I was just wondering if it's possible to lose weight by just making better food choices and not counting everything that goes into your mouth. It seems that since I've been counting calories, I'm so obsessed about each one until the point I go nuts and eat whatever unhealthy foods I want at the end of the day.
A week after I bought my excercise machine I saw a 3# loss in weight just by moving more and eating a better. I didn't count calories or any of that. Whether it was just water weight or I really lost that much in fat, I'm not sure. But, I keep getting off-track since I've been really "dieting."

Any thoughts?

I have found that every time I try to follow a "diet", I literally become obsessed with eating. Ironic?

A much better approach for me has been to simply focus on eating less, not eating as soon as I get hungry, and not eating to full capacity.

My efforts to become comfortable with hunger sensations is based on the free info at WeightLossAim.org

Once you are able to handle the hunger sensations and not give into them immediately, you'll have more control over any diet you choose.

I don't count calories. I may look at them sometimes along with fat grams just to have an idea how unhealthy something is or isn't it.
I don't eat sugar, white flour, white pasta. It curbs my appetite--makes me have a 'more' normal appetite and not want to binge. I am also involved in OA. I've lost 50 lbs since September.

I never could count calories or fat grams.

Amy

I think it depends a lot on the person. I can just watch what I eat and make good choices because I have a general awareness of how many calories / fat grams, etc. I'm consuming. I know what is healthy and what isn't and I know my own body and when I'm overeating and when I'm not. I wouldn't say I don't count calories at all, but I don't obsessively count them. I have a more general awareness.

There are people out there who don't have that awareness or who aren't able to keep that kind of mental track of what they've eaten. My DH is like that. He'll mindlessly pick at a loaf of bread until the whole loaf is gone and not even realize he ate the whole thing. He'll come back the next day and say "did you throw the bread away" and be shocked when I say "honey, you ate the whole thing yesterday".

If you actually CAN know when you're full and when you're not eating for the wrong reasons ... and if you can eat healthily w/out picking or snacking unconsciously, then I'd say go for it. At least try it and see how it works for you.

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I feel for me that this will be the route that I take in trying to lose weight. Because like others the second I tell myself I am going to diet or not eat this or that.. I become obsessed and all I can think about is food. So I hope for my sake atleast that small baby steps in changing how I eat and drink and excercise will help me more in the long run! Good luck!

For some people, this does work. For others, though, it can be very hard to respond to "hunger" cues that we've been ignoring for years to get to our heavier weights. And the bottom line is, even with very healthy choices, you can't eat unlimited amounts or you will, if not gain weight, not create enough of a deficit to lose.

I eat very healthy foods...I tried giving up counting for a little while, just to see if I could use my hunger and better choices and continue on my weight loss path (and this was after 5 or so months of religious counting, so I knew about where things fell on the calorie scale). I gained weight, and found myself feeling what felt an awful lot like hunger way more often than I should have been. I ate really healthy foods, I avoided my triggers, and I still overate enough to gain weight.

For me, weight loss (or even weight maintenance) without counting is impossible. You may have a different experience. The only thing you can do is try it out and see how you, the individual, do with it.

I think that's kind of the premise behind the all-inclusive "plans" like the home delivery ones out there (I'm doing BistroMD, but this would include stuff like Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, PurFoods plans, Deliciously Yours, etc.), wherein we're paying for our menu to already be planned out and mapped out for us, taking away the "obsessive counting" thing.

When I'm calorie counting or carb-gram counting or anything else "on my own," I get ridiculously obsessive about it all and end up derailing, driving myself nuts, etc., so I like the "not having to think about it, yet still getting results" part of being on BistroMD. No more "going nuts," like you described.

Note: This doesn't mean I don't try to find ways to obsess. And it's still not EASY, but I do like that I've basically paid someone else to do the part of this dieting-planning stuff that usually sends me off in an unhealthy direction, emotionally.

HTH!