Every day is a new day to make a payment towards controlling my body’s weight! How do I pay that? The price of being in control of your weight is constant attention to regulating and recording what you eat, and weighing yourself every week at least. People may someday ask me, “Doctor, how do you find the willpower to lose 120 pounds and then keep it off?” And the answer will be, I don’t play that game. I don’t have that kind of willpower. But I have found a way that is much easier.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – baguette and salami sandwich (150); baguette and hummus (100); Ruffles chips (150)
- 400 calories
Lunch – Pork loin wraps (200); pretzels (100); ice cream (200)
- 500 calories
Dinner – grilled knockwurst (310); grilled bratwurst (300)
- 610 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (80); crackers (100); cookies (100)
- 280 calories
Total for the day: 1790 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)
Using self knowledge
I have a complete record of almost everything I have eaten since January 2019. Sometimes, that is useful. Right now, looking at the last week or two, I have not been keeping focused. My method depends on eating a small amount of food for each meal. That food has to be pretty exciting, to make up for there being only a little. But I have had trouble with keeping to my daily calorie total of 1800. Looking at my menu for the last two weeks, I think I have figured out why.
Many of my recent meals have been a collection of unexciting leftovers or grazing on snacks. Who would rejoice to eat that? Since I don’t have the fulfillment and satisfaction of eating the foods I really am looking forward to, I am falling back on my old eating goal.
I should explain. When I was developing this weight loss strategy, and was thinking about my eating behavior over the last 20 years, I realized I was eating to feel full. I convinced myself that being full was the source of satisfaction and fulfillment and was the point of eating. If I felt sad, or mad, or bad, well, I could feel happy and satisfied if only I was full.
My new (and successful) eating goal is to focus on strategic hunger. Using hunger, I have transformed my relationship with food and eating. The goal now is to be actually hungry (famished) just in time for a meal. To make that work, the food I am eating has to be worth getting hungry for. If I am just eating snacks and random leftovers, the incentive is gone. My old food goal – being full – re-asserts itself. Luckily I am paying such close attention to my food that I can see this kind of thing early and fix it. So tonight for dinner, I got very hungry and then rewarded myself with Boar’s Head sausages, freshly grilled and delicious, with mustard. Tomorrow, I will put some effort into figuring out what will excite and motivate me for the next week.
That’s part of why this diet is so fulfilling. I am spending a lot of time figuring out how to please myself and reward myself. It looks like I am responding to that kind of care! Maybe you would, too. What would you be willing to do, to be thin and in control of your body’s weight?
-The Doctor