Yesterday I figure I ate nearly 3000 calories, mostly carbohydrates including ice cream, chocolate, candy, crackers, and bread.  I did eat some meat, but it wasn’t very appealing to my appetite.  I am trying to eat 1800 calories per day.  Is the solution, then, to not eat until I have made up for those calories?

No, you can’t do that!  Each day should be treated as a new day.  Overeating yesterday shouldn’t be made up at the expense of today.  Part of you will see that as a punishment and rebel.  You would have to use force to keep yourself from eating, and then resentment would start to build up.  Try dieting when every meal is a source of resentment!  The best way for losing weight is to cooperate with your own plan.  The plan has to present an attractive lifestyle you want to follow.  It regulates itself, if you have set it up properly.

My weight control system is focused on each day’s food.  If I fail for a day, well, I can’t make up for it.  It is lost.  It so happened today that I was not hungry until dinner time.  Maybe it’s being ill, maybe it’s the huge amount of food I ate yesterday, but I checked by opening the fridge and looking around – no, nothing appealed to me.  I drank tea just hoping that it would wake my stomach up.  I have no idea if that worked, but I did get hungry around 6PM. 

For most meals I try to eat about 500 calories.  When I was hungry at dinner time, I tried having my normal meal.  But I am still not back to normal.  Meatballs didn’t really appeal – I just wanted the noodles!  And I could have kept eating them, too.  But I am hoping that when I get up tomorrow, my normal appetite will have returned.  

I read an article today about weight loss and exercise.   This author had the idea that one would look best through strength training.  Her system is to diet until you like your weight and size, then incorporate a lot of strength training (weight lifting) to make your body look better.  To do this, you would have to increase your food intake a lot while burning a lot of calories at the gym.   She does stress that the point is not to bulk up, but to gain muscle definition.  

This system wouldn’t work for me.  As she correctly points out, you should only do this if you really like working out at the gym.  You won’t keep doing it over the medium or long term if you have to force yourself.  The maintenance cost is high.  Muscles take a lot of effort to build, and if you don’t use them, they go away.  For my lifestyle, it would be effort wasted.  

Some strength training is probably a good idea, though.  I am hoping that my swimming contributes to that.  I like it; I do it twice a week and miss it if I don’t go.  It all adds up to a lifestyle I like.  That’s the goal.

-The Doctor