The purpose of my daily posts is to keep my food journal and remind myself why that is important. Since January 2019, I have been becoming a new person with a new life, and new values to live by. This new person values being in control of his body’s weight, and has a plan for doing that. The mechanics of the plan are: (1) monitor your weight and (2) regulate the intake of food. These mechanisms failed me in the past due to two main problems: they took a lot of willpower and I didn’t really value being thinner. A lot of other things were more important than being thin, in my old life. Thanks to the mental changes I have made, I have lost nearly 60 pounds since January. Willpower was not really involved! I found a way around that.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – Apple fruit bar (110); Bella Vita crackers (230); Beef jerky (90); peanut butter crackers (130)
- 560 calories
Lunch – catered lunch: chicken adobo, rice, corn salad, guacamole (450)
- 450 calories
Dinner – breaded chicken (200); rice (100); green beans (25)
- 325 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (80); Nestle Li’l Drums vanilla cone (110)
- 190 calories
Total for the day: 1525 calories (limit 1800)
Eating by numbers
In the Futurama TV series, there’s a pair of virtual reality glasses you can wear that lets you see the world through someone else’s eyes. If you look at today’s food picture, you will see I have labeled each component with the number of calories it contains. See the world through a calorie counter’s eyes! It’s just a joke, though, eyeballing your food portions doesn’t work. You end up cheating even if you don’t want to. So the calories were all measured using package information, a scale, or volume measure.
If you visit the weight loss forums at Reddit and similar sites, you will see that CICO reigns supreme. That’s Calories In Calories Out. The technique is the undisputed king of losing weight. However, many people will admit they gain some or all the weight back, once they stop dieting. That is, they diet, reach their goal, and then stop dieting. Not only that, but the person doesn’t keep monitoring their food intake and weight. That’s no way to live. It makes losing weight and dieting a futile exercise of your willpower.
I continue to be impressed that there are people out there with that kind of willpower. The Doctor doesn’t have it. I got around that problem by redefining how I see the world. I don’t eat to be full any more. I have switched my eating goal to quality over quantity of food. Quality is narrowly defined by me as “things I really like to eat”, and does not include things that other people say are healthy for me. Is it healthier to be thin, or to be eating health foods? My answer is, being thin is more desirable.
I am confident about this system, having consistently lost weight with no feeling of overall deprivation. I don’t feel like I am starving myself and I am not using willpower to eat Diet Foods that I don’t like. This has been an intense and enjoyable experience so far.
Tomorrow I am going to talk about clothes, especially pants. These are things to think about when you are losing weight at the rate of 10 pounds per month.
-The Doctor