Yes, I did find I got a bit obsessed with it the first few days - I've been doing it just over a week and lost 4lbs so I'm really proud of myself - especially as it was my birthday week!! Still managed 2 pieces (small!) of birthday cake and a meal out with friends - I just ate extra low cal foods for breakfast & lunch - almost SAVED my calories for the evening - this way I could still have what i wanted, except swapping potatoes for extra salad.
I have worked out the "calories burned" for the excersice I do, for example a 40 minute dog walk would burn *** calories or a 15 minute bike ride etc - I keep a little note pad on me and put my "favourites" in the back for quick reference - that way you don't have to work it out everyday - I usually have a cup of tea and 2 crumpets and an apple for breakfast everyday so have tallyed it up so I can just glance at it every morning and know what calories I've had.
I have just found a brilliant app on the iphone if you have one called My Fitness Pal - you put in your details and what calories you want to eat and then add each item of food/water/excercise in and it calculates what you have had and what you have left - it is amazing!! But I do still use my little note book for reference.
If you don't have the iphone I would work out a list of what excercises you plan to do (eg 30 minute aerobics/20 min swim etc) and just google it to see how many calories you would burn - then you know how many "extra" calories to add onto your daily allowance.
My weakness are crisps...eeekkk! I would LOVE to eat an entire tube of pringles right now!! hahaha! But there are crisps you can have that are under 100 calories - skips/french fries/squares etc - so I can still have a little crisp fix and not feel guilty! I think it is just spending time looking at labels or trawling the internet for low calorie ideas, means if you have 150 calories left then you know what you can eat and not feel bad about it!!
Great news on the 3lb loss already!! Good thing about calorie counting is I feel like I ve ACTUALLY lost those few pounds, rather than thinking "its probably water loss" haha! Its going to be a new start for me - I can see this affecting how I eat and what foods I eat in the long run, so hopefully will be easy to maintain
xx