Can you get too caught up on CALORIES???????

Yeah, you can, for sure! I can't say that you will lose more weight eating healthily, but you will end up with a healthier body and mind, even! We feel better and function better when we are eating more good nutrients, as opposed to those empty calories. I like counting the calories because it appeals to the numbers side of my personality and keeps me from overeating without realizing it....I'm really good at that! But keeping the junk to a minimum and eating unprocessed, natural foods is always going to be the best path, even when we are not counting calories!

carrie, there should be a balance to this. You can stay within your calories all you want, but if all you eat is empty carbs all day, you aren't becomming much healthier. Put it this way, your body needs a balance of nutrition, eating empty calories will lead to higher cholesterol, put more stress on your organs, and give you complications down the road. On the flip side, you can eat a perfectly balanced nutritional diet and still become overweight by eating too much of it, and that leads to obesiety, possibly diabetes, heart problems, and joint/muscle issues down the road.

So really what you should probably do is keep track of calories until you are relatively confident that you can stay within a caloric range without keeping track, but you should also be aware of what you are eating and try to get all of the veggies, protein, complex carbs, and healthy fat that your body needs.

Add exercise to this regimen and you WILL eventually become healthy (barring medical conditions).

Will it take longer then some diets that have you eat one type of thing? Sometimes. But this is the ONLY proven, without a doubt, way to do it right. Most diets that limit certain types of food are for temporary use only to get you to the point where you feel you can continue in a healthy way, and for 99% of those, I would say consult with a doctor before even considering it.

For example, for morbidly obese people, doctors can put them on a very low carb diet, because of their issues, that is a perfectly healthy way to lose the initial weight, but it is under doctor care, and I have looked at these plans, they are very regimented about how much to eat and how long, and the doctor always ramps them back up to a more normal carb intake after some weeks.