The daily report is a chance for me to think about the mechanism I am using to control my body’s weight. (1) Regulate food intake and (2) weigh yourself regularly. (I like that there is regulation and the beginning of the first axiom and regularity at the end of the second one. I might trademark that.) The important questions are: why do these things and how to gain the ability to do them?
Why is easy. I want to be in control of my body’s weight. I don’t want to diet, or get thinner, etc. Those are all temporary. They are ways of temporarily restraining yourself until you reach weight XX, or else give up. You don’t make any permanent changes to yourself or your life. In the worst case, you may gain all the weight back and more besides. So control is the answer. Axioms 1 and 2 give that control.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – 2oz meatloaf (150); half a sandwich wrap (45); french fries and carrot and cucumber salad with dill (50)
- 250 calories
Lunch – 2oz meatloaf (150); half a sandwich wrap (45); french fries and carrot and cucumber salad with dill (100)
- 300 calories
Dinner – Big Mac (450)
- 540 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (80); cookies (250); pretzels (200)
- 530 calories
Total for the day: 1620 calories (limit 1800)
A shorty
I did a lot of traveling today, so I only will write a bit.
To successfully control your weight, you have to change yourself permanently. Your old life caused you to gain weight, and gain, and gain. You can’t diet, lose weight, go back to your old life, and then expect to keep your diet weight?!? So you have to put in the effort to create a new life that is worth living. It has to be better than your old life and more rewarding. Then, you are not very tempted to go back to the old way. Your new weight control life will win, most of the time, and that is all that matters. Losing weight and maintaining weight are about averages over a long term of years. It took me 15 years to gain the last 50-70 pounds of my highest total (325).
It’s pretty impressive that I gained weight at all during those years of not paying attention. My metabolism was probably near 3300 calories per day for many years. Now that I am paying attention and am happily satisfying myself with 1800 calories per day or less (most of the time), I sometimes wonder what it must be like to eat, say, 4000 calories per day. I must have done it, but I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t notice. Doing it on purpose, while paying attention, sounds kind of difficult. Regularly eating, say, 3300 calories per day sounds strange to me now. It seems like it would be a lot of food.
That is a problem for the future. Right now, I want to stay on top of my currrent average. So far this week, that’s about 1933 calories per day, a bit high. Time to pay some more attention!
-The Doctor