Every day, I have committed to writing a food journal and keeping track of what I eat. It’s not how I lived for many years, but during those many years I gained weight and was unable to lose it. Now that I am keeping track, I find that the work is much more productive. Keeping track is simple but requires a lot of paying attention. Not just what you eat, but how much, and why you eat.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – tea with half and half (80)
- 80 calories
Lunch – 2 x ham and cheese wraps (150)
- 300 calories
Dinner – meatloaf as pictured (150); cooked carrot (25); cucumber salad (25); oven roasted cauliflower (25); french fries (100)
- 325 calories
Snacking – Nestle’s Li’l Drums chocolate cone (120); Sarris chocolate cherry cordial (65); oatmeal cookies (300)
- 485 calories
Total for the day: 1190 calories (limit 1800)
Only the few
I was not hungry at all this morning. Yesterday, I snacked a lot late in the evening and spent most of the day trying to recover. My appetite only really returned at 10PM today! Having a bad day like yesterday is bad for several reasons.
First, clearly I wasn’t listening to myself and didn’t keep myself happy and satisfied. So that has to be gone back over and figured out. What should I have done differently? It was a difficult day; I was up at 4AM and that kind of screwed up my food schedule. Then I stayed up until nearly midnight. That wasn’t good for me either. When I get that tired, I will often overeat. Someone said once that calories can temporarily take the place of sleep.
Second, you feel physically bad the next day. I felt all bloated and heavy today. It takes time for overeating to work it s way through your system. I was sluggish and unambitious today and didn’t get much done. My weight control diet is meant to enable a new and exciting life. This wasn’t it!
Third, it messes up the next day’s eating. My system of weight control relies on using hunger as a valuable signal that things are going well, and also as an intensifier for food as a sensory experience. So really by overeating the day before, you are really making it difficult to get back into your desired system the next day.
Fourth, you feel emotionally let down. I don’t let myself feel self pity on this diet, so my feeling is more related to the first point – where did I fail in paying attention to myself and making sure I could stay focused on the positive? Also, you tend to feel bad about overeating and angry with yourself. The productive way to deal with that is to admit to yourself where the failure really is. You probably took the easy way out, were lazy and didn’t plan well. You demanded too much of yourself and then it fell apart a bit. Time to pick up and figure it out, and try not to let it happen again.
Self knowledge is the only way to make this work, improve, and keep motivated. If you let yourself, you will take the easy way out and quit trying to get your weight under control. Learn why this happened. Where did you fail? Don’t blame your body. It’s only responding to a failure of your conscious will. It can be fixed! So get that figured out and move on, with a new and improved knowledge of yourself.
-The Doctor