Definitely in the beginning I was so serious about weighing and tracking my food. It became a chore. Food is a big part of my life, kinda sorta professionally, and it started taking me down a path of non-enjoyment. Food is not just fuel to me. I believe that cooking is the only craft that relies on all five senses and that the only way I could continue to cook "my way" was to use them all. I found that I was being so strictly regimented that it was affecting this. I called bullshit.

I stopped using the food scale for my daily meals and it went back to its job of being used to measure flours. Bye bye tracking websites and logs. No more physical weighing at my CF joint - just the mirror and how my clothes fit, my energy level. And simply just eating when I was hungry and stopping when I was full.

I eat very clean and in a way that is best for me and keeping to my performance level. The only journal I keep now, besides recipes, is for my lifting. Definitely I will continue to tinker but will never go back to such a strict structure. And anyway, I feel and look good and am enjoying myself. That's kind of a win in my book.

I've always been sort of a 'regimented' kind of person, and have spent a large segment of my life in the measuring, weighing, and analyzing of my diet. For me, it wasn't healthy. It forced me into ever expanding obsessive-compulsive behaviors and 'tweaking' of my nutritional plan, as well as extreme levels of guilt if I deviated from the plan even a little bit. Instead of bringing me freedom, it became constricting and debilitating.

For a little over a year, I've been "eating instinctively" -- I keep healthy foods around, and modify my diet only in so far as it makes me feel good. I listen carefully to my body after I've eaten, and see how it feels, and I trust those feelings... "I am satisfied", "I am groggy", "I have lots of energy", "That meal made my heart do weird stuff"... then I modify based on trying to feel the best that I can each day, and minimizing the stuff that makes me feel horrible. As a really nice side-effect, I've dropped a lot of weight (somewhere over 175 lbs... I stopped weighing when I'd lost 175 lbs, but my body is still shrinking... I just don't know the numbers for how much), and been able to participate in things that I never thought I'd be able to do again (YAAY raquetball!).

I still have some issues with the whole "mealtime" thing -- especially with the idea among members of our household that one HAS to eat 3-4 times a day... whether they're hungry or not. I still find it difficult not to sit down to a meal that I had to prepare and that everyone else is eating, so sometimes, I'll still eat even if I'm not hungry. I'm working on it...

I guess my advice is -- Do what makes you feel more healthy, and just be aware. Don't do stuff that distracts you from how your body is responding to the food. Trust your body, and everything else will balance out over time.

To those who say no-count-paleo vs. calorie counting: Why does it have to be either-or?

Yes you can lose weight on ice cream, pizza, and protein shakes. Be prepared to feel completely unsatisfied though.

And yes eating whole foods will help you lose weight, but there are (and I predict will be more) paleos who cannot lose weight due to such items as bacon and heavy cream.

So if your goal is to lose weight, I say, make choices with a better satiation:calorie ratio.

If you stall before you reach your goal weight, calorie counting for a week or two is a great way to see exactly what you're spending your intake on. This should help you become more in touch with your hunger. For example, I have discovered how for equal calories low fat dairy makes me feel more satiated than high/full or low fat. I would never have figured that out if I didn't measure the amounts.

Similarly, a single serving of nuts (~150kcal) is great, makes me feel very satisfied when mixed with yogurt. However, if you give me a bag of nuts, I will destroy them, all 3000kcal. If you decide a serving of nuts is a handful, then depending on the size of your hands you could be taking in way more calories than you intend.

And by using tracking software I start to realize how much food I am really supposed to eat. Think about people who are always late to every event. They just don't have a reliable internal clock. Wearing a watch and sticking to it can help them. Similarly, overweight people have an unreliable energy balance scale. They will, if left alone, eat more food than they need. So, using calorie counting, you can train them to know what they really need.

Here's some news most people won't want to hear: A lot of people will be overweight on the strictest of paleo foods. Even if you restrict paleo to lean meats, veggies, and 1 serving of fruit, Where there is a will, there's a way. And where there's fatty meat, fatty dairy, it doesn't even take any effort.

Tl;dr use calorie counting when weight isn't doing what you want it to do based on your food choices. At the end of the day, calories are all that matter but that doesn't mean you should try to influence calories directly. Rather, you should choose your food/activity choices to achieve whatever caloric intake you desire.

If I had to count, measure, and track what I ate I wouldn't have lasted 30 days.

I count and weigh nothing. I have no idea how many calories I eat, or how many grams of any particular nutrient.

Since the beginning one of the reasons paleo has worked for me is I can Keep It Simple. I eat when I'm hungry. I skip meals when I'm not. As long as a food is not on the Avoid list - I eat as much and as often as I like.

With that said - I do consciously try to get as much variety of good food as I can. I will often buy a food simply because I haven't had it in a while. I trust in variety to balance out my nutrition over the long terms and could care less about daily recommended intakes.

My friends shake their heads at me frequently as I often appear to eat way more than any of them, yet I've lost weight and gotten into much better shape of the last couple years.

