Paying attention is the most important change you can make, if you want to be in control of your body’s weight. Sometimes that is easy and sometimes not. Today the Doctor went to a party where there was party food for dinner, but there was no way to count calories! So I had to guess. I did my best by remembering to write everything down in my food journal. However, my camera phone is currently a brick. Until I find a substitute, pictures will be a bit limited.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – 1/8 Blueberry pie (400); slice of Spanish tortilla (165)
- 565 calories
Lunch – 2 x Italian sausage links (250)
- 500 calories
Dinner – Spicy Asian noodle salad (200); boneless chicken wings (100); cheeseburger slider (200); pizza (100); Nepalese potato salad (50)
- 650 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (160)
- 160 calories
Total for the day: 1875 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)
Becoming and staying thin has to be your highest value.
Continuing from yesterday, today I still was not able to pay full attention to getting hungry. This was due to putting my swim above my diet in terms of priority, but I still didn’t think about my beef jerky snacks. More on that below.
Breakfast was as soon as I got up. I didn’t wait until hunger was pressing and that went well. I know that eating something so sugary as pie wouldn’t last the morning, hence the slice of Spanish tortilla. I wasn’t able to eat lunch until 12.30, even though I usually eat around 11.30. The usual result of delaying a meal is that I lose control around 4PM. Luckily, the party was at 3 and the potluck was pretty lucky. I was able to find things I really liked and were filling. I contributed the spicy noodle salad, or else I would have taken less of it. I knew it would be good.
After such a nice dinner so early in the day, I was satisfied for the rest of the night. Unlike yesterday, when part of me really wanted to eat and made that known all evening, today I have stayed satisfied and have had no interest in eating anything else. No willpower required. (That’s really something. When I was gaining weight, eating the equivalent of a second dinner in the evening was my biggest self-identified issue.) But back to the point: this is all critical self-knowledge. The important point is that I need to put my diet above other considerations, like swimming. I like to swim, but it is not essential to my weight loss plan. Next time, I must put my eating in first priority. When I am so much in calorie deficit for the day (about 1000 calories per day), I don’t have the margin to put other things first. It’s a lesson I will have to learn over and over in different ways.
Tomorrow: weighing day. I am confident I will weigh less than last time, but less confident it will be an impressive amount of loss. I ate 700 calories more this week than my optimum. That’s why weight control has to be first in your mind. I have promised myself that eating fewer calories will be rewarded! I can’t break that promise by not eating on time. That’s unfair and will erode my diet, because important parts of me just won’t cooperate. My promise to myself is that important, and I will work on keeping it better.
-The Doctor