I've been considering trusting my instincts with my diet, not tracking anything officially and just seeing what happens. I figure I have spent the last 6 months tracking calories, carbs, fatty acids, protein etc and would like to think I've picked up a little bit of wisdom from every method I've tried. However, I am getting tired of having to think about every tiny mouthful I put in my mouth (especially as it has not been that successful lately). For the last week or so, I've been eating what I think I should (read: not exactly what I want!) and yesterday it looked like this:

Breakfast: over easy egg, 1/2 can of baked beans and zucchini cooked in a bit of olive oil, peach
Lunch: chicken salad with a low fat yoghurt dressing and a bite of my bf's sandwich, banana
Snack: coffee with coffee liquor and chai latte (was helping a friend with man troubles in a cafe, lasted more than one drink!) + last of the yoghurt and homemade peach jam (not very much) with 2 tbsp sunflower seeds
Dinner: Salmon and sweet potato (1/2) with red pepper and avocado, melon and about 15g of dark chocolate. 2 glasses of wine

While this is perhaps more than I would have eaten on a 'diet day' when i was counting calories, I don't think it is tooooo bad so I think I am going to commit to this and just stick with exercising daily and chilling out about the eating. My weight was up by 0.6kg since I last weighed 2 weeks ago but I have just finished my period and I did a lot of strength training yesterday, so I will ignore that for the time being.

The actual point of this thread was to ask if any of you feel like you've learned enough about your eating habits/ triggers / danger areas to be able to loosen up the tracking and chill out to avoid diet burnout? Or do you think you'll have to track forever in order to stay at your happy weight?

If anyone wants to try this experiment with me, feel free to use this thread as an evaluation of what you ate (after the event obviously, otherwise it is the same as tracking).

I've never really meticulously measured or weighed my food or even counted calories. I've always just watched my portions and eaten every three hours to keep my metabolism going. I'm not saying that works for everyone but I'd be miserable if I was thinking about every morsel I popped in my mouth, lol. I guess it depends on your metabolism too. Mine's always been decent so obviously everyone's different.

I think after awhile eating healthy and portion control becomes like second nature as with any learned behavior after awhile.

I'm perfectly happy calorie counting, but of course no one actually wants to be doing that if they have the choice. Once I'm well into maintenance, I plan to keep weighing myself (daily at first, then weekly, I think), but I will give it a while to settle and then see how I do without the calorie counting. If I put on weight again, it'll be back to the calorie counting. By now I have a good idea of what I should be eating in the course of a day. It's worth mentioning, however, that I do not have any kind of eating disorder, haven't been overweight for long, and put on weight through losing track of what I was eating due to illness. It's not my instincts I need to worry about, really, it's my memory. If I get to the point again where I really can't remember whether I've had lunch or not, I'll need to go back to writing it down.

As long as I'm not in a "binge" mindset I trust my instincts. I know what "full" and "hungry" feel like and I know roughly how many calories are in various things. Honestly this whole thing is about sustainability and happiness, so whatever is easy to do but also leaves you feeling great about your body is the best way. Your dinner sounds exactly like what I often have, except I'd ditch the wine and have Haagen-Dazs

I took a maintenance break from about mid-December to mid-March while I focused on some important projects. I tried to intuitively eat maintenance calories (no calorie counting), and I exercised about 3 times a week (strength training, very little pure cardio during those months). In mid-December, I weighed 134 pounds; in mid-March, I weighed 132, so I went down a couple of pounds without trying. My measurements stayed pretty much the same.

As with Esofia, I wasn't overweight for long, and I've never had any real food issues. During my break, I focused on:
1) portion sizes--I consciously made them smaller than I "thought" they should be, since I still tend to overestimate portion size when I'm not weighing my food. I wasn't hungry, so I figured that was a good sign.
2) balancing out indulgences. If I had some wine and cheese or cookies or whatever in a day, I would make sure to eat low-cal, nutritious food during the rest of the day (or the day after, if I hadn't planned ahead for it) to try to balance things out.

It worked just fine for me, but YMMV, of course. Good luck! Sounds like you're doing fine so far.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I think for my own good I will stop with calorie counting now and just focus on eating healthily and exercising (weight training for the moment + swimming and cycling when I get the bandages off). I kind of just want to enjoy my summer and not worry about dieting.

Esofia - like you, I wasn't overweight for long (technically not at all). Luckily, or unluckily, my weight stays within the same 5-10lbs whether or not I diet.

Sumire - I like your idea about balance. I have been trying to balance out my days too, basically by saying if I eat healthily the whole day, I can have a bit of chocolate in the evening. Has been working fine recently!

Good thanks for the confirmation everyone. It is always so hard to know when to stop and give up a bit of control

I started counting calories in August 2009 and weighing myself each week (okay, sometimes every day). After about 18 months of that, I was at a spot where I ate mostly the same things every day and exercised enough to balance any over eating.

At this point, I only count calories when training for a race (to make sure I'm getting enough carbs), or when I did P90X (to get enough protein). Nutrients seem to be more about fuel, now. Hooray! While I do have weight left to loose - I'm less concerned with how quickly it comes off - only that the fat is replaced by muscle.

I agree with Sumire - I tend to have a bowl of ice cream, or a glass of beer/wine here and there and don't feel a bit bad about it. Stress raises hormone levels in you body that make you hold on to fat! So...don't stress.

PS - love, love, love all the fruit and veg in your diet!