Discontinuing Calorie Counting...
 

I feel like I need to stop calorie counting and move towards a more intuitive style of maintaining. The restriction is not working well for me anymore and it's causing me a lot of anxiety and I need it to stop.

Trouble is I'm afraid and there is a lot of comfort in counting for me. Two weeks ago I stopped counting on the weekends and that is going very well. For right now I plan to just stick with that and when I feel comfortable maybe try it through the week.

So my question is just for those of you who've done this. How did you go about it exactly, what kinds fears did you have and how's it going?

OP, I stopped but am back to it now. I have gained ten pounds in twelve months. :( To be honest w you though, I knew along the way I was overeating. I think it CAN be done --carefully and thoughtfully. Good luck and let me know how you are doing.

I would assume a reaonable estimate would be 12.....I have dieted and stopped counting calories about 12 times; each time I BALLOONED up larger than ever before, eventually realized my problem, and started counting calories again...........

I then stopped countingm ballooned up, started again...........

I am hoping this is my last time!!! I hope I NEVER AGAIN stop counting calories.

After I lost 65 lbs on calorie counting, I took a "break" for a couple years with no counting and did just fine. I simply ate intuitively and used the common sense that I had learned while calorie counting about portion sizes. I'm not doing that any more because late last year I decided I want to lose the last 15-20 or so, but it's absolutely what I'm going to do again when I reach my final goal and go back into maintenance.

This is hard to answer because intuitive eating is more natural for me. I don't know how I do it, exactly. But I'll try. I think you know I'm not maintaining, but I lose intuitively, so I think that kind of counts.

I tend to eat in a fairly monotonous way. I have the same thing for breakfast, snack, lunch, and another snack every day and base it around a nutritional principle.

Breakfast: Always a carb and a protein
Snack: Always a protein and/or a carb
Lunch: Always a protein and 1-2 veggies
Snack: Always a protein and/or a carb
Dinner: Usually a protein, 1-2 veggies and maybe a carb

I really do not ever vary from that unless one night out of 60 I'll have pizza for dinner. I may have popcorn, an ice cream sandwich or chocolate chips for an after dinner snack.

Eating like this, I have to be mindful of portions and of course basic nutrition. For instance, protein is a lean piece of baked chicken, not fried chicken. A carb is going to be a complex carb and never smothered in butter. But baked chicken and a small side of spaghetti is ok now and then. A full plate of spaghetti is not.

Does that help at all? It works great for me and I do not feel like I'm on a diet at all. Every now and then I'll pull out a scale and/or measuring cups to check myself or I'll use measuring cups to serve myself, especially any pasta. But I don't count the calories, just the portion size.

One more very important thing...I watch craving triggering foods. I have to keep the chocolate in check and every now and then I have to swear off it for a while. Like um...now. :o Gotta do that! I'll start tomorrow. ;)

If you think your actual eating is fine and its only the security blanket of counting that you are concerned with, Id suggest two things...

1) Add a Friday to the weekends of no counting...then a Monday...then a Thursday...etc. Taper out of it essentially.

2) Create a plan to prevent failure. Ex: if your weight changes by xlbs in whatever timeframe you will starting counting again. This allows you know the tool is still avail to you if you really need it.

Oddly I quit counting calories around last summer/spring and just kept up with my workouts...and my clothes still fit! I stopped weighing myself so often...I weighed last week and before I was 170 but now I'm around 173...which oh well could be alot of things
Maybe just keep a diary of WHAT you eat instead of calories for a while? then, when you say I haven't have any sweets for XX time you can look in your diary and see that yes, you had a cookie yesterday (for example) and it might keep you on track that way?

I've thought about doing the same but it scares me too. Sometimes I feel a bit too obsessed with it all. I still weigh EVERY day at exactly 8:30am.....Why? I'm in maintenance, why do I feel like I might gain 5 pounds overnight? I still weigh every single bite of food and log every single calorie into an online food diary. EVERY DAY!

Then again I feel like I've worked hard to lose what I lost, and it's good to "guard" that loss, if that makes sense LOL

So I don't know.....is this the time to slack off and go with instincts? Or will that just lead to more and more carelessness. Ugggh.....

XTY has a good point there......Maybe watching the weight and at a certain point you realize that maybe its not working out and you need to change things or go back to calorie counting again. I just might do that. Technically I am 5 pounds UNDER my goal weight anyways so I have room to "play around" and see what happens.

I just stopped a few months ago.

I recommend the book On Eating by Susie Orbach. I am following that and it's really working for me. It's basically eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full, but she gives some great advice about doing that. This never would have worked for me before but after nearly two years of calorie counting, I think I was pretty aware how much I should be eating.

I don't count calories in maintenance. However, I do need to have a "red line" weight. If my weight creeps up above that number, I have to count calories in order to lose back under it. I cannot lose weight without counting calories.

It works pretty well for me in general. I find that I can maintain without counting for a relatively long time period. Inevitably I will gain a bit, then I count, drop the weight, and repeat. I would much rather do that (the yo-yo dieting on a very short string) than count all the time, which drives me nuts. I can only handle counting for a couple weeks at a time.

