Thursday, July 29, 2021

What to do if I don’t want to count calories for the rest of my life

Ok, here’s the thing. I successfully lost about 25 lbs several years ago by using MyFitnessPal and logging everything. I also was doing strength training and roller skating. It was…fine. I ate mostly the same foods as before (mostly avoided rice because it’s so calorie dense and not filling), though I ate a lot more frozen dinners because I didn’t want to weigh everything while cooking. I did sometimes cook simple things and weigh them.

I then had some stressful stuff happen and took a break that never ended. Then health problems, antidepressant side effects, etc. and I’ve gained a bunch more weight since then. I am getting a handle on things now and would like to give weight loss another go.

It wasn’t like psychologically distressing to count calories but it was tedious and limiting. It made it hard to do things like share food with friends and family or go on dates, not even because I had to eat less but because I had to be able to measure everything I ate. While I don’t mind tracking things for a while I don’t want it to be something I have to do forever.

I see 2 ideas consistently come up on this sub:

  1. CICO is best. You have to track calories. (I don’t want to do keto or give up whole food categories so limiting my overall amount of food seems like the best strategy anyway.)
  2. You can’t just diet for a period of time and stop; you have to make changes you’ll keep up for the rest of your life.

Anyway, how do you reconcile these two ideas in a way that’s not “weigh everything you eat that’s not a frozen dinner for the rest of your life”? Are there methods to get better at estimating how much food you should be eating for a given meal and adding that up? Especially if they’re not centered around calories but maybe some other unit of measurement; that’s not a requirement though.

The idea that I’m entering into some sort of commitment to count everything that goes in my mouth until I die is really making me not want to start trying at all. What does it look like to maintain weight loss without constantly having to count things?

submitted by /u/BeauteousMaximus
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