Quitting food logging???

I lost 23 lbs from Sept. to Dec. on curves complete. No logging, weighed and measured food for the first few weeks. I have been faithfully logging now for 45 days and have only lost 1 pound. Hmmm...??? Plateau perhaps?

Been at the logging for 5 months. 3 months on another site and then stumbled upon MFP that has a better food database. I am interested in tracking various nutritional components, and so it's good for that. Weight loss happened for me pretty quickly, set some realistic goals, achieved them, set some new ones, so now it is more about optimizing the diet composition and exercise. I do recognize that this is all about being a marathon and not a sprint from here on, and weight is only one factor, which is why I enjoy the new hobby of logging in all of the various stuff. How I will feel about that in a year, for example, who knows. I enjoy reading all of your opinions in the posts for some additional perspective.

i quit logging FOUR MONTHS AGO and i haven't gained a pound. so for those naysayers out there that it didn't work for them.. it would seem you didn't learn enough by logging your food to begin with.

How lovely it must be to be perfect...

I just write down throughout the day what I eat & the calories in a small notepad. Then I log on later that night or next morning to add it to mfp. Instead of searching the data base though, I just add it all in as quick calories & manually put them in. I felt I was spending too much time on here searching for something in the data base before I ate it. & logging on here every time I ate something.

So, I will probably always log, but it is less time consuming & easier for me to do it in a little note pad...then I can add to mfp when I have time. Different things work for different people though...do whatever makes you comfortable/happy.

Agree with post above - I'm planning on logging for around 3 months after reaching my goal to make sure I can stay there after taking so long to get there in the first place lol.

I don't find it too annoying to have to do it though, I don't change my food from week to week (generally, obviously there are exceptions) and I've saved pretty much every combo I might have as a meal so it only takes 5 mins to do. I like logging exercise in particular, and just feel this makes things much easier to work out than having to calculate in my head.

For me logging takes forever. I rarely have the same foods week to week. I am pretty atypical. I don't have 1 go to recipes, I probably have 45 in my normal rotation. And I generally try something new once a week. I don't even bother creating meals, since the odds of it being the same are low.

i quit logging FOUR MONTHS AGO and i haven't gained a pound. so for those naysayers out there that it didn't work for them.. it would seem you didn't learn enough by logging your food to begin with.

How lovely it must be to be perfect...

i am far from perfect but i'm glad you enjoy your own form of humor.

I figure it isn't an all or nothing thing. Start by having some days where you don't log the food during the day (if you were) and instead log at the end of they day, so you can begin to see if you're eating the right amount of food even when you're not logging it as you go. When that is working well, start only logging 5 days a week, or every second day. During this period you of course keep monitoring your weight, and measuring other key things (e.g. waistline, chest measurement, whatever). So there is no risk whatsoever of putting on 20 pounds, or 80 pounds, as some reported happened here. Clearly that can only occur if you not only stop logging calories, but also stop tracking your maintenance of your progress. Eventually, you could move down to just logging random days to ensure that you're still calibrated OK. As long as your waistline isn't changing, and your weight is making sense (e.g. if you're building muscle, it's going up) then you're obviously fine. As soon as you see your weight change more than just your normal fluctuations (e.g. maybe more than 5lb?) then you know you may need a refresher.

Each to their own. Some people may choose to manage their long term progress by logging calories. But I would always encourage creative curiousity about any black-or-white belief like "I can never stop logging calories if I want to stay at my target weight". While keeping on logging may be a good choice for some people, it's unlikely that it is the *only* way this could be achieved.

Quitting logging is worth a try. I know for the brief period in which I logged calories on MFP, I was stressed out and would get anxious if I was just over my calorie limit. I thought too much about various foods and the amount of calories in it. Now I just try to eat clean and eat til I'm 70% full. It's definitely working out for me - losing 0.5-1lb per week.