I lost 35 lbs between October 2009 and April 2010. My summers are really busy, so when I hit a plateau in April, I decided to stop dieting for a few months and pick it up again. I wanted to give maintenance a spin, too.

I'm happy to report that, without counting calories or doing any planning or tracking, I stayed between 229 and 232 for five months. I was still practicing all the stuff I learned about myself, about portions, about hunger, nutrition, etc. that I used to lose the first 35 lbs.

Now, I'm back in the saddle, going for my next goal of being a size 16. I bought the book "Intuitive Eating" and tried to lose with it for a couple of weeks, and realized that if I eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm full, I'm maintaining, not losing, so I started calorie counting and meal planning in advance again.

I felt like the Intuitive Eating was very much what I did all summer to maintain my weight loss. But the number of people here who count calories and plan meals forevermore makes me wonder if I'm just fooling myself? Would I eventually lose control? I did tell myself I'd weigh in every week, and if I went out of a 5 lb range, I'd count calories again until it was back down and under control.

Anybody else doing the Intuitive thing for a long time, successfully?

I wish I could say that I did. I tried to not count calories or track in any way other than in my head for some months. Unfortunately for me, I did regain weight. So, either I need more practice at how to "intuitively eat," or I'm just going to have to use a tracking method.

I'm not sure that people who have become overweight or obese can successfully do intuitive eating. For some, the meter seems to be broken or set on the wrong number! In any case, if intuitive eating worked, I don't think we'd see so many people here... But, maybe they just don't post here and are off in the world happily leading their lives at goal.

I'm hoping that once I get to my stated goal weight again, I'll be able to institute some more flexible way to maintain--but I think I'm always going to have to track in some way, just so I don't "forget" how often I've had ice cream or how many of those nuts I really ate.

Good luck!
Jay

Yes and no. I find that with intuitive eating I can maintain my weight for an extended time period, but not forever. I get gradual portion creep and my weight starts to go up. It's so slow that I don't notice it happening until I get to my red line weight (which is why I have a red line in the first place).

I find it absolutely impossible to *lose* weight without tracking calories. Typically for me the difference between loss and maintenance is whether I track my calories or not. I log my food either way, just not the quantities and calories. This means that when I'm maintaining, for example for dinner I'll take my bowl and scoop in food until it looks like a good amount to eat. When I'm losing, I put the bowl on my kitchen scale and weigh out one serving. Sometimes in maintenance, if I'm hungry, I'll have seconds. I can't do that when I'm losing.

The problem is that gradually a "full" bowl of food gets a little bit bigger. A "serving" of raisin bran gets incrementally bigger over time. I start having seconds at dinner most nights, instead of just occasionally. Since the increase is so small over time, I don't notice the creep. I don't feel any fuller than I did before, I don't feel like I ate too much. It just gradually becomes more and more food and my weight starts going up.

That said, my general maintenance strategy has been to go for intuitive eating (at least, in terms of quantity -- I still have to consciously think about WHAT I'm eating) until my weight starts to go up, at which point I count calories until it goes back down, lather, rinse, repeat. Who was it who said maintenance was yo-yo dieting on a very short string?

That's great! I hope to get to that point someday

Quite honestly, I think that I could use my knowledge of portion sizing, eating at appropriate times, eating the right foods, etc and maintain without calorie counting. My "full" response is flat out broken, I'll never be able to depend on it, but without counting calories I know what, when, and how much I can eat for the most part. Partly because I have been calorie counting long enough to have a good feel for how much of what foods I can fit in to maintain my weight.

BUT, I don't want to. I need the stability, accountability, and control that calorie counting gives me. It takes the guesswork out of it all. It gives me a reality check. I know that if I were to quit calorie counting, it would be so much easier for me to start sneaking foods in. I nearly ate a bag of gummy candies last night. That tiny bag, just a couple bites of candy, it couldn't be THAT bad. If I wasn't a calorie counter, I probably would have snarfed them and not had a second thought about it. Well, looking at the calories, it was 150cal for that little bag of candy! What a worthless unsatisfying waste of calories! So I lost any desire to eat them and found a more filling (and actually lower calorie) snack that I didn't feel guilty about logging.

Weighing myself everyday (or as close to everyday as I can) and continuing to count calories are absolutely vital to my personal success at maintaining. I NEED the accountability.

Speaking from the never-obese category - I think BrightAngel may (again) be right on the money. I've held 25 pounds at bay for almost a year now - but I gained them exactly the way Paperclippy described, with portion control creep and needing "just a little more" to be satisfied. My "full" sensors aren't broken, but they sure aren't on automatic pilot. I've been here a long time, and it just doesn't seem like those who've come down from the higher weights can trust "intuition" - be it with calories, or types of foods. There must be a multitude of different mechanisms involved (the "full" switch, the drive for sugars, for grains, for fats), but I don't think that getting healthy "fixes" those things - we just create work-arounds with knowledge and discipline.

On the other hand, you very well might be the outlier ... five months is a decent test. I never fail to be surprised by what's working for folks!

Intuitive eating can be a wonderful way to make peace with eating issues and take the good/bad and black/white thinking out of food choices. But I haven't seen any evidence that it's an effective strategy for weight loss or maintenance, unfortunately.

