Ok so plain and simply is it really that nessacary to count calories everyday? If not how to I lose fat without counting calories?

simple answer, no, as long as you have an idea of what your doing. If its not working count em.

in my opinion it is not necessary, but it is the best way to see what you are eating, and how you are eating. trust me, you dont want to do it at first because it seems time consuming, but its not more than a couple extra minutes to count the numbers, plug them in, or weigh the food.

so as long as I take in my macro nutrients stay away from simple sugars bleached foods trans fats etc and also exercise correctly then I wont have to worry about it at all?

It depends. I never counted them until the last month. Now, since I'm losing weight and I've got 40 more pounds to lose, I find it very helpful.

In my younger years, I usually only needed to lose 10 pounds or so. Well, I could eat really clean and restrict probably way too much for a week or two and lose the weight. Now that I've got such a long road to go down, it helps me do it the right way. I can reasonably restrict calories, exercise correctly and stay with it for the long haul.

So, I would say YES, at least for the first few weeks. Depending on your goals it may not be necessary to continue forever but it will give you really good insight at first. Hope this helps, Greg

I've been doing it for a pretty long time taking in 2200 calories the main problem with me is that I tend to binge eat because I get such intense food cravings this is really bad I also read on bodybuilding.com that a restricted caloric diet can cause your metabolism to slow down and trust me I know the whole starvation mode thing

Personally, I don't "count" calories persay, as I can't in college. But I do have an idea of how many calories are in things, and try to estimate how many I am taking in during the day. This probably means somedays I am grossly underestimating the number of calories, and other days overestimating, but I at least try. You shouldn't lose all conception of how many you have consumed.

so should i or shouldnt i stick with counting calories?

If you do it for a while, you'll get to know the approx cals of the foods you eat. After a while you can gauge things pretty well without counting, so if you don't want to/don't have time to count all the time you can manage without. In that case counting periodically to make sure you stay on track may be a good idea. I normally log everything into fitday, but there are days when I just can't be bothered, but i have a very good idea how many cals i've consumed.

what do you mean by have a pretty good idea of what your taking in. so you eat the same foods everyday?

Yeah I would say if you have the time and resources you should, it's definitely worth it, but if you can't just try to get an idea of where you stand.

I mean that after a few months of counting you know how to approixmate serving sizes (i.e. you know what a cup of rice looks like, or 150 gr of chicken breast) and you begin to memorize the calories they contain. This especially true if you eat clean and cook your own meals.

I do a rough count daily.
It keeps me on track and conscious of what I'm eating.
As has been suggested, start off with an accurate count until you're sure of the numbers. "The numbers" means proteins, fats and carb's.
You won't have any problem after getting off to a good start!
It doesn't hurt to pay attention to the details.

I agree with Matt, when I started trying to gain weight I had to count calories as my judgement of what I was eating was so poor

Now I don't need to count, I've been regulating my intake for so long it's like second nature

So, if you're confident you know what you're doing then give it a try. If your results aren't what you expected then start counting them

You need to be in a certain calorie range to lose weight. The question is: Can you sort of subconsciously know when you reach that limit without actually weighing and measuring everything? ...or do you eat basically the same things every day and can pretty much tell how many calories you're eating? I suppose some people can. I'd rather rely on hard numbers.