Is it reasonable to track what you eat for the rest of your life?

I've been tracking every day, even prior to surgery.   I'm more focused on making sure that I get enough protein and keep the carbs within a decent range.  I like the accountability it creates and forces me to look at how easily I can get off track if I let myself.

I don't know if studies back this up, but according to my surgeon's office, the people who track what they eat are generally more successful at losing and keeping the weight off long term.  With MFP, it's so easy since you can enter recipes or scan bar codes.  Will I do this for the rest of my life?  I don't know.  But I will do it while I'm losing weight and easing myself into maintenance.  I don't see it as becoming dependent, but using all tools available to me to be successful.  It was too easy for me to gain the weight and ignore the quantity and quality of foods I used to shovel into my mouth.  Tracking is my new normal and I don't find it burdensome. 

Thank you everyone! I'm so glad to see that tracking has been a vital part of your success. It makes me feel much better about continuing to do it, and after surgery, I absolutely plan to set my nutrient goals manually and focus more on protein than anything else (and calories last, at least at first).

I've been using MFP for a couple of months but I didn't know the nutrient goals could be set individually.  How is that done within the app? 

You'll have to do it on your computer, you can't do it on your hone.  Go into Settings and you'll see a Food & Exercise Diary section.   You can pick the nutrients you track.  Then you go into Goals  and set your nutritional goals using the "custom" option.  

Thanks.

I don't know if there's a way to do it from the app, but from the website you can go to Goals, Change Goals, then choose Custom and set the nutrient percentages and calories so they correspond to the number of grams per day you're aiming for. Obviously the numbers have to all add up, but if you don't care about calories, you can set the protein, fat, and carb numbers where you want them and just let the calories calculate themselves.

Thanks.

We do what works for us! I have never tracked. Well not quite true, I made very sure I understood calorie values and every few weeks I would count for a day to make sure I was actually eating what I thought I was eating. I have no idea how to count other things. Like carbs! 

If I measured and recorded, I would obsess about food and think about it all the time. And that's what got me obese in the first place. 

The only time I do a rough count, apart from my occasional check, wouid be on a day when, for example, I had a cream cake mid-morning!!  I would then count carefully to make sure that I didn't go too far over my limit! 

I simply don't have the patience or attention to detail recording everything would entail! 

And it always works out about right. At the moment I am trying to lose a bit of regain. It is late evening here and as I answered this, I just did a quick count. I have today had 1100 calories, I allow myself 1200. So that's fine! 

This really concerns me:

"But sometimes, I feel like I had a really filling dinner and SHOULD stop eating for the night, but I see a few hundred calories left and have an Outshine bar or cheese as a snack because I have the calories left."

If you're not hungry, hooray, you get to stop eating for the day! It will be between you and your team how much protein/cals you're eating and MFP can be very useful to make sure you're fulfilling that. But if you get there and are under goal...if you're no longer hungry, there's no reason to eat :) 

I do use it to track and make sure I'm eating enough. I tend to under eat. But once you've used it long enough, don't you know a lot of your common foods' numbers? I do log each and every bite right now. I'm not certain I will each and every day once I hit maintenance. Or maybe do it now and then to make sure I'm on track. 

Oh it absolutely concerns me too. Evenings are my worst snacking time, and learning to get past the urge to snack after dinner is one of my biggest challenges. That's partly why I worry that MFP may be harmful as well as helpful. But none of us got to be MO by stopping eating when we'd consumed enough calories for our metabolic needs.