Getting burnt out counting calories?
dvoncino
Posts: 3 Member
Does anyone else start losing their motivation to count calories? Like after a month I start cutting corners - start trying to "memorize" my calorie count for the day.
Any solutions?
Any solutions?
1
Replies
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Your body doesn't know or care whether you log calories. Your body just knows what you put into it, and how much you move. If you are making progress while not logging your calories, that's fine. But, for me and I suspect many others here, we need to keep track. Because not keeping track is what got us where we were before we started MFP.11
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I've been logging for more than 3.5 years. I does get easier when MFP knows your frequent foods and you've saved Meals/Recipes. I wouldn't mind less hassle, but on the other hand that is the first approach I've found that truly works for me (75lbs lost) so that's a price I'm willing to pay to feel so much lighter/healthier/more fit.
As the poster above me said, you don't have to count calories. Or you can count calories less precisely. But if you notice you aren't making progress anymore, you might want to re-evaluate.5 -
Motivation: don't count on it. It's about developing habits. A month isn't long enough to really develop a habit. A common analogy is brushing your teeth; are you motivated to brush your teeth? No? Do you do it anyway? Well, sure, because it's a habit you developed.
Logging your food can be similar. There's a number of strategies to make it easier until it sticks. I carry a pocket notebook and a pen. If I don't want to enter something right away, I can jot down a note and enter it later. Over time, and precisely because I weigh things I use on a food scale when I'm at home, I have calibrated my eyes to make reasonably good estimates when I'm out. I will always need to keep my eyes in calibration, so I'll always use my food scale at home.
If after a few months you decide logging food isn't for you, then there are other tools. You can track your daily weight and/or your measurements. If you find the scale is going up or your waist is getting bigger, you'll have to find some way, other than logging, to reduce your intake. The trouble is, the damage will already have started. If you're good about tracking what you eat every day, you'll expect the scale to go up after several days of eating over your budget, and you'll know exactly what to do about it.6 -
You get somewhat of a feel for what you’re taking in calorie wise after you’ve been counting for awhile and how those calories affect you and your body composition. The thing with counting is it keeps you accountable.4
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Is the issue about the mental regimen of counting, or the time it takes to enter stuff in MFP? Because if it's the latter, it's only a few minutes per day for me. My regular meals are saved, my recent foods are frequently used, and the majority of the time it's just a quick cut and paste to enter today's inputs. If it's the former, well that's part of the journey. If you want results, it helps to be accountable to yourself.4
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@Retroguy2000 - It is more of the latter. For foods I eat all the time, I agree it is easy to enter into MFP. When I have a more "complicated" meal (like at a restaurant) or a totally new food, going through the process of finding it on MFP and recording it properly does burn me out over time. Additionally, I do snack quite a bit. I know snacks add up so I want to record them. But constantly adding every thing little thing into MFP is somewhat draining.
I'm really just curious if anyone has been able to reduce some of the friction here.0 -
I prefer to prelog my meals every day, usually the night before. I get all the logging done at once, then if it's in my Diary I eat it. If not, I can decide if I want the hassle of going back in and updating my diary or (what usually happens...) choose not to eat the food. Win-win for me.2
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As far as restaurants you won’t be able to be super accurate so just get it close and not worry about it. Some places list the calories though. Try to err on the high side rather than the low side if they don’t list the calories.@Retroguy2000 - It is more of the latter. For foods I eat all the time, I agree it is easy to enter into MFP. When I have a more "complicated" meal (like at a restaurant) or a totally new food, going through the process of finding it on MFP and recording it properly does burn me out over time. Additionally, I do snack quite a bit. I know snacks add up so I want to record them. But constantly adding every thing little thing into MFP is somewhat draining.
I'm really just curious if anyone has been able to reduce some of the friction here.
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TL/dr: I hear you saying that the tool you're using, logging, is acting as an inhibition and forcing you to limit your eating out and the variety of novel food you're consuming.
From where i am sitting, you are describing a feature. Not a bug.
Take pictures. Log a generic amount you believe is correct based on the pictures. Call it a day. You can also pre-bag and even pre-record certain snacks.
HOWEVER: If this "loose" logging method proves to be insufficient for you in terms of continuing to meet your goals, then re-consider the benefit of inhibition associated with more precise logging.
Verbiage: So... many of us on MFP have an affinity to over-eating. And many of us on MFP are trying to do something which, let's face it, our bodies actually would rather we do not do: consistently eat less than we burn.
It is surprising, to me, a number of years after major weight loss, how, if I am absolutely calm about it and manage to exclude other issues, my body will actually convince me to eat to maintenance day in and day out.
There is a problem though if I eat to maintenance day in and day out without adding days of under-eating.
When I'm tired, cold, pissed off, agitated, somewhat sad, perturbed, or if I am really enjoying the taste, the company, the plethora of new taste sensations, I over-eat! "Oh, I'll just have that extra tempura prawn, the previous one was sooooo good and it's just sitting there" Wow: ice cream: well, I am not really hungry right now and I could walk away from the table; but it looks so yummy, and tastes yummy: mmmmm.
You know the people who the waiter asks: "room for desert"? And they look at her and say: Oh, that's OK, I'm not hungry right now? Or leave uneaten a quarter of a plate of food they say they enjoyed and liked and thought it was tasty? They are NOT me!
People starting out on MFP and asking how to lose weight? I often tell them: Just LOG your food, BEFORE you open your mouth to put it in there. By weight. By verified entry. Correctly. Every lick. Every taste. Every single bite. BEFORE you put it in your mouth. Even if it means the food will be cold when you do so. And I guarantee you will lose weight.
Why you ask? It is called INHIBITION.
By increasing your personal cost of food consumption you're separating out the food that is of real value to you from what isn't. Thus reducing the consumption.
PS : this does not mean that logging by scale and weight is some onerous painful super time consuming task that one grudgingly engages on. It also does not mean that there are no other strategies. For example on a couple of vacations where every single meal involved eating out I did not log but used other methods to keep to a reasonable caloric intake.12 -
@Retroguy2000 - It is more of the latter. For foods I eat all the time, I agree it is easy to enter into MFP. When I have a more "complicated" meal (like at a restaurant) or a totally new food, going through the process of finding it on MFP and recording it properly does burn me out over time. Additionally, I do snack quite a bit. I know snacks add up so I want to record them. But constantly adding every thing little thing into MFP is somewhat draining.
I'm really just curious if anyone has been able to reduce some of the friction here.
Different people find different styles of logging easier and more natural. Some people find logging to not be the right tool for them.
You'll need to figure out what route works best for you to get to your goals, and take responsibility for both finding and implementing it. There is no alternative to that . . . other than giving up your goals. There's no magic, just boring old "taking responsibility". I wish it were otherwise.
I agree with others that logging is a more complicated skill than many appreciate. There's a learning curve, and there will be more mistakes at first, and it will take longer at first. That's how learning works, right? If logging is the right tool for you, just keep chipping away at it.
Like others have said, once I understood the tool, got meals/recipes/frequent foods set up usefully to my routine, learned how to find good database entries, honed my estimating skills for meals out . . . it was easier, took less time. (It sometimes surprises new folks to learn that getting/using a food scale at home is one of the ways to save time, not just to be more accurate.)
It's a rare day now - nearing year 8 on MFP - that logging takes me even as much as 10 minutes. For me, that's an absurdly tiny price to pay for staying at a healthy weight after around 30 previous years of overweight/obesity, and feeling confident that I get the good overall nutrition I need for health. I admit, nowadays I do skip logging the occasional d ay or few, either because I'm busy, or it would be only a super-approximate estimate anyway, or something like that.
But I logged like it was religion all through just under a year losing weight, and for some months into maintenance, so I was confident in my routine. (Now I have a vague idea of the off days' impact, just watch the scale as guardrails around the off days.
I'm a different style than some of the others: I usually just note what I've eaten on a piece of paper (blank side of junk mail), log it into MFP at the end of the meal or day. At first, I did need to pre-log bits of dinner to dial into my goals, but now I come close enough most days just on intuition, and my late day logging tells me what size of treat there's room for, if I want one.
If I need to estimate, I estimate, then let it goal. What's the worst that could happen? Wild estimates are rare, were even when I was logging meticulously every day. Even being off by 1000 calories (improbable after a bit of practice) is only a third of a pound of body fat, tops. Meh. I won't be that far off very often, and if I try never to lowball my estimates, lows and highs will probably balance out.
