“The pool is closed through Monday for a swim meet.” That’s what I saw today. I am lucky I have a safeguard built into my calorie regulation system. I knew I would be swimming today, I knew I could eat 500 extra calories. But I didn’t eat them yet, because the rule is I can’t bank those extra calories until I’ve earned them. I can’t eat 500 extra calories just “because I’m going to swim later.” Once I have swum, and if I am hungry, I can eat 500 calories more. Today, unexpectedly, no swimming – but no harm done. I still get to eat pizza for dinner!
My daily food intake and calorie count:
Breakfast – Costco pizza slice (350)
- 350 calories
Lunch – 2 x Homemade chicken enchiladas (250)
- 500 calories
Dinner – 5 x pizza slices (100), pretzels (150)
- 650 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 2 x Jaffa cakes (50); Lil Drums ice cream cone (110)
- 290 calories
Total for the day: 1790 calories (limit 1800)
Every day, I concentrate on regulating my food intake for that day. My goal is to get hungry just in time for each meal. Part of the job is to make sure that I have something worth eating once I am hungry, since it’s going to be a small portion. Then, I take my time and enjoy eating it. As I eat my food during the day, I enter it into my food journal. Then, my food intake is under control.
I was talking to someone yesterday who said it seemed like my system (weight control) was easy for me. That couldn’t be more wrong. It’s not easy for me! I am trying to make it easier for you. I feel like what I am doing is hard, since I am inventing it as I go along. Maybe, somewhere, someone else has come up with a similar system, but reading around the internet, I haven’t found it yet. Some of the techniques and advice is similar (see yesterday’s post), but the underlying thinking and accumulation of self knowledge are areas I haven’t seen explored carefully.
Thinking is key. You got to be overweight using your old thinking and habits and life. You have to be willing to let all that go and adopt some new ideas before you can be in control of your weight. But you can do it. You can value things that keep your weight under control and learn to devalue things that keep you from that. You can find within yourself the strength to do this, if not for yourself, then for all the people that depend on you.
A support system is also nice. There are people in my life I don’t share my weight loss achievements with, and don’t discuss my new values and thinking with. I don’t believe those people would be happy for me or help me. Better not to involve them. There are other people in my life who are happy I am getting my weight under control. I tell them all about it and they tell me I am doing a good job.
Self knowledge is also important. If anything helps keep the weight off, it’s knowing all about how to control your intake and the months of experience you will have doing that. That’s why you can’t make temporary changes and go back to your old life once you have lost some weight. Your old life made you overweight, and will again. It has to go. Your new self knowledge makes you strong and independent and in control.
-The Doctor