I do a combination of minimum calories and minimum exercise that lets my minimum calories never have to run too low. It is pretty rare that my calories in will ever dip below 1400, but I'm running closer to 1400 now than 1500 as my weight gets lower and it takes more work to burn calories through exercise. Breakfast used to be 4 turkey ham & cheese roll ups and now it is 3, but will probably go back to 4 in maintenance. I'm also shaving my after work snack - instead of an oz of nuts it is now a tablespoon of milk in a cup of caramel vanilla tea, or sometimes some home-made low carb ice cream (100 cal vs the 165 - 175 for the nuts.) Where I'm seeing the biggest effect of calorie counting is that my portions don't gradually start sneaking upwards like they used to. I weigh my 1 oz of nuts, and DON'T grab one more unweighed almond from the can before putting it back. If it is going in, it is getting weighed and counted. One oz of cheese is 1 oz, not 1.1. I'm sure I'm getting a minimum of 100 - 200 calories per day (worth 10 - 20 lbs per year) by cutting calories through weighing portions.

"Exercise the minimum" has had a really big effect on me. The last day that I've had less than my daily 10,000 steps was Feb 2. In December I was averaging around 9000 steps per day. Since then daily average has creeped first to 13,000, then 14,000, and now 16,500. I'll start dropping it back down beginning May 9. Starting to expect a minimum amount of daily exercise has had a real effect on me. At this point, fitting 10,000 steps into my day is so easy that it is an achievable daily minimum for the rest of my life. So many small habits (parking in the worst parking spot at work or the grocery store, which bathroom to walk to at work or home, keeping some frequently used things in the spare room at home instead of in the living room) add up so that my minimum daily calories burned is so much higher than before I started measuring.

Lynda