Part of my commitment to a new lifestyle is to keep track of my food intake. I count my calories and put everything I eat into a food journal. Every day. It’s a serious commitment which takes a fair amount of time. I enter food into my journal as soon as I eat it. That is done right after the meal and I consider it part of the meal. I don’t wash the dishes or do anything else until everything is entered in my spreadsheet. Because otherwise, I wouldn’t remember everything and my journal wouldn’t be accurate. I have gained a lot of experience dealing with myself over the last several months, and I recommend it to everyone trying to be in control of their body’s weight. It’s been very valuable to me as I transform myself into a person who can lose weight successfully and keep it off.
My daily food intake and calorie count:
Breakfast – Paska bread and butter (450)
- 450 calories
Lunch – Carnitas burrito (400); ham slice (100)
- 500 calories
Dinner – 2 x Ham wraps (150); strawberry shortcake roll (250)
- 550 calories
Snacking – tea (120)
- 120 calories
Total for the day: 1620 calories (limit 1800)
There are two parts to successfully controlling your weight. I found them by observing people who are thin and remain thin. (1) They absolutely do monitor their weight and (2) they regulate their food intake. I have committed to performing both of these actions for the rest of my life. That’s how I will lose weight and keep it off. I have doubts about the long term application of the other diet plans out there, though I wish people on them all the best.
I was reading yesterday the story of a man who lost 140 pounds on a keto diet, with lots of exercise. And it was strange to read about the diet – the keto diet was developed to treat people with certain mental disorders such as seizures. It is believed that the ketone bodies in a dieter’s blood affect the brain chemistry enough to mitigate the seizures. And it seems to work, though it has some side effects. But it is now wildly popular as a weight loss program, used by people who didn’t have any seizures at all.
You can see how a keto diet would fit into the Doctor of Things program of weight control (and how it wouldn’t). Keto dieters do regulate their food intake. A lot of them commit to eating very few calories while losing weight: mostly meat, fat, and a few leafy vegetables. It must take a lot of willpower. They can lose weight rapidly, like the gentlemen I mentioned who lost 140 pounds. But after the weight loss, what will they do? Such a person wouldn’t know anything but (a) how to gain weight using their old life patterns and (b) how to lose weight using the keto diet. How would they maintain their new weight? It could lead to a vicious cycle of gaining and losing weight, unless they could teach themselves a new lifestyle.
The great strength I am developing with my weight loss plan is self-knowledge. That includes finding out how much I can eat and learning how to lose weight or maintain weight. In my system, I can eat any food I want, so long as I control how much I am eating and write it down in the journal. I have learned to negotiate with myself to make the trade-offs I need to be satisfied and content while eating fewer calories. I have learned not to punish myself for breaking my discipline, but instead listen to my needs and wants, and to find out and appreciate when my mind and body are working together. Once I have lost all the weight I want to lose, I will be in a great position compared to someone who only knows dieting and overeating. When was overeating, I had no idea how much of anything I ate or how many calories I was eating. Deciding to write it all down was a hard decision. I had to be prepared to learn some humiliating and bad things about my old self. But that old life was not worth keeping. The new me, who is in control of his body, has a better life and is happier about the way things are going.
-The Doctor