Quote:
Originally Posted by Satine
I thought part of the appeal of induction was to "not" count calories...that is what I'm enjoying about it.
Carri
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Carri, a huge part of my initial success with low carb was not counting too, don't worry!
... but sometimes weight loss doesn't happen, or it slows down to an untolerable level, and that's when the fine-tuning starts.
Dr Atkins never said calories don't count, he just said most people won't need to count them. And that's what I see, at least early on especially if you're quite heavy to begin with, I don't think you need to track more than the limits on the allowed carbs (and personally I'd recommend counting more than the "net" carbs on the bars shakes treats etc).
A large proportion of women over 40 need to keep a cap on both carbs AND calories long-term to succeed from what I've observed over 5 years doing this. Younger women, men, and maybe a few of the older women who are extremely active may not need to... but probably a lot of us on this site WILL need to at some point.
But watching calories is just a tool, one of many - people play with dropping carbs even lower, with no-dairy, with many other things instead of counting calories - it's up to each person.
The reason I often net out to the calorie thing is that the first thing I do when my weight loss fails to satisfy me is start a food journal, including weighing & measuring my food. And I find this easiest to do with software these days (but I'm old enough to remember using paper & a book!) - with the software even if you're only looking at the carb number, the calorie one is there too... so the information is there, easy to see. So if carbs are where they are supposed to be but total calories are very high, that's an obvious potential starting point for tweaking, down the road.
I've never used the Atkins tracker, I wouldn't trust it, as I don't trust their marketing of the Atkins products. I use LoseIt on my phone, I know many people who like MyFitnessPal, and there are many others out there too.