If you have been logging calories for a while and are stalling, it might help to change your approach
A few years ago I lost ~130 lbs . Since then I have gained a fair amount of muscle mass. So I have been logging my caloric intake and macros for a while. Currently I am maintaining/recomping.
Logging calories has been super helpful for me in terms of educating myself about my caloric and macro-nutrient intake. However, my long term goal was (and is) to be able to trust my body's hunger signals and not necessarily continue to log calories for the rest of my life.
One day I had an epiphany. I noticed that logging calories had turned into a double-edged sword for me. While it was helping me stay under my calorie ceiling, I had started relying on the number of calories I had "remaining" for the day as my hunger cue. Even if I wasn't necessarily hungry I would open the app and see that I had X number of calories left for the day, and decide "Oh, I have so many calories left, I should have a snack!". And then later I'd be *actually* hungry and either go over my goal, or be left unsatiated.
I started off by logging what I had eaten into the app only at the end of the day. I was surprised at how quickly that helped shift my focus from a number in a food logging app to actually being aware of when my body was telling me it was hungry. Gradually I stopped logging my calories. I ended up losing ~10 lbs of fat I had been trying to get rid of.
This doesn't mean that I go all out every time I feel hungry. I do try to be mindful of what and how much of it I have had to eat over the course of the day. If I have had a light lunch, I don't stress out over eating a little bit more at dinner time. And vice versa. I also mentally add up how much protein I have consumed.
This approach will likely not work for you if you are only just starting out. However if you have been logging calories for a while and are able to guesstimate (to a reasonable degree of accuracy) the calories in the food you are eating, this might help you get more attuned to your body's hunger signals and to have some peace of mind.
[link] [comments]
from loseit - Lose the Fat http://bit.ly/2IGdj6z
No comments: