planning what I'll have and when. From decades of yoyo dieting experience I know that I can't trust myself to eat just what I need. I get hungry. I get bored. I get tired and eat to give myself energy. The only reason I'm not obese is I enjoy exercise and I've learned to have some discipline about how much I eat. I do use intuitive eating in the sense that when I want a snack, I'll ask myself if I'm actually truly hungry or just bored or unhappy and want to use food to fill the empty places in my heart. Otherwise I've learned that I need to log what I eat so I have a handle on my CI-CO. I've been maintaining for about 5 years since I started with MFP. Logging what I eat has made a big difference in keeping my weight stable. Like someone said above, it keeps me mindful. I choose more wisely when I know I'll be logging a food.5 -
"Intuitive eating" is a foreign phrase to me. If I ate "intuitively" I'd be overweight, OK, let's be real, obese again. While the first 4 years of maintenance were good, year 5 has been a struggle even though I'm still logging and weighing food and myself.
I'm actually up by a pound or two because I've been sloppy about taking bites here and there and not logging those. It's a big mistake for me so I'm dialing that back for more stricter logging. A day never goes by that I don't want ALL the food. But what I really don't want are those almost 50 lbs back. No way can I stop logging and weighing everything.
I'll have to stay on MFP forever or whatever calorie counter is around for the next 30 years of my life (turning 70 this year and planning on getting to 100, ha, ha). It sucks but it's better than ill health in my dotage. Still hitting over 20k steps per day including low impact gym workouts but, not gonna lie, it's hard. I would prefer to just do nothing and eat which is why I had to lose all that weight to begin with. Sigh.11 -
"Intuitive eating" is a foreign phrase to me. If I ate "intuitively" I'd be overweight, OK, let's be real, obese again. While the first 4 years of maintenance were good, year 5 has been a struggle even though I'm still logging and weighing food and myself.
I'm actually up by a pound or two because I've been sloppy about taking bites here and there and not logging those. It's a big mistake for me so I'm dialing that back for more stricter logging. A day never goes by that I don't want ALL the food. But what I really don't want are those almost 50 lbs back. No way can I stop logging and weighing everything.
I'll have to stay on MFP forever or whatever calorie counter is around for the next 30 years of my life (turning 70 this year and planning on getting to 100, ha, ha). It sucks but it's better than ill health in my dotage. Still hitting over 20k steps per day including low impact gym workouts but, not gonna lie, it's hard. I would prefer to just do nothing and eat which is why I had to lose all that weight to begin with. Sigh.
You updated your picture!😁1 -
"Intuitive eating" is a foreign phrase to me. If I ate "intuitively" I'd be overweight, OK, let's be real, obese again. While the first 4 years of maintenance were good, year 5 has been a struggle even though I'm still logging and weighing food and myself.
I'm actually up by a pound or two because I've been sloppy about taking bites here and there and not logging those. It's a big mistake for me so I'm dialing that back for more stricter logging. A day never goes by that I don't want ALL the food. But what I really don't want are those almost 50 lbs back. No way can I stop logging and weighing everything.
I'll have to stay on MFP forever or whatever calorie counter is around for the next 30 years of my life (turning 70 this year and planning on getting to 100, ha, ha). It sucks but it's better than ill health in my dotage. Still hitting over 20k steps per day including low impact gym workouts but, not gonna lie, it's hard. I would prefer to just do nothing and eat which is why I had to lose all that weight to begin with. Sigh.
OMG, this is me. I want all the food. Until I hit my 40s I NEVER had to think about what I ate, I could eat cakes, sweets and fast food whenever I wanted and I was a size 4 through most of my 30s. Suddenly, I have to watch everything and I HATE it.
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I want to say I haven't found it that hard. I combine logging and intuitive eating. I log everything, but by the time I finished losing (9 months), I knew how to eat. I'd always had pretty healthy eating habits. What I learned by logging was which foods had a lot of calories and which didn't. I was 50 when I started and bone ignorant about what really contributed to calories (FAT and then carbs).
I continued to log but it almost never influences individual eating decisions. What I did drift on (guilty guilty guilty) was not paying attention to what my body was telling me. I don't restrict the kinds of food I eat but I do have to watch how much I eat. I know for me, one small piece of cake tastes great and feels fine. A second piece makes me feel gross. When I get off track, it's because I pay attention to the 'more is better' belief and not the 'just because some is good doesn't mean more is better'.
Frankly, it's a lot like drinking. I feel pleasant after one drink but I know better than to have three because I'll feel gross.
To be intuitive though you have to ATTEND and be mindful. Keep doing that and I think you can maintain forever.
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I want to say I haven't found it that hard. I combine logging and intuitive eating. I log everything, but by the time I finished losing (9 months), I knew how to eat. I'd always had pretty healthy eating habits. What I learned by logging was which foods had a lot of calories and which didn't. I was 50 when I started and bone ignorant about what really contributed to calories (FAT and then carbs).
I continued to log but it almost never influences individual eating decisions. What I did drift on (guilty guilty guilty) was not paying attention to what my body was telling me. I don't restrict the kinds of food I eat but I do have to watch how much I eat. I know for me, one small piece of cake tastes great and feels fine. A second piece makes me feel gross. When I get off track, it's because I pay attention to the 'more is better' belief and not the 'just because some is good doesn't mean more is better'.
Frankly, it's a lot like drinking. I feel pleasant after one drink but I know better than to have three because I'll feel gross.
To be intuitive though you have to ATTEND and be mindful. Keep doing that and I think you can maintain forever.
Thank you for a very helpful & inspiring post!0 -
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 is usually my approach as well, though i loosely log every month or so for a week-ish to make sure I’m remembering my portion sizes. If I start creeping out of my maintenance range I will log more strictly until things are back to normal.
Usually breakfast and lunch are one of a handful of similar choices, so I get a rough estimate of how much I can eat for dinner. I’m pretty active, so there’s usually a bit of wiggle room for a handful of indulgences on the weekend. It’s the remembering to keep it to one or two on the weekend and not let it creep into a nightly glass of wine & dessert that’s my constant struggle.
When maintenance logging (not “oh no, things are getting crazy” logging) I tend to log all day and see how much is left for dinner and only log if it’s not a large # (ie, 800+ calories). It’s a good tool to have, especially for after vacation/holidays when normal habits and portions get lax.
I don’t think I’ll ever be 100% log-free....I have a tendency to snack or grab something if I’m hungry (but really I could have just waited 30 minutes for the meal, which I’ll eat in addition to the snack), eat out of the package, etc.
Logging for a while reminds me that my natural habits don’t work well for me and that I can’t eat along with my super skinny husband (who averages 1-1.5 meals a day—so what I see him eating—while I’ve eaten 2 meals and at least one snack before he even eats his first meal of the day).
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