I *do* post what I ate here though. I don't weigh or measure it, I don't count its calories, but I write down what the food items were. I find that the fact that I'm telling someone what I ate makes me less likely to eat junk.

I stopped calorie counting in early November and have gained 3 lbs. I'm trying to work out a WOE that doesn't involve CC anymore mainly because I'm not cooking for myself exclusively any more. But if that scale goes up one more pound next month, I'm going back to CC.

Hm. Hard to tell. I stopped counting because I felt it was either that or ending up anorexic-bulimic, so it wasn't exactly the same thing. On the other hand, after so much time counting and always eating the same kinds of foods, I guess you get to 'know' what you can eat freely and what you have to be careful of (I know for instance what green beans + omelette + rice + a yoghurt amount to, roughly--yeah, I also know I have quite simple tastes in terms of meals ^_^;--so I don't really need to count anymore). Hope this helps.

I just read through this thread and found out what I have to do to not feel totally restricted and geeky :dizzy: (calorie counting and writing everything down) vs gaining 8 lbs. :sumo: (which I did when I stopped counting/writing for a year).

Thanks Jessica!

Dagmar :cool:

You've gotten some great advice here. Ncuneo, you have gained a great deal of knowledge from calorie counting. Trust yourself to use that knowledge. I CCed for about 6-8 months during my weight loss but I found myself becoming too obsessive about it. I quit CCing about 3 months before I reached goal, but I used the knowledge I gained from CCing to continue to lose. I use my daily weighing to keep myself on track, that and how my clothes fit. When I've gone overboard, the scale shows it and I rein myself back in. If I suddenly gained 10+ lbs, I'd probably CC again. It's a very useful tool.

When I stop counting calories I start gaining weight.

Thanks everyone, you've given me a lot to think about. Oddly enough I lost about 1/3 of my weight without calorie counting and I lost the 50 lbs of pregnancy weight without it and maintained that for awhile before I started CCing because I ready to really reach my goal.

For now I think I will take it very slow, weekends only for a while, see how that feels a take it from there.

This is kind of old, but I just wanted to say, you definitely have to do what works for YOU. Getting to know your own quirks, habits, triggers, etc., is what can help you continue maintenance successfully. I think, for some people, this does mean calorie counting forever. If that is so, they should keep with it. Others may be able to shift off of it. We are all unique and should realize that there is no one size fits all,especially for maintenance.

I was able to stop calorie counting, but I did so while I was still losing (about 4 months before I hit maintenance), gradually, not all at once. First I started estimating calories instead of counting them, rounding up to err on the side of caution. But I was still writing them down.

Phase two was still estimating calories, but not writing them down (like allowing myself around a certain amount of calories per meal and estimating that meal before eating it, but not recording it).

Next I started just eyeballing my portions, but still keeping it mind what foods tend to be high-cal/low-cal.

Now I just eat and don't pay too much heed.

But there's only two reasons this works for me. My maintenance is mainly eating lunch and dinner, and generally not snacking or drinking things that have calories (if I wake up at a decent hour I eat breakfast though!). If my maintenance involved lots of small meals, I'd have ballooned by now.

It's so much harder for me to overeat when I am only eating 2-3 meals a day. In fact, every time I have started to gain, it's because I started snacking again. That's the reason why I am five pounds over my maintenance weight now, but I put a ban on the snacks again and I'm coming back down. There is no way I can ever snack on a regular basis and NOT gain weight. But some people maintain by eating many small meals, and that works best for them. :D

That and the second reason this has worked for me is I weigh myself at least a few times a week, which means if I'm gaining, I'll know. No denial involved. That and I sometimes weigh myself when I'm tempted to go eat a snack/ice cream. Seeing I'm still 4 pounds over my maintenance weight makes me seriously reconsider that snack.

So those are the things that have worked for me. If any seem like they might work for you, go ahead and give them a shot. Just make sure you're doing what works best for you, not what you think SHOULD work best for you. ;)

Hey ncuneo. I'm not really maintenance, but I've lurked in a lot of your threads and took a lot of things you said into account and incorporated them into my program. I use intuitive eating as a way to maintain... it's how I haven't gained any weight back but made little progress in the past 9 months haha.

I pretty much eat whatever I want, within reason. I let my body pick. I can differentiate between what is my inner fatty trying to stuff me silly, and what my actual BODY wants. So sometimes I'll have a fried egg with a little butter, or extra almond butter. I slow down my eating, and I stop when I'm full. I also don't eat when I'm not hungry. I don't really plan my meals persay (options are available, and I eat whenever I start feeling hungry so it's different every day.) I never thought this would actually work for me, but it does. I feel like a normal person almost. I don't even think about food that often, because nothing is off limits, as long as I stop. I used to binge really badly too, and I mean a real hardcore binge, sometimes upwards for 12,000 calories in a day, because I looked at it like "I better get as much of this stuff in me as I can NOW, because tomorrow it's back to the grind!" I've noticed my obsession with food has dissipated quite a bit. It doesn't work for everyone, but I noticed it works for me, for maintenance. Losing though, I have to count calories.

Anyway, good luck. I know you're struggling lately. I've learned a lot from you here and I just wanted you to know you inspire me a lot. :)