Counting Calories

I weigh, measure and track every bite that goes into my mouth. It's not a trust issue, it's intuitive eating doesn't work for me and not because I'll eat too much but that I will eat too little. I tried it for a few days (tracked but just ate when I felt like it) and I was eating about 800 calories a day. I try to do 40% protein and generally get well over 120g of protein, 35% carbs and 25% fats. Because I'm in maintenance, I can eat a bit more and along with trying to use macros as my guide, shoot for 1500 calories a day. I also tend to be a rather analytical kind of person and so I like to see the numbers. That's one reason I track.

Another reason is if I should start gaining weight unexpectedly and not necessarily understand why, I can look back and say, oops, I've gotten kinda heavy on the carbs or if I look at my micronutrients, I can see, oops I had too much sodium or too much fat, whatever.

Third, if I still can't see what I'm doing wrong, I can show it to my nutritionist and she can, based on what I've tracked, make suggestions that could help me do better, after all, the nutritionist's job is to provide guidance to her patients.

Above all, it keeps me mindful of what I am putting in my body. Pre-surgery, honestly, I put a lot of non-nutritious stuff (pure crap) in my body and I paid a pretty heavy price for that, mostly with a lot of joint issues. I want to be healthy and anything that will assist in a healthy lifestyle, I am more than willing to do. That doesn't mean that I never eat unplanned foods or that I never eat something that isn't healthy but I'm mindful of doing it and I do weigh the risks, etc, i.e. I can look back and see, today eating that little bite of cake wouldn't be a good idea cuz I ate such and such a few days ago. All in all, I say the best idea is to track. Some people don't and they do fine but I think, over the long haul, because evidence that tracking is one of the best things you can do to lose weight, it's the best thing to do.

Intuitive eating would only work for me if I could stay 100% away from carb-heavy foods, but they call to me. I have to weigh and track my food and weigh myself.