Calorie Counting

I'm pretty resistant to the idea I counting calories because I have the tendency to get unhealthily obsessed with numbers. Have any of you had great success without calorie counting?  (Food tracking I'm cool with, but calorie counting is a different beast for me.)

If I do opt for the counting, ugh, how much of a pain is it to enter recipes into myfitnesspal?  Will it get to be easier and faster than it is now?

I'm going to be 100% honest here. I have had MANY days where the only things I consciously tracked were carbs and protein numbers. It worked, sure, but now that I'm closer to goal, I've found that I've got to be super strict if I want the scale to move. I did use MFP, and the calories were automatically tracked, but I noticed that when I aimed for my carb/protein numbers, the calories usually stayed in a specific range. MFP gets easier to use once you get into the groove of it. 

Thanks, I appreciate it!  

I'm with Chrissy and, frankly, my doctor didn't even want me tracking calories.  I used MFP too and shot for the 80 grams of protein and under 40 grams of carb and found I didn't have to pay much attention to calories.  

Entering into MFP is a breeze, especially with the mobile app for your phone.  And once you've been logging for a couple weeks it gets a LOT faster as most of your food choice will be in there.  

Yeah, my NUT hasn't given me any sort of calorie goal until I reach maintenance.  

What about if you cook lots of different recipes?  I think that's what I'm worried about - the idea of having to enter in a recipe every day.  It sounds like a pain in the butt.

Entering the recipes is a pain in the butt.  Seriously though, I don't think you'll be doing too many recipes in the beginning; during the first few months you really just stick to basics.  And you'd be surprised at how many recipes are already out there that you could use to calculate your numbers.  

You're totally right - in the first few months I won't be entering too many things at all and, maybe once I am... I'll be used to it and not think it's a hassle :)

I get your resistance and obsession with numbers. For many years before my surgery I used counting calories to try to lose weight. It worked sometimes, but I would get obsesses with it and it ended up leading to failure.

I stopped doing it about 6 months before surgery, but decided I should probably start up again once I had surgery. For me, it is different now. Like Chrissy, I focus more on the carbs and protein, but also keep my eye on the calories.

It might not be the biggest deal not to do it right away, but I think for most people it is an important tool for those who are the most successful (lose all or most of their extra weight).

Edited to add: On the ease of counting calories - having done it for many years with short spans here and there where I take a break. It is always annoying or slightly difficult to get into doing it regularly, but it really does get easier with time. For me, it is basically just normal daily activity. I enter recipes and over time you will have the majority of your meals in there and it makes it easy to log or edit if you must. If you can push through the first couple weeks you'll just automatically be doing it. 

Thanks for the reply.  

I think I'm just worried that the whole recipe entering thing will be a big huge pain in the butt :P  And my therapist can help me with my numbers obsession... maybe. 

I use MyFitnessPal too.  As mentioned above, in the beginning it's time consuming - but it gets easier as your foods are entered on a list, reducing the need to add new foods.  Being creatures of habit, we generally stick to eating the same meals over and over again.