Logging may not be the right tool for you. We have no idea. To find out, you'll need to buckle down and give it a fair chance. If that's undoable, pick a different weight management strategy. Calorie counting isn't the only option, it's just a quite transparent and simple one.2 -
It is a choice. For me, I will need to log forever. 102 days in and every time I try to eat first log second I blow it. I do have preset meals that I know that are “legal” to eat then log and I allow fresh veg to be a freebie if I forget to measure grams. It is the same willpower that I draw upon to ignore sweets or say “NO” to late night snacks. If it is important to you, you will find your best method.1
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Yes, I get burnt out on logging, but I might just be burnt out on thinking about my diet constantly. I wish I could be one of those people that decides to lose weight and then starts eating less and making better choices, but I’m not that kind of people anymore! If I stop logging now, I’ll be ordering takeout and having midnight ham sandwiches in no time. I’ll get sloppy.
I won’t do it forever (it drives me crazy when I’m cooking because I don’t like following recipes) but if I really want to lose weight (I do) I’ve got to commit for the short term. My hope is that I gain new habits and won’t need to worry about reducing calories ever again.
One additional benefit of logging is the nutrition data I get. I’m more health-focused than looks-focused this time around. I’ve been able to make some adjustments that I wouldn’t have known to make. For example, I’m consistently very low on potassium, so it’s more potatoes and bananas for me!4 -
@dvoncino
It's very possible you're doing new foods and restaurants more often than I am. I agree it can be an inconvenience, but even in the absence of specific nutrition info from the restaurant, you can ballpark estimate it, or maybe cut and paste from a similar meal at a different restaurant that's already in your diary.
e.g. I had brunch at some restaurant for the first time this weekend. When I got home I added several of my own saved meals which had some of the components, e.g. scrambled eggs, biscuit, sausages, etc. and cobbled together an estimate for the meal I had. Sure it may be off, but it's a starting point, and it didn't take me long.
What saves me time I think is I'm very focused on my protein goal, so most of my day is pre-planned in advance, so I can put more or less into my protein powder drinks as required to meet my target.
Other people have a generic food item saved for "stuff", which may be 100 calories of say 60% cals carbs, 30% cals fat, 10% cals protein, as an example, just pulling numbers out of the air to represent a typical snack maybe a cookie or whatever. And they fill the diary with several "stuffs" as needed.
Coincidentally, I just had a pre-workout snack, and this cookie type is something I very rarely have. Rather than look it up and check the info blah blah, I know the total calories are 170 so I just added 2 of a common snack I have to get the same calorie total. I don't care that the macros would be off a gram or two off in this case. Quick and easy.3 -
I get you ... cause I am debating giving up logging as well. I've been logging my food for 10 years .. (not under my present User Name, and not always on MFP, but other apps). Had it made a big dent in my weight? Not really ... Oh , I've lost 70 pounds over time, but logging food didn't cause me to lose.
What it did do was help me focus on the quality and quantity of food I ate.
I agree ... if your diet is self-made and varied due to your creativity with your recipes, it does get to be a pain and time consuming to log ... more so in other apps than here on MFP ...
As someone else suggested ... can you snap a photo of your plates for every thing you eat and keep a photo diary somewhere that you can reliably and faithfully revisit? Or can you snap a photo so that you can create the food to log later on? ... both things are those I resort to.
Good luck what ever you decide to do. The important thing, I think, is to be aware of the food and of how you feel before, during, and after eating it.2 -
Rockmama1111 wrote: »Yes, I get burnt out on logging, but I might just be burnt out on thinking about my diet constantly. I wish I could be one of those people that decides to lose weight and then starts eating less and making better choices, but I’m not that kind of people anymore! If I stop logging now, I’ll be ordering takeout and having midnight ham sandwiches in no time. I’ll get sloppy.
I won’t do it forever (it drives me crazy when I’m cooking because I don’t like following recipes) but if I really want to lose weight (I do) I’ve got to commit for the short term. My hope is that I gain new habits and won’t need to worry about reducing calories ever again.
One additional benefit of logging is the nutrition data I get. I’m more health-focused than looks-focused this time around. I’ve been able to make some adjustments that I wouldn’t have known to make. For example, I’m consistently very low on potassium, so it’s more potatoes and bananas for me!
I am curious if you "aren't that kind of people" with respect to food choices and portion control, what do you plan to do after you reach your goal weight? Many people find maintaining their weight loss as hard or harder as losing, and many people including me still log. After you reach your goal (your short term commitment), what will be the difference then that you won't be ordering takeout and having ham sandwiches?
I encourage you to go ahead and give some thought about what you'll do and how you'll manage your food choices and portions BEFORE you get there. Then as you get close, you can maybe slow down your loss rate and settle in to maintenance.