Important note: I am NOT saying my way is the right way. I don't think there is such a thing. This is just what works for me.

Your question is at the heart of what we're all trying to do, which is to reach and maintain our desired state of body/mind without having to think about it all the time. The ideal is that it seems to "happen" on its own although we know it won't.

No, I don't use detailed techniques but I do try to use a logical approach. I have defined in my mind what is a reasonable serving size for me for each major nutrient. That's what I defrost/cook/dish out. If you're trying to lose weight, I think it works against that goal to have extra food ready to eat.

If I realize as I'm eating that I don't feel hungry for one or more foods any more I stop eating it/them. My typical sequence is leafy salad, fruit, meat/veggies. I almost always finish my salad and meat, but it's common for me not to finish the fruit/veggies.

Eating meat early in the day helped my transition; at first, I had my main meal in the morning but it slowly drifted to mid-day and then afternoon. Sipping coffee is still my morning ritual and I find it soothing. In the afternoon I sip water kefir because I find it mildly energizing and it seems to kill cravings for carbs.

Is it not all related to the specifics of the goals?

I can imagine that if I was a world class competitive athlete then measuring and adjusting my diet constantly may give me an edge in my performance. For the rest of us I doubt whether the effort put in actually produces an equal effect on our day to day lives.

If part of the paleo/primal lifestyle is simplifying life to reduce stress and maximise overall health, then adding such specific dietary monitors in place surely defeats this purpose. Again I do not think that spending so much time weighing and measuring macronutrient benefits of a meal in more than just a general sense will provide benefits over and above simply just eating a good paleo meal.

Understandably taking the effort to take two Vitamin D3 pills every morning is pedantic in itself, but the effort involved: the low financial cost, the fifteen minute online purchase every two months, and the five second consumption every day, is far less stress than the overall benefits of D3 supplementation.

When I first started looking at my health I joined "DailyBurn" and was tracking every meal. Once I began to understand the basic structure of meals and their general calorie content I deleted my account. Every now and then I check certain ingredients for calories but mostly I just eat and listen to my gut. I am beginning to understand when I am most likely at a calorie deficit merely by just thinking back through the day/week. I also just have some simple nutrient goals: have I eaten a particular vegetable or fruit in the last few days? If not then I do so.

Personally I am training myself to maximise the output of this diet with the minimum amount of stress. When I find myself obsessing over the specifics, I have to step-back and remind myself that the time I spend striving to reach perfection could actually be used to live right now.

I have started to think about compound nutritional interest. Compound interest arises when interest is added to the principal, so that from that moment on, the interest that has been added also earns interest. And thus should it be in every area of our lives. In the case of diet, it is probably better to just do something averagely right the majority of the time, rather than do something perfect the minority of the time.

The benefit of spending one hour eating a slice of cake with a good friend probably outweighs the benefit of not ingesting half a cup of refined carbohydrate and possibly extending one's lifetime by perhaps a day.

But eating one slice of cake every day because it makes you feel happy, in contrast overtime may not only reduce your life but reduce your overall happiness while you are still alive eating or not eating cake.

Another technique is to eat the same thing every day for breakfast. That eliminates one meal that you have to weigh etc... Because you can always make it the same...

I keep a food/mood/exercise journal to let me keep track of my progress (weight loss goals, nutrition goals, exercise intensity & how all this makes me feel to better optimize "me"). Now, I'm not religious about using it, I may go days/weeks w/o an entry b/c I feel things are ok... but if I'm starting to feel "different" (more tired, sorer, super energetic, etc.) I'll start plugging to see what I am or am not doing & if there's a dietary/physical reason for it (other than say a cold or allergies).

That being said, I have always been a proponent of the concept of "listen to your body". If I eat too much today, my body will tell me by not being super hungry tomorrow. If I ate something my body doesn't like (say, sugar), tomorrow I'll probably fast or just consume broth.
I have odd cravings & give in when it's strong enough (say dreaming about foods gives me a pretty good inclination I'm lacking something!)... sardines (for salt usually), milk (which i havent drank since I was about 6 y/o, I need calcium), beef (for iron), etc.

A lotta folks think I'm crazy for "craving" beef or fish or something, but I think we all know that our bodies know nutritionally speaking better than we think we do.

This is a skill I think is super important - learning to listen to your body. And it's a skill that small children have (think of the buffet experiment w/kids) & more primitive cultures/tribes have. They eat to live, not live to eat.

That's my 2 cents & experience. HTH

I track my calories (roughly, I don't own a food scale) as I tend to undereat by accident. My hunger pangs just don't seem to work correctly, and at least my problem is less annoying than the opposite. However, while I still track my calories, I eat to satiety first, and plug things into fitday after. If I haven't eaten enough and I still have some room in my stomach, I go eat more. I don't eat til I'm stuffed, even if my counter says I need more food; I just wait and let the next few days even it out.

Many paleos contend that food is meant to be eaten, not measured, and I agree. However, food tracking is not necessarily evil. It can be an informative tool utilized at the same time you are eating mindfully.