I could have maintained 257 pounds with intuitive eating -- and did for years, in fact -- but that would have meant remaining morbidly obese. In order to achieve a healthy body weight, I had to count calories, weigh portions -- all the usual stuff -- and I have no doubt that I will continue to need to do so for the rest of my life. It's completely the opposite of IE -- I guess we could call it Non-Intuitive Eating. But at this point, more than nine years into the process, it's effortless. And a very small price to pay for health and fitness!

If you've read about setpoints, you know that there's a lot of research out there about our body weight being controlled by 400+ hormones and biochemicals designed to maintain our current weight (even if it's obese). Once we lose 10% or so of our body weight, a physical process kicks in to defend our weight and return it to previous levels. The thinking is that it's relatively easy to manipulate weight within a 20 - 30 pound range, but once we get out of that range, we're fighting Mother Nature. At that point, intuitive eating will return us to our previously high weights because that's what our bodies are signaling us to do.

The problem with IE is that its fundamental premise is that when we listen to our bodies, we'll achieve and maintain a normal weight. The past fifty years of obesity research has shown that notion to be dead wrong for overweight and obese people. If we listen to our bodies, we'll stay fat. Instead, we need to be constantly aware of our food choices and make thoughtful decisions based on our rational brains, not our intuitive stomachs.

Having spent more than two decades being 100+ pounds overweight, it would be naïve to expect my body to self-regulate at a normal weight. I know never-overweight people who can do it, but me, with all my empty fat cells just waiting to be filled up again? Not happening, though I sure wish it would. But as Bright Angel said, it's just wishful thinking.

I don't mean to be a bummer about IE and it certainly is an enticing idea, but it just doesn't seem to work for most of us.

Argh, I wrote a post and then I lost it!

I was going to say that it would be interesting if the NWCR did a study comparing maintainers who were formerly obese/morbidly obese versus maintainers who were only overweight at their highest weight. Also it would be interesting to see what effect the amount of time spent at high weight has.

That would be me. But I didn't mean it in a good way at the time.

Jay

Yes! I would love that. I never got to the "obese" level, but I was close, and when I first started reading this forum I was surprised by the differences in the effort to maintain between these 2 groups.

I've kept 25-30 pounds off for 14 years now (and I'm working on losing some at the moment, because I haven't been at goal for 9 years, though I never left the "normal weight" level) and I'd say what I do when I'm maintaining is half way between intuitive eating and keeping track of everything I eat. I DO count calories, always have, since I got to my goal in 1996 (funnily enough, I didn't count when I was losing, I just ate as little as I could, which turned out to be 1000-1200 cals). But I only count in my head. I have tried to write it down sometimes, but it drives me insane. I also don't weigh anything, so I'm sure I'm guesstimating a lot, but since it has worked all this time, I guess I must be doing something right. For me, it DOES feel too obsessive to weigh everything and write everything down. But I don't mind guesstimating and counting in my head. I'm so used to it that I don't think I could stop even if I wanted to. I also can't deal with super clean eating. I totally rebel and start binging. I *have* to eat whatever I want to keep my sanity, but I can do moderation (well, usually ). I couldn't in the beginning, but I've trained myself. Some things I still can't keep in the house (like some kinds of cookies), but others I'm fine with.

Well first of all, it would be *easier*, with more leeway that is, to maintain a 225 pound person, than a 135 person, I would think.

So I do think it would be more difficult, with less leeway and less *room for error* to maintain a "normal" weight, than an obese or overweight one.

That aside, and this is coming from not only an obese person, but a super morbidly obese person, which is the only perspective I know of - IE scares the living you know what out of me.

YEs, I have learned a ton about portions, nutrition, not eating my emotions, yada, yada, yada - but I can't/won't rely on IE. I'm not taking any chances!!

I also don't see the need or purpose to not count calories and have to rely solely IE. At this point, and it's been this way for years for me already, it is no hardship or burden to count my calories. None at all. It's easy shmeazy. Zero effort. Zero. And it's freed me up to have the life of my dreams.

I think you are OK to take this approach as long as you make a commitment to a few "golden rules" that will help you to stay healthy & aware. Things such as X servings of veggies every day, Y amount of water every day, weigh-in every day (or every week if you prefer), etc. That way it isn't so rigid, but you have some guidelines so you can inform your food choices.

For me, I think I'll have to count calories forever, & daily weigh-ins are a must. I have the most amazing ability to completely ignore my clothes (even make up excuses for why they don't fit anymore!) and the mirror, and just blissfully go about eating junk or ridiculous portions & gaining weight. I'm not wired to have any intuition around food. I don't know how to stop when I'm full or only eat when I'm hungry. But that is me - and I'm happy to report lots of people can & do live a healthy life by following their intuition.

Continued success to you! You are doing AWESOME!

I do wonder though, how many of these people were once super morbidly obese, morbidly obese, obese or significantly overweight....

I would think not so many.

I've lost anywhere from 20 to 100 pounds *multiple times* only to return to morbid obesity *multiple times* by eating mostly healthy foods in reasonable portions (or at least that was what I told myself I was eating) after I finished "dieting." While I'd always heard "don't do anything to lose weight that you aren't willing to do to maintain it," I thought that somehow the fat fairy was going to smile upon me and give me a special dispensation.

I've been calorie counting, monitoring intake and burn, for just over a year and I'm still not even close to figuring out when I am truly hungry in need of food or just feel like I am without checking my food and burn logs.

I have no reason to believe that my "I've had just the right amount of fuel today" button (which is broken in both directions, btw) will ever work. I'll never run a 4 minute mile or sing at the Met, either. That's just life.