Welcome to the Doctor’s daily food log and battleground of ideas! Keeping a food log is very important, if you want to be in control of your body’s weight. And if your mind is in the wrong place, it is very hard to keep writing down your meals in a journal.
The wrong place? If you enter upon a diet with the idea that it’s a temporary change you are making to lose some weight, you will be fighting yourself the whole time. You will have to use a lot of willpower and that is hard to do over any length of time.
What is the right place? Read on. The whole blog, of course, but every day I touch on it a little.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – Kirkland granola bar (100); 3 eggs (240); 1 oz cheese (70); toast (120)
- 530 calories
Lunch – grilled bratwurst (300, 260)
- 560 calories
Dinner – 6 ounces cooked spaghetti (300); 5 Kirkland meatballs (230)
- 530 calories
Snacking – pretzels and hummus (150)
- 150 calories
Total for the day: 1770 calories (limit 1800)
Another reason to have a food journal
Now that I am recovered from being sick, I find that part of me is pushing hard to lower my daily calorie count. That makes things a bit miserable. Looking back through my food journal, I noticed that over the months I have had a lot of excursions from perfection while following this weight control system. Over many successful months, I allowed myself extra calories on the days when I exercised, for example, and yet I still lost weight. So, there is no need to rush, no need to push calorie restriction to the point of unpleasantness, when you are losing 2-3 pounds per week. Really, that’s enough. I can just do what has worked in the past. Losing weight is hard enough without making it harder.
In the summer heat, I haven’t used my oven for a couple of weeks, so no bacon. I did try a few brands of pre cooked bacon, but they were all failures except for Boar’s Head precooked bacon, and that was marginal. So today, I made eggs on the stovetop. I have also moved a lot of cooking outdoors to the grill. My slow cooker is another tool good for summer cooking. I made pulled pork in it (very good) and I am looking at recipes to make barbecued beef brisket and barbecued beef chuck, and even pulled chicken. It’s worked well for me to have a stock of premade savory food (like chili or pulled pork or Jambalaya) that I can use in different ways and look forward to eating.
Remember – get your mind right. You are embracing a lifestyle that is new, attractive, and self-reinforcing. You want to keep it up, because you are living well. Your old life seems dull and shallow by comparison. That gets around the unfortunate truth that we would rather not change ourselves. If we don’t change, we will get what’s coming to us. If we do change, WE move towards the goal we choose.
-The Doctor