I used MyFitnessPal to lose 15kg a few years ago and I have a theory that the act of calorie counting (ie the effort of working it out and labour of putting it into the app) is a key part of why it works. It becomes just slightly more effort to eat something and it makes you stop and think. Making it easier I would expect to make it also easier to eat more.
As someone who lost nearly 100lbs (about 45kg) calorie counting and working out, this was a big part of it.
It also just made me cognizant of my bad eating habits. I’d absent-mindedly snack on something, go to log it, then think “wait, why am I eating this right now?” and stop.
It’s essential educating yourself on nutrition through habit.
Yes, macros were key as I was doing a pretty intensive 4-day HIIT program at the time.
I actually aimed strictly for my maintenance calories as I was burning 700-900cal in exercise per workout day. Was very hard work, but rewarding.
It took about a year to drop that much weight, normally I think it would take longer but I had a very dedicated group trainer helping me stay on track.
That's cool that it worked with your maintenance calories. was that calculated a maintenance for sedentary lifestyle and the exercise was on top, or did you also eat the exercise calories and still lost weight?
The former - the ultimate goal was to get myself comfortable with eating in a way that would keep me at a stable weight and stick with it. I knew this was going to be the hardest part of the lifestyle change, so I opted for a more difficult up front program to ensure I could focus on that while I lost weight.
I think that's something that a lot of people fail to account for when trying to lose weight that ultimately ruins their goals - you have to build habits to sustain the lifestyle you want. Weight loss surgery, eating at a large deficit or working out hard alone are going to get rid of some weight, but most people will gain all of that back within a year's time.
I find a similar thing with budgeting apps. Manually tracking requires effort and for you to think twice before every purchase, whereas automatic transaction syncing with your bank means you can just not think about it.
In the case of dieting/calorie counting - I don't think you can get away with not thinking about it, especially with inaccurate estimates.
Yes!! I used an app called Waistline 2 years ago to keep myself on a brutal diet. I did < 1500 calories per day for 2 months. Lost 9kg. Came out with the same insight: the hassle of meticulously keeping track helps with the restraint.
