I did it faithfully for a year, and then I felt like -- just as I was obsessed with how much diet coke/chocolate/snacks were in the house for me to gorge on and think about, I was obsessing about the good stuff too and i didn't like that aspect so I stopped for 3 months to see what would happen, and i had continued losing. I KNOW what's in everything, I know how MUCH i should be eating through experience etc. When I hit a plateau for a while, i go back to logging the calories and decide if i should go down another level of caloric intake.
I also fell off the logging wagon once. I gained back 17 pounds. It was hard to take those back off -- knowing I had been there already and had to do it again. The worst part was it took me 10 months to put it on so I didn't even realize it -- I wasn't weighing during that time either.
It's easy with the online tools to chart my weight and food and see how they go together...more carbs will make me stall, protein helps me lose, etc.
I'm the same as most people here - I have to log. I've tried to lose weight without the tracking and it does work for a while of course but I get sloppy. I find that if I stop logging, I get lazy about what goes in my mouth and I tend to "forget" a few calories here and there. If I write it all down, it's there in black and white and there's no mistaking how much I've eaten. It keeps me accountable to myself.
Tracking isn't for everyone of course and I'm sure there are plenty here who have been successful without it. I'm just not one of them!
I am enjoying it! I find that it's keeping me honest, so that I am not saying "well, what's 60 calories, no biggie". The problem comes when it's 60 calories here, only 100 here, 90 there, and before you know it....
The other thing that's helping me, is finding out what is really in the food. Even something as simple as looking at the difference between eating chicken with the skin on vs the skin off. I am making much better choices now.
I don't like to keep a journal either but I have to. I find myself 'forgetting" the little stuff and then it adds up and 3 days later I wonder why I'm sitting at the same weight. Since I'm on about 1500 calorie diet on my own without a program, I have to write it all down. Just a small price to pay for a bigger success
I was pretty faithful with my calories and kept a log in a bound book for about 5 or 6 months and lost around 35lbs ... then I got tired of tracking and ta-da! about a year later I have gained all of that back and then another 10lbs. I was carefree and thought nothing about what I put in my mouth and this is where it got me.
When I originally did it, I did everything manually and spent a great deal of time reading labels and calculating calories. I don't know why I did that to myself when there are things out there you can use for free on the computer. Now I use the Daily Plate. I generally try to put things in after I eat a meal, so I go there around 1 - 3 times a day. It is SOOO much easier using the Daily Plate, but then again, it can also be easy to forget about it. I am not always very consistent with it, but I'm trying again.
So yeah, I get tired of logging things, and sometimes I forget or just flat out don't do it, but I know that if I want to be successful I NEED to track everything HONESTLY. Period. Hopefully someday I'll get to the point where I don't need to track everything I eat, but I'm not there yet.
I don't mind. I feel like it's my security blanket. I also tend to eat the same things over and over and have a long list of custom foods, so it doesn't take long.
I am not neurotic about it-- for example, I don't fill in the nutritional values on custom foods-- just the calories, and I'm fairly loose about estimating... if I'm not sure exactly how many calories I guess high and move on.
Like exercise it is a necessary evil. If logging as you eat is a chore, I've found that occasionally writing out a daily food plan either the night before or that morning helps. My food choices are set to an extent, and after each meal I go and check off what I ate and write in the appropriate substitutions.
