Normally on Saturday The Doctor does a weigh-in. It keeps the calorie counting honest. For the last few days though, I have had a cold. My appetite has been off, I have been hungry for carbohydrates, and my weight has never been right during periods of illness. So today will be a normal day, where I log my food intake. That will be a bit fun today, because the grill is open for the summer!
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – Meatloaf wrap (250)
- 250 calories
Lunch – Hamburger (300); bratwurst (300); Italian sausage (200)
- 800 calories
Dinner – Reuben wrap (250); 2 x Nestle Li’l Drums ice cream (110 and 120)
- 480 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (80); pretzels (100)
- 180 calories
Total for the day: 1710 calories (limit 1800)
Getting better
Good health to you! The Doctor is recovering. Hopefully tomorrow will be totally normal. I slept in this morning, and didn’t feel the strong need for simple carbohydrates today. I won’t weigh myself today. While I am sick, my weight has always been off. One thing at a time. Maybe next week I will reach a milestone – I may weigh less than 270 pounds! My halfway point is coming up too, at 265 pounds. Pessimistically, I will still be a very overweight guy at 265 pounds. On the positive side, I have a mechanism to get down to a weight I like better.
I found an interesting story on Reddit /loseit. It is like the True Confessions of a woman who has lost 100 pounds with her experience on what works and what doesn’t. “Xandie” had lost significant weight several times in the past and gained it all back. She writes about previously using meal replacement shakes or keto diets to lose weight. She actually did lose weight, but then gained it all back once she stopped drinking the meal replacements or quit the keto diet. Readers of this blog will recognize her core ideas (The Doctor’s comments in parenthesis):
- Weigh yourself every day (some say every week)
- Log everything you eat
- Build a new life you enjoy more than the old one
- Plan your meals and have the foods you need at hand
- Be kind to yourself and forgiving for mistakes (work with yourself and not against!)
- Find supportive friends
- Learn from your mistakes and behaviors.
This is wonderful and The Doctor is sure that Xandie will be able to keep the weight off this time. There were no tricks or meal replacements or keto (all past ideas she tried), just food intake monitoring and periodic weighing. She also did a lot of walking, but it’s not clear if that helps a lot with losing weight. IT is especially interesting when she talks about her realization that she was trying to make a better life for herself and she should be enjoying it. That kind of mental framing made a huge difference to me, and probably to Xandie.
Keep in mind her best points. Be good to yourself and get your own willing cooperation. Give yourself a taste of the life you are building, which should be better than the life you are leaving behind. Plan your meals using your self knowledge, and have the food ready for when you need it. All that’s missing is the change in food goal that I have talked about the last week. But that’s a step beyond, I’ve never seen anyone talk about that yet. Keep it up!
-The Doctor