My daily report is all about what I am doing every day, and why. Every day, I regulate my food intake and keep a food journal. That’s because of an important change I made to my moral compass. I decided that being thin and in control of my weight (which is more important) was the most important thing in my world (or at least in the top three). Once I decided to dedicate myself to weight control, I was easily able to find ways to make that happen. I wasn’t fighting against myself, unlike on all the other diets I tried.
If you do it the other way around – try to force yourself to eat less or exercise more – you will run out of willpower. To be a successful dieter in the long term, you have to change who you are and why you eat.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – Yogurt (140); bratwurst wrap (310)
- 450 calories
Lunch – 2x Reese’s peanut butter cups (80); Snickers ice cream (180); 5oz Walnut chicken (250); 3/4 sandwich wrap (90)
- 660 calories
Dinner – 10 ounces red lentil curry (290); 5 ounces cooked Jasmine rice (160)
- 450 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (80); pretzels (160)
- 240 calories
Total for the day: 1800 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)
The Doctor of Things
Tonight I spent some time reading about people who have successfully lost 100+ pounds through dieting, and in some cases have kept thin afterwards (some people weren’t tracked long term). There were some interesting commonalities. Almost all of them were on some variation of the keto diet or the Atkins diet. On top of that, they all seemed to be counting calories. That’s too much complexity for me; I want simple rules, not two sets of rules.
But this is beside the point. There is a sameness to a lot of what you read about losing weight.
What the Doctor provides you that no-one else does, are the instructions on making the mental changes necessary to become a new person who is capable of controlling your body’s weight. The various accounts people give of their weight loss successes are all missing that component. They tell you what to eat, how much to eat, but not why you would do any of those things, or how you would keep on doing them. They don’t talk about how to bring yourself into alignment with all the different parts of your being, or how having your food under control can be rewarding and satisfying, and bring you deep feelings of contentment.
At least for me, weight loss success and failure is all in your mind. If you figure out why you are eating, what satisfies you, and how to place weight control at the center of your thoughts where it ought to be, then you can change all that. You can become a person who is in control of their weight and whose goal in life is to become thin and stay thin. After you have changed your mind and adopted some new thinking, then weight loss follows as a consequence. Your mind and body look for ways to make it happen. Make yourself into a weight loss machine in your mind and your body will follow.
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” – Sun Tzu
I talk to a lot of people who are very determined not to change their thinking about food, eating, or anything else. For them, losing weight will be a constant struggle, to be resented. Starting a diet while not changing anything about yourself is tantamount to Sun Tzu’s defeated warrior. To be victorious, first change who you are. Change yourself into a weight loss machine.
How? Start here, but I will talk some more about it soon.
-The Doctor