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Losing the weight is easier than maintaining for many people. The fat loss phase has an end to it however maintenance is pretty much forever and maintenance can in some cases be the cals you end up with after leaning out or maybe just a little higher.Rockmama1111 wrote: »Yes, I get burnt out on logging, but I might just be burnt out on thinking about my diet constantly. I wish I could be one of those people that decides to lose weight and then starts eating less and making better choices, but I’m not that kind of people anymore! If I stop logging now, I’ll be ordering takeout and having midnight ham sandwiches in no time. I’ll get sloppy.
I won’t do it forever (it drives me crazy when I’m cooking because I don’t like following recipes) but if I really want to lose weight (I do) I’ve got to commit for the short term. My hope is that I gain new habits and won’t need to worry about reducing calories ever again.
One additional benefit of logging is the nutrition data I get. I’m more health-focused than looks-focused this time around. I’ve been able to make some adjustments that I wouldn’t have known to make. For example, I’m consistently very low on potassium, so it’s more potatoes and bananas for me!
I am curious if you "aren't that kind of people" with respect to food choices and portion control, what do you plan to do after you reach your goal weight? Many people find maintaining their weight loss as hard or harder as losing, and many people including me still log. After you reach your goal (your short term commitment), what will be the difference then that you won't be ordering takeout and having ham sandwiches?
I encourage you to go ahead and give some thought about what you'll do and how you'll manage your food choices and portions BEFORE you get there. Then as you get close, you can maybe slow down your loss rate and settle in to maintenance.
If you plateau for a few weeks when you get to your goal weight that’s a good sign you’re at maintenance there.
Once the weight is off many people consider “job done” and just go back to the way they used to eat in the pounds go right back on fairly quickly
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I am curious if you "aren't that kind of people" with respect to food choices and portion control, what do you plan to do after you reach your goal weight? Many people find maintaining their weight loss as hard or harder as losing, and many people including me still log. After you reach your goal (your short term commitment), what will be the difference then that you won't be ordering takeout and having ham sandwiches?
I encourage you to go ahead and give some thought about what you'll do and how you'll manage your food choices and portions BEFORE you get there. Then as you get close, you can maybe slow down your loss rate and settle in to maintenance.
I have managed my weight fairly well for my whole adult life. I took off pregnancy weight three times in the past 25 years and am not new to the process. I’m back because I’ve put on 20 pounds since 2020. Middle age, pandemic, getting comfortable, all the excuses. I have 7 pounds to go and I’ve upped my calories and am going very slow, so not far off from maintenance. I’m retraining myself, really. I will stop logging at some point and my plan is to watch the scale a little closer and I will return to logging for a while when/if it creeps up, and way before it climbs 20 pounds. And I’m also breaking habits like too much takeout and midnight ham sandwiches. Since I’m only about 80 days in, I still need to log to make sure the habits stick, and to keep the needle moving in the right direction. Based on my history, I’m pretty confident that I have a good plan for me.
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@dvoncino a few more questions for you re: counting calories fatigue... how large of a deficit are you applying? How much weight did you lose this past month for example? How much weight do you need to lose to get within the normal weight range?
Are you viewing calorie counting as the enemy or are you viewing it as the opportunity to maximize your eating within the parameters of achieving your goals? Are YOU using calorie counting to help YOU make decisions and achieve your goals, or is it an unwanted evil imposed by a cruel universe?
Are you tired of counting calories or are you tired of trying to lose weight--weight loss fatigue, unsurprisingly, being a potential side effect of trying to lose weight!?2 -
Rockmama1111 wrote: »
I am curious if you "aren't that kind of people" with respect to food choices and portion control, what do you plan to do after you reach your goal weight? Many people find maintaining their weight loss as hard or harder as losing, and many people including me still log. After you reach your goal (your short term commitment), what will be the difference then that you won't be ordering takeout and having ham sandwiches?
I encourage you to go ahead and give some thought about what you'll do and how you'll manage your food choices and portions BEFORE you get there. Then as you get close, you can maybe slow down your loss rate and settle in to maintenance.
I have managed my weight fairly well for my whole adult life. I took off pregnancy weight three times in the past 25 years and am not new to the process. I’m back because I’ve put on 20 pounds since 2020. Middle age, pandemic, getting comfortable, all the excuses. I have 7 pounds to go and I’ve upped my calories and am going very slow, so not far off from maintenance. I’m retraining myself, really. I will stop logging at some point and my plan is to watch the scale a little closer and I will return to logging for a while when/if it creeps up, and way before it climbs 20 pounds. And I’m also breaking habits like too much takeout and midnight ham sandwiches. Since I’m only about 80 days in, I still need to log to make sure the habits stick, and to keep the needle moving in the right direction. Based on my history, I’m pretty confident that I have a good plan for me.
