Transition from Calorie Counting to Intuitive Eating
 

Hi, I'm not sure if this belongs here or in calorie counting, but I'm at a point in this journey where I'm transitioning from counting my calories to intuitive (i.e. clean) eating. I started Oct 2008 at just over 240 and I'm about a pound shy of breaking the 160s. I'm looking to be about 140-145. I feel like I've almost lost weight *too fast* and I want to slow down to a more sustainable loss, I was losing 5-7 lbs every 7-10 days. I plateaued for a bit and didn't loose any weight, but not the scale is moving again slowly, but in the right direction.

And I'm looking more toward "lifestyle" now than real weight loss. I want to loose a pound a week max until goal. And I want to starting thinking about going to gym as something I do because I life being in shape, versus because I need to lose weight. So I don't want to track every calorie, every mile, because i know I can't do that for the rest of my life. I want to learn how eating normally and working out normally feels internally, not empirically.

Is anyone currently working on this transition? Or are there people that feel like calorie counting HAS to be a long term thing or the weight will come back on? I'm curious what people's opinions are of this process, what works, what doesn't etc. etc.

Try it for a month and see how it works for you. If you are calorie counting for awhile you probably know to eye portion sizes and how much you can eat in a day.

Remember, you can gain weight on even healthy clean foods. I think vegetables are the only food you can go wild with portions and not gain weight, everything else you will need to watch the portion sizes.

I tried it after I got to goal. Bit mistake. I though I could just eat "clean" and eat healthy small portions. After all, I had lost the weight and been doing this for a long time. I slowely (and not so slowely) regained some of the weight. I've come to the conculsion that I will always have to count calories and watch what I eat. and that's ok. I love the way I look and feel and I'm willing to do that little bit to maintain it. I do eat more calories now, of course, but I still make a menu, buy groceries for the week.

I am in total and complete agreement with the slim me.

Ahh, you see, I feel that calorie counting IS a lifestlye. MY lifestyle. Watching myself and eating only healthy never did the trick for me. Intuitive eating - nun-uh, not for me either. My intuition button is sorely lacking or missing all together. My intuition tells me to eat and eat and eat some more. "Listening" to it is what got me to be 287 lbs.

I don't find calorie counting a burden or a chore. It keeps me healthy, wearing size 2's and 4's, XS and extremely happy with my body and life itself.

Come pop on over to the Maintainer's Forum. You'll find most of us there remain doing the same thing to maintain our loss as we did to lose it. The planning, the calorie monitoring, the exercise, the whole bit.

Of course, we all have to find what works for ourselves. You can always experiment - slowly that is and see how it goes.

Every one is different. It's working very well for me, and for many others. I don't have much time right this moment, will try to come back later.

Definitely cool if it works for you.

Intuitively, I want to be eating all the time. I can eat when I'm not hungry so I don't do well with intuitive eating. Right now, I can pretty much make it the 2 hours between meals/snacks by saying something like "you can eat again in 2 hours." If I were to just wander into the kitchen and find something to eat whenever the urge hits, well, I know what that looks like - 200 lbs of me.

Welcome to my world. But, it has not been a transition for me (unless one views is as a transition from my "before my journey, junk food food eating" life) - I have been doing this from the very beginning. Personally, I am against dieting because I feel that one cannot stay on that course for the rest of her/his life (and by diet, I mean Atkins, South Beach, Zone, or whatever else there is). I have never counted calories. Yes, I did play with counting calories for a few days and then i was always in shock at the number that I consumed and I simply decided this is not for me.
I slowly progressed to clean eating, being mindful of what I, trying to control portions, drink plety of fluids, etc. and of course, tons of exercise.
That has been my lifestyle for the past year and I plan on keeping it.

This board is one example of how different things work for different people. Put me in the camp that needs to count calories as a life style in order to avoid weight gain. I gained my weight on healthy foods -- probably healthier than I am currently eating bc I eat packaged foods more often since they come with calorie counts printed on them.

Like others have said, give it a try and if it works for you, that's great! And congratulations on your weight loss!!!

Just want to clarify for the umpteenth time that intuitive eating is not about eating whenever the urge hits. Not even close.

But what about if you don't really get full. How do you intuitively eat if you can keep eating, way past the point of a reasonable portion size? I get that it works for a lot of people and I think it's a cool way to live, but for me, I can't see how it would possibly work.

By all means, different things work for different people. I'm not saying IE would work for you, I'm saying you're not describing IE.

I say try it if you feel like it could be a good thing. It works for some people, it doesn't work for others, but you can never tell until you've tried.

In my personal experience (since this is the only 'fact' I can share about IE), it worked well. Counting calories had me so obssessed that it became destructive in the end; IE allowed me to finally learn what was 'my' way of eating. I still retain some habits from calories counting, in a way -- mostly I weigh my cereals/rice/pasta. But as time passes, this kind of things becomes more and more 'instinctive'.

I guess that if you start with IE, you may also need to watch out certain things at first (weigh starches but not veggies, etc.), then gradually switch to something really more intuitive.

Can you describe what intuitive eating is? I guess that I was thinking along the lines as what it seems Glory is thinking; that is, just eating what you think is best and how much you think you need. Eat till you're full, that kind of thing. So can you tell me what it really means?

i knwo what you mean!!! when i started thinking about weight loss i immidiatly set the goel to do it WITHOUT diet but rather WITH healthyer lifestyle and with gaining good habbits. I also dont belong to ANY of those subgroups that are here - because i dont do any particular diets. I just understand roughly how my body works and what it needs and doesnt need. I now eat small portions of meal and have helthy snack in between. So i eat6 times a day and go gym every day for daily workout. Everything is outopilot now. I dont even think about counting my cal cuz i know i will be bad at mesuring food. What you need to do is REALLY REALLY REALLY set your mind on eating right and excerice daitly. Right now i am sooooo in love with how i feel when i push my body to its limit while exercise. It might be silly or gross but i feel my VERY SUPER BEST when i swet a lot at the gym. Its like a drug to me :) and i am looking forward every day for that 4pm time so i can go to the gym again :) I just cant describe :) i go there to fill good. And i also love eatign small and healthy. By saying small is not like a kids meal but for me its not HUGE portions that i used to have. So everything about this is second nature to me. And things like cakes, soda, other sweet bad stuff is just grosses me out. I dont like those things anymore! Life style is great!

I used to be on south beach diet and they give you several weeks perriot to get familiar with pattern of food and what to eat and what not to eat... so i assume IE is to eat what you learned.....