I keep a food journal, and write these posts. Why write it all down every day? Because that ensures success at controlling my body’s weight. Successful people sacrifice, and I am sacrificing in order to get thin. It is also nice to think that what I am experiencing will help someone else.
What I am sacrificing is the future. It’s a future where I can eat as much as I like and not worry bout consequences. It was a fun place to live, for say my whole life up until January 2019. It was then that I realized that (1) that wasn’t going to work for me if I wanted to be in control of my weight and (2) people who are thin and stay thin really work at it. I am studying thin people like they are a different species. Why do they eat? How do they know to stop? Why does staying thin take so much effort?
But if something is worthwhile, it is worth the effort. Maybe a lot of effort.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – 2x Bratwurst wraps (300)
- 600 calories
Lunch – 2x corned beef (125); boiled cabbage, carrot, and potato (50); wraps (45); with Thousand Island dressing (15)
- 470 calories
Dinner – pizza (450); 3oz chicken strips (125); half cupcake (100)
- 675 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 11AM cookies (200)
- 280 calories
Total for the day: 2025 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)
Listening to yourself
I am finding that eating small meals (designed to deliver about 60% of what my body needs to maintain its weight) is very satisfying, if I structure the day carefully. That means listening to myself. If I eat certain foods, they stick with me and I am not tempted much to eat between meals. That means each meal has to be a Meal and not just some stuff. You have to look forward to it. That means I have to plan out what I am going to have during the day and the week. Then I can look forward to that food and it becomes very satisfying to eat it. It feels like my body and mind are working together that way.
This week I made sure I was looking forward to every meal. I had:
- Spaghetti and meatballs
- Corned beef and cabbage
- Red beans and rice
- Spanish tortilla
- Grilled bratwurst
- Corned beef Reuben wraps
I noticed that if I carefully structured the meals when I got hungry for them, and knew in advance what I wanted, I did hardly any snacking, and none after dinner. Snacking after dinner has always been a problem behavior for me, in the old days I might have effectively eaten a second dinner. Well after dinner. Generally I was hungry an hour after waking up, then close to 11:30AM, then 5:30PM. Not always, but most of the time. After dinner, if I had done well, I just wasn’t hungry. Today I went swimming and burned about 600 calories, but I don’t feel deprived or hungry at all.
In this system, each meal is a reward for letting myself develop an appetite. Rewards are definitely the way to keep yourself on a weight loss regime. There are people who say you shouldn’t use food as a reward, and to them I say: “I have lost nearly 75 pounds using food as a reward. Rewards work if your head is in the right place and the goal of your eating is not fullness but rather a good appetite.”
You get a good appetite by letting yourself just get a little hungry, and then rewarding yourself with food you really want. Not too much food, because the goal is to have a good appetite for your next meal – which is also a food you are really looking forward to. So far the system works. I have been having a struggle with the last few weeks to lose weight, but I have solved it. I had gotten careless and let myself slip away from the goal. It’s amazing how much attention you have to pay, to steadily lose weight.
Change your mind and your body will follow.
-The Doctor