I wish you success. It sounds like a pretty solid plan.2 -
@dvoncino a few more questions for you re: counting calories fatigue... how large of a deficit are you applying? How much weight did you lose this past month for example? How much weight do you need to lose to get within the normal weight range?
Are you viewing calorie counting as the enemy or are you viewing it as the opportunity to maximize your eating within the parameters of achieving your goals? Are YOU using calorie counting to help YOU make decisions and achieve your goals, or is it an unwanted evil imposed by a cruel universe?
Are you tired of counting calories or are you tired of trying to lose weight--weight loss fatigue, unsurprisingly, being a potential side effect of trying to lose weight!?
I've lost about 5lbs this month, and hoping to lose another 15lbs. My maintenance calories are ~2,200 and I typically try to finish the day from 1,600 to 1,900.
I know that calorie counting is effective and my friend. I want to do it. It has worked for me in the past, many times. But I find that it is not sustainable. At some point I stop counting, and sure enough the numbers on the scale will start going up.
I think I'm looking for a system that is somewhere in between recording everything in MFP and tracking everything in my head. Because neither approach here has worked for me over the long-term.0 -
Just throwing the idea out there, but what about only logging SOME of the time? I know in my life I have "big eat" days and "normal" days. With experience, you can feel comfortable knowing what a "normal" day looks like for you, a day with enough food to get through the day and not be over on calories. Those days you can skip logging.
But days when you load up with an extra serving at the buffet line? Or have that super delicious dessert that's over and above what a "normal" day would include? Or days you go out to eat instead of dining in where you have full control over ingredients/portions? Maybe THOSE days you log, in part just to see how much that day actually added up to, in part as an incentive to make those days the exception, not the rule.1 -
Or, maybe treat calorie counting as a recovery thing? You probably have some handle on what appropriate eating and activity is, at the start of maintenance. (I hope you've used some of your weight-loss time to find and groove in pretty good, sustainable habits for eating and activity, not just made some mad dash to goal weight the whole way.)
So stop counting when you reach goal, and watch the bodyweight scale. Set an action weight, a pound or few above your normal daily fluctuation range. If you find yourself creeping up, hit/exceed that action weight for a day or two, start counting again until you're a few pounds under your goal.
For a lot of us, maintenance realistically is gaining and losing that same 3-5 pounds over and over again, maybe as a seasonal thing, maybe as a result of hitting an action weight then backing off. Use counting when you need to . . . or if you don't want to do it at all, just cut back snacks or other high-cal less vital-to-you things until you lose that few pounds.
A key thing is setting some boundary conditions, like a weight range or staying in the same size jeans. When you hit the boundary, cut back, using whatever method works best for you. Just don't let it get out of hand.
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Or even the exact opposite while putting a hard limit to the over days.
To begin with, an average of over a pound a week is actually a pretty substantial deficit. Certainly I averaged less than that my last year+ of losing. and I've certainly tried to keep downward adjustments to half a pound or less in terms of desired deficits since then.
The most critical time for maintenance is the first year after weight loss. It's not a terrible idea for you to have a fairly solid plan for that 🤷♂️
Just one strategy is to aim for a slight daily deficit to allow for the occasional excess. The alternative is to truly have exceptionally few excesses. I'm talking much less than once a week.
My gut feeling without reviewing logs is that if I'm eating at maintenance and exceptions exceed the once or twice a month range my weight will trend up. Once a week or more frequent excesses require active management for me.
It is what it is.
I didn't get to be morbidly obese by "naturally" mostly choosing to eat at maintenance. And for myself 8+ years into a change of direction I'm happier where I'm at today in spite of the "work" that it takes.3 -
I can often do well with just listing the foods I ate--usually in my own journal instead of a website. It creates enough awareness that I manage portions pretty easily. I did a 7-day kind of awareness journal to get an idea of what I eat, when, and why. I noticed then that if I write it down--just the food I ate, no weights or measurements--I paid more attention to my choices and quantities.
Full disclosure though--I've been in maintenance for a few years and am just trying to trim down some COVID weight these days, so I have a pretty solid base knowledge of the portions I need. This definitely wouldn't work if I were just starting out.3
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