i've decided to stop counting calories. i hate it. it takes all the enjoyment out of eating for me. and it also gets rid of something i believe to be very important when it comes to healthy eating: LISTENING to your body and PAYING ATTENTION to the way your body feels.
i've been counting calories for the past few months and, since that time, i've completely stopped paying attention to whether or not i feel full. all i do is obsess about knowing (or not knowing) how many calories are in what i'm eating. or trying to figure out how i'm going log that little bite of something i just ate. that wasn't packaged. i can't stand it.
i'm not posting this to discourage anyone from counting calories because i really do think it's useful to know what's in the food you're eating. i've certainly learned a lot of valuable information from this website. however, i don't want to be afraid of a dab of butter or a slice of bread or an avocado. just because i know i could eat something with fewer calories. i want to eat what i want to eat. and stop when i feel full. because that's what i truly believe will keep me happy and at a healthy weight. which, in turn, will get be to a healthy place with food.
good luck to everyone, but this is the end of calcount for me. :)
I felt the same way a few months ago. I was losing weight, things were going good and I decided to stop counting calories. I did still track my weight.
Fast forward to yesterday when the Doc called with the result of my glucose test. Diabetes Type 2.
I'm back counting and trying to reverse the effects.
Not to say that this is the result of me stopping (it was the years of eating wrong and no excersise that did me in) but I kinda wish I would have stuck with what I was doing...
Just venting a little. Good luck..
I have felt the same way sometimes. It's hard not to become obsessive and overanalyze everything you eat. I agree. I've thought about quitting calorie counting myself(not the web site just doing it), but I guess I haven't gotten fed up enough yet. In the end we shouldn't worry about nitpicking every calorie. As long as you are eating a well balanced diet and enjoying life and you feel good, then who cares?! Go ahead and eat that piece of chocolate cake and enjoy it!! Unless you eat a whole cake to yourself, nothing is really gonna happen anyway. One of the wonderful things calcount has taught me, lol.
i'm glad to hear i'm not the only one who's felt this way. i really think all the obsessing over calories has made it even worse for me. and i've started to binge eat. way more than i did before. because all i think about is food now. and i tend to deprive myself of high caloric things (because i now know they're high in calories) and then the awful, vicious binge cycle begins.
i do think it's just healthier for me to try to make a lifestyle change that doesn't involve anything as strict as counting calories.
thank you for your responses and good luck to both of you!
Hmmm. Not sure 'Motivation' is the place for this post. ? 
I think most of us who are believers are so because we have demonstrated to ourselves many times that we stink at things like knowing when we're full. If we could just self regulate like that, we wouldn't have the weight problem to start with.
That being said, one size does not fit all. It may be a bad fit for you. It also maybe that even though 'months' feels like a long time, you just haven't given it enough time to get past that sort of obsessive level. I think most of us do have that for awhile and then once we know what a teaspoon of flax looks like etc. we can chill a bit. I log anyway because every now and then, I get a surprise one way or another. It just sort of keeps me honest with myself.
I couldn't agree more with this post. I almost feel like I eat more when counting calories, because I'm always thinking about food...which makes me hungry.
I have been at this place many times before and I felt so restricted I also did the binging. What I have learned through this website and also WW is you can have the foods you enjoy...just learn portion control. The biggest part of calorie counting is to learn portion sizes..once you get that down you can pretty much know what you should be eating and when you are full. I also agree with chris1208..if we knew all that info we wouldn't be overweight to begin with. I suggest just maybe taking a few days off and have some fun.Good Luck to you .
After my own personal experience, calorie counting is a double barrel shotgun; it helps when losing weight, but to maintain I always felt like the calorie goal was the "goal" and if I saw that bar go yellow, I freaked! and Stopped eating.
While listening to the signals your body is giving you to eat is good, you should be able to get up to "maintenance" calories and then stop counting. Otherwise you can really be undereating as well.
Just a plug: the food pyramid helped me with my maintenance, in that for your age, height and weight, you will be advised of how many whole grains, vegatables, fruits, calcium/dairy, proteins (meat/beans), tsps of oil and "extra" calories you should be eating. Like counting calories, it is still a goal to meet servings, however, I do not freak if I have too many or too little servings of each food group.
Good Luck and great move.
The opposite is true for me. The more I count calories, the more in tune I am with what my body wants and needs and how to tell if I'm full and stop eating. Before, I tried to listen to my body but there was so much in the way. Emotional eating, stress eating, habitual eating . . . all these reasons to eat. There are certain things you can eat and never feel full - like donuts or butter - even though you've consumed a ton of calories.
I've been counting calories for 6 months and more and more often I will log my calories after the fact and find that I hit very close to my calorie target.
One thing I avoid is counting the "little things" like all the sugar, all the butter or condiments. I don't weigh everything. I have learned better portion control and I actually use the analysis tool more than calorie meter. No longer eating tons of fatty foods, restaurant and fast foods, I actually have to make sure I'm getting enough nutrients and enough calories.
And I skip days too.
I agree with someone here who said that most of us suck at "listening to our bodies". That's why I'm here. My body "told me" to skip meals and binge later. Somtimes my body suggested fried eggs and country fried steak after drinking a 6 pack of beer. So, now I have to teach my body new tricks and it will likely take a while to do so.
