Saturday is my weighing day. It’s reality day. I have been counting calories all week, writing in my food journal, planning out meals and figuring out how I work and how to keep myself happily losing weight. Did it all really happen? Did I really lose weight?
I believe I need my own willing cooperation to make weight loss and weight maintenance work. I can’t force myself because I don’t have the kind of willpower that can do that for more than a couple of weeks. Dieting, approached as a willpower problem, takes a lot of will and makes you feel unhappy. Treating yourself well, on the other hand, takes only a little willpower and feels really good. It produces results.
This is good news! That means that since starting my weight control plan in January 2019, I have lost………
Scale and reflection
I wasn’t happy when I got on the scale this morning. It said 265.8! That’s what I weighed last week.
I have been working hard on controlling my food intake this week, after a few uncertain weeks in the recent past. The harder I work, the more I have to give up. I am giving up the future where I have eaten more food, for a future where I am thinner. And it has worked. Every week (barring illness) I have weighed less than the week before. It has correlated fairly well with how successful I was during the week, of keeping my calorie count low. This week, my calorie count was practically a record low. I mostly ate meat the whole week, and I really had hunger and calories under control. And then the scale had me losing no weight?!?
I got off the scale. I was going over in my mind all the things I might have gotten wrong this week. The scale beeped – an error code was on the display. Whew! The higher weight was an error. I let the display clear, got back on and I was down to 263.8. It’s not as big a loss as I was hoping for, but still 2 pounds is a great amount to lose in one week. My hard work was worth it.
Based on this one week, working harder on restricting the calorie intake didn’t necessarily translate to a bigger loss than average, though. I have had weeks where I lost three pounds or more. It might just be circumstances, water weight, etc. Next week will tell. But now it is reward time.
My reward for passing halfway will be to make a gingerbread cake! I have done that before, and I carefully made a half cake last time. I can do that again. I previously made a full icing recipe and used half last time, and froze half. It was really good. So the new lifestyle is rewarding, taking good care of myself is rewarding, and success is rewarded. I am floating towards my thin weight on wings made of reward. This is truly a transformative approach. I urge everyone to lose weight this way.
-The Doctor