I’m with you. I’ve been doing OMAD for 4 weeks today. I honestly have not counted calories because I don’t want this to be a diet, I want it to be a lifestyle. Tonight I’m going to eat a pizza and not stress about it. I’m sure you’ve noticed that you get full quickly after only eating in a small window so that’s why I’m not worried about it. I do try, on most nights, to get lots of veggies and protein before anything else. But, like tonight, pizza sounds awesome and that’s what I’m going to have. I’ve been watching YouTube vids from fasting foodie and she doesn’t count calories and has been able to sustain OMAD for over 2 years. For me, that’s what I want. I want a lifestyle change that I don’t have to work at and it makes me feel great. I’m still learning too and may experiment with counting calories if I plateau. I guess that’s the cool part is experimenting until you find something that works for you. Good luck friend.
I track everything, and i weigh daily. I personally Can cram a lot of calories into 6-8 hours. I can can blow through my calorie deficit in hour 4. I’m in it for weight loss, IF helps me restrict calories while still enjoying larger meals a couple of times a day.
I’ve done IF before with mixed results. This time around I start counting calories with an app. And it is another whole game for me. I realized I was not doing calorie deficit and some of my “innocent” foods were actually contributing a lot towards my daily calorie count. I was probably compensating eating more so my fasting was not going to work for my goal. My goal is lose the covid pandemic weight.
Not a fan of calorie counting….. it takes way too much effort. Not all calories are equal. Better to use that time to do anything else. Like creating a habit for balanced meals. I guess it works for people who want a whole lot of data but until you can isolate calorie counting from all my health habits as beneficial in a specific way, I don’t find it useful
On OMAD and mostly whole foods it takes deliberate effort for me to exceed my daily maintenance budget of ~2k kcal. Still I like to keep a food journal in order to identify foods that I’m prone to overeating (too calorie-dense, too tasty or otherwise too appetizing) and retain a rough overview of my compliance over recent weeks and months in mind.
Explicit (a priori) intake tracking, i.e. “eating to a number”, on the other hand, I find to be a little too tedious for my taste as well as to promote compulsive behavior on my part. That said I would absolutely adopt the practice if I got struck by an inexplicable plateau or nowadays an inexplicable weight uptrend. While IF may well be gifting me some metabolic wiggle room and better hunger regulation, by no means have I been granted a license to just “eat whatever”, simply because “it’s my eating window and throughout the rest of the day my insulin is going to be lower”, without consequence.
My stock advice is to head down the path of least resistance first and optimize further if/when the need arises. Needless to say, if you enjoy calorie-counting then more power to you. Otherwise, perhaps you’ll get lucky as I have and make it to your goal in a more indirect fashion. Or perhaps you’ll make it three quarters of the way only to figure that the last few remaining steps necessitating explicit tracking aren’t really worth the effort.
I don’t. If I had to I would fail every time. It would drive me nuts to even try.
Works well for many people. One of the reasons I like IF is - it gives me tremendous latitude to eat as a I like (within reason). Want that Indian buffet? Great, it’s on the menu (during the feed window).
What I like about IF is - I really don’t have to think about. . .anything. If I’m in my feed window, and I’m hungry, I eat naturally. And if I’m out of it, I do something else. Otherwise no decisions.
I make progress - and if I ever stall, all I need to do is adjust the feed window.
Simple. Easy. Effective.
But other people want to track everything - I think that’s great if it works for them. It would NEVER work for me.
Hello! I can’t count calories, sounds like torture and I’m way too lazy. OMAD (and sometimes 2 in 4 hrs) with whatever and however much I want to eat is the only way I personally can sustain intermittent fasting; otherwise I would just give up, because I love food and hey you only live once. I still lose weight and feel good. For me it’s not a race but a way of healthy living. I never did calorie counting ever in my life (in my youth I wasn’t overweight) so maybe that’s why it’d be hard for me.
It really all depends on the individual, if you’re the type to want to count calories because you need to know, or if your body is stubborn and not dropping weight even with a squeaky clean fast. We’re all different.
When I want to drop more weight I just go with a tighter window. I find I can maintain or slowly gain with 16:8, so I usually stick with a 4 hour eating window or less when trying to drop weight. Works for me and I’m down 35 pounds so far.