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

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  • zeejane4
    zeejane4 Posts: 230 Member
    edited May 2019
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    ahoy_m8 wrote: »
    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 :)
  • psychod787
    psychod787 Posts: 4,088 Member
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    Trina2040 wrote: »
    "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!😁
  • whmscll
    whmscll Posts: 2,254 Member
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    Trina2040 wrote: »
    "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.
  • nxd10
    nxd10 Posts: 4,570 Member
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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.
  • MadisonMolly2017
    MadisonMolly2017 Posts: 10,987 Member
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    nxd10 wrote: »
    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!
  • gradchica27
    gradchica27 Posts: 777 Member
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    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 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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