There are two parts to controlling your body’s weight.  (1) Monitor your weight and (2) Regulate how much you eat.  #2 means, first of all, keeping a log of everything you eat.  You can’t remember it all, so write it down right after it happens.  I use a spreadsheet that I can customize. 

Also, by keeping track of what you eat, you are  engaged in measuring how many calories of energy you are eating.  You are also paying a lot of attention to what you are eating, and how much you are eating.  That is all necessary so you can be in control.

Forget about using willpower to make yourself do this, though.  Very few people have that kind of willpower.  You need a different approach.  Get your brain and body and will on the same side, and reward them for working together.  It’s very fulfilling to sense the different parts of your mind and body working together.  

Looking back at my food journal, I am seeing changes in my lifestyle, not always for the better.  For several months, I was allowing my calorie count to be higher on exercise days, and I was taking advantage of that by eating from 200-500 more calories on those days.  I was still losing 2-ish pounds per week, so it was part of a working system.  However, more recently, I have been pushing myself to keep to 1800 calories per day, every day of the week.  It turns out that is hard to do and has been a bit counterproductive.  I have felt a bit deprived and less well rewarded.  Maybe I needed some days to splurge, or cheat a bit.  To put it another way, don’t fix what isn’t broken.  Today, I kept that promise!

Healthwise, I have decided to try and help my intestinal recovery along.  I bought a bottle of drinkable yogurt that has certain beneficial bacterial flora included as ingredients.  Will it help?  Your guess is as good as everyone else’s.  It’s fruity, but needed at least a packet of splenda to be palatable – it’s very tart!  It’s the Trader Joe’s kind.  

The vegetable curry was an interesting meal.  Per the recipe, the entire curry was only 2100 calories, but weighed about five pounds when cooked.  That means I had 13.5 ounces for dinner, it seemed huge.  Nearly a pound of curry – what a way to diet.  

That’s where things are now.  I am trying to get all better, and I am trying to get my weight control scheme back into balance.  It’s a very intense experience, doing all this weight loss.  I am really involved in a lot of day to day decisions about food and eating that I was very casual about for a long time.  I have months of records to show for it, and a few blog posts.  

Tomorrow I want to talk about diet soda.  It’s an interesting topic that reveals a lot about your mindset.  I don’t think it affects your diet one way or another, as a food, but in the realm of how you think about food, it can be an indicator.

-The Doctor