The price of getting thin and staying thin isn’t steep, but it does take some time every day. It is high priority time. My food journal must be filled out right away after eating. Keeping a daily food journal is one of the two parts to controlling your weight. The other part is weighing yourself. Thin people do both of these things, though not in the same ways. Show me a thin person and I will show you someone who keeps track of their weight (they may use a tape measure or belt or judge by the way clothes fit). I will show you someone who is careful about how much they eat. People have different strategies for regulating how much they eat. I count calories.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – 2 x BLT wraps (200)
- 400 calories
Lunch – 2 x Reuben wraps (250)
- 500 calories
Dinner – Meatloaf with potatoes and carrots
- 500 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 1.75 ounces Sarris peanut butter meltaway egg (280)
- 360 calories
Total for the day: 1760 calories (limit 1800)
Can I keep losing weight this way?
Recently it’s been strange. I am eating 1800 calories per day, but I must have gotten used to it. Now it seems like a lot of food. I had what seemed like three large meals today. Am I going to lose weight when I feel like I am eating a lot? Well, it’s worked so far. But it is still strange the way perceptions change. Don’t forget that part of this system of counting calories means no extras between meals. It’s amazing what you can eat when not paying attention. My Sarris peanut butter meltaway egg (one pound) has lasted a month since Easter and I have only eaten half, about an ounce at a time, a couple of times per week. Before I started paying attention, that egg would have lasted two days, maybe. I used to drink about a gallon of milk a week. Paying attention is a challenge in so many ways!
I was looking at Reddit /loseit again. The people who have lost weight or are losing weight have lots of great advice. But most of them sound like they are recommending willpower to get it done. Other people are posting and complaining they can’t get motivated or stick with a diet. That was The Doctor, not too long ago. I’ll have to come up with some ways to talk about the transformation you can make, to become a person capable of losing weight and controlling weight.
The most important part is to get rid of your old thinking and not be too stubborn! One Reddit /loseit poster asked for advice when starting a diet. Five different people answered him with great advice. He rejected them on the grounds that he would get too hungry. They didn’t know how to answer that – a couple suggested he would have to get used to being hungry. He was hilariously stubborn – being hungry was for barbarians and could cause health problems! Modern people shouldn’t get hungry.
The Doctor didn’t feel the original poster would benefit from his insight that hunger depends on the food goal. If your goal is to be full and satisfaction comes from being full, then hungry is any time you are not totally full. Your idea of hunger is distorted by the eating goal. On the other hand, if your goal is to be ravenously hungry – your stomach actually shouting for food – then your goal is met anytime you have eaten anything substantive. Tie that to the idea that your food is worth getting hungry for, and you will become a self perpetuating weight loss machine.
-The Doctor