Since my last weighing was a bit disappointing, I put some thought into what to do next.  I let myself get a bit down yesterday, and get into a non productive place.  That’s over.  What I decided was to quickly re-establish my system of rewards, focusing on my own pleasure and satisfaction.  That makes it worthwhile and motivates me to succeed.  And what did I want for breakfast?  A BLT wrap.  

I cook my bacon in the oven, it’s more uniform and less messy than almost any other method.  In the summer, I don’t usually like to turn on the oven, but luckily it was a cooler day after a week of 92+ days.  I made bacon that I really wanted, and had it on flatbread with lettuce and tomato.  It was great!  It’s easy to measure too, because the bacon (Kirkland) is 70 calories per slice and the flatbread is 110 per bread.  Four slices of bacon are 280 calories.  The lettuce and tomato don’t count for much.  

I wasn’t hungry again until noon.  Then, I wanted the Doctor’s Own Famous beef, hummus, red sauerkraut and pickle sandwich on a flatbread.  It’s like a Middle Eastern pita sandwich (think beef kofta, pickled vegetables and hummus.)  It was very satisfying.  And easy to measure!  The hummus is 40 calories per tablespoon, the flatbread 110 calories each (cut in half to make two), and the meatballs 230 calories for five (Kirkland again).  The pickled vegetables don’t count for many calories, but I round up to account for any missed.  

Last was sausage chili for dinner.  I made that this morning.  (It’s most valuable, if you are counting calories, to make your food yourself.  It tastes much butter than anything you can buy, and you can control the calories more precisely.)  The sausage had 1620 calories, plus 780 for kidney beans, 300 for tomatoes, and 200 for olive oil, for a total of 2900 calories.  I don’t worry about the few calories in spices and garlic and onions and bell pepper.  To measure it out, I put it in a tared bowl and weighed the entire chili.  It weighed four and a half pounds, or six servings of 12 ounces each (480 calories per serving).  Weighing out 12 ounces into a bowl was very easy.  And it was plenty to be satisfying.

I did have calories left over for dessert.  Ice cream can be weighed in a tared bowl.  That’s much more accurate than trying to measure a half-cup or whatever.  88 grams of ice cream was 210 calories.  A good trick is to serve it in a small bowl.  The bowl looks really full.

An important part of satisfying and rewarding yourself is to not allow distractions while eating this food.  They are some of my favorite foods, and I got good and hungry for them and really wanted them.  So I sat and paid attention to every bite.  It was a great experience.  And now I am going to bed, full and happy, and happy with myself, and eager to keep things going until next Saturday.  Then comes the weighing!  I can hardly wait – when things are going well, I have learned to feel that perfect balance between hunger and satisfaction, the feeling that I am losing weight all the time.  You wil learn what that feels like, if you try!

-The Doctor