I've only been using CC for a little over a week but I love the calorie counting for just the opposite reason. It has freed me. I'm a lifetime member of Weight Watchers, since 1991, where I had to analyze food then find the point value and/or memorize all the point values. I did become obsessed. I'm not knocking Weight Watchers because it's a fantastic program. I guess I'm just tired of spending money when I'm above goal and counting points. Here I just quickly type it in see how many calories I have left and go from there and it's FREE. WOW! Weight Watchers has similar tools but you have to pay for them. I was actually not eating enough! I'm perfectly satisfied with the amount I get to eat and love seeing how well I have eaten. My first week I lost 7.5 lbs and I haven't been able to lose anything the last few years after I had some health issues. I know that is mostly water weight but I feel confident that doing this will help keep me on an even keel and that slowly but surely the weight will come off. All of us have to choose what works best for us.
I'm with you lucylus - I feel so much more "in tune" with what my body really needs since I've started CC. I realize now that I rarely felt hunger before. I will admit that the first few weeks I felt like I was never going to feel full again and that made me very depressed. Now I make better choices that let me feel full and good. I've had emotional ups and downs with regard to CC so far. Today I'm on an up. But they really aren't about counting calories - they're about being constipated or on a plateau.
I like the focus.
good luck with that
double post
Counting has freed me from the guilt. It seems like every time I ate something "bad" I felt guilty and I constantly had this vague negative feeling something like "I should not be eating right now" or "why do I eat so much."
Here's my take...
I don't completely agree or disagree with this post. I'm new to this site (I atually counted my calories for like 3 days in the beginning :)) and I think it's a little time consuming and obessesive. However, it did give me a good idea of how much I was actually eating.
I think some people may need to count calories to control their diet, but others may just need a little a little coaching. If you can learn the general concepts and rules to eating healthy, I don't think you need to count calories. We know what we should be eating, we just don't most of the tiime!
I stopped logging food/counting a couple of months ago, but it's not because it caused an obsession with food. I first realized that my calorie count for the first half of the day (through afternoon snack) rarely varied, despite the variety I built into my food choices. Since I had established it as a habit, I didn't see the need for it anymore, and I was only logging the biggest variables: dinner, evening snacks, and eating out at restaurants. Then after seeing how consistent I was getting those (like less than a 150 cal difference over a week), I stopped logging those too. And I gotta admit, it is kind of freeing to not have to save the package labels and take 10 minutes to log stuff after dinner time.
For people who need the logging, I understand - I would have never learned intuitively what is now an established habit, and some have expressed their need for that control and information. Whatever works, I say.
I felt the same way about counting calories back in June because I seemed to be going no where with my weight. So I quit for 3 weeks. And guess what, CC+ had unconsciously made me very aware of the amounts I was eating. I started dropping weight slowly and now I have come back to CC+ because I realized it had actually helped me.
For instance, tonight I splurged on chicken enchiladas. I ate 2 of them, a whopping 660 calories in one fell swoop. But with CC+ I was able to plug in the calories and make the choice of where to cut back on something else so I could enjoy my enchiladas without guilt.
You won't be the first to leave CC+, but I have a suspicion you'll be back. ; )
It's funny how CC affects everyone differently. I agree with others here in that CC has set me free! I couldn't be more thrilled! Not to mention it's taught me that I didn't know as much as I thought I did about what was healthy. When I first found CC, I ate what I normally did and simply logged what I ate and was surprised to find that my eating habits were horrible! Take into consideration the fact that I WAS listening to my body and it's no wonder I weight 191 lbs. I thought I was eating right, but I was wrong.
However, CC has helped me to be accountable to myself, and it's helped me to not only eat healthy but eat a much more diverse range of foods. I ate cooked spinach the other day for the first time since I was a kid! Tonight I ate some sugar free instant pudding for the first time in years. For the first time in my life I'm exploring with the foods I eat. I am not obsessed with counting calories. Instead, I do my best to choose healthy foods and try to keep a mental idea of where I am calorie wise. When I get home, I log everything and see where I'm at, and what's left goes towards dinner. Usually I'm right about where I think I am, but sometimes I'm way off. And on those days I chalk it up to a simple learning process. I recently ate out with friends, and managed to eat at a Mexican restaurant and get full for under 300 calories!
CC has set me free. This isn't just about weight loss, this is me changing my entire life. And counting calories helps me to retrain my mind and body. It helps me to keep into consideration that if I splurge on this, I need to decide how to adjust what else I eat. And like someone else on here said, IT'S FREE!!! Wow, this amazes me.
Who knows, maybe I will get to a place where I don't need to log my calories every day, maybe not. But for now, I'm thrilled there's a place I can go to every day for free which will not only help me count calories, but will also help me learn about foods, nutritious and unnutritious, and what they do to my body. CC is a place where I can learn about exercising and what's good for me, it's a way for me to keep track of what I'm doing from day to day.
As far as I'm concerned, CC rocks.
Safiyah
Getting in touch with the numbers of calories is good for me. I would not have known otherwise, and may not have been able to shed these last 20 and hopefully the last 10 or so. It hasn't taught me when I'm full or not. It has helped me to figure out that eating some foods will tend to keep me fat, so I can put that into my personal equation.
I am counting my calories right now. I am trying to lose weight. When I get to a weight my body and eyes like, I will switch to maintenance. While maintining, as long as I exercise and my weight stays within a comfortable range, I won't need to look at the calories. If my weight drifts out of that range (and I have a scale, a mirror and some new "DO NOT GET FATTER THAN THESE CLOTHES" clothes to give me easy feedback) then I will go back to counting my calories.
But to each his own. So long and good luck!
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