The decision to live a weight control lifestyle is mostly a mental revolution. Your body is a lagging indicator that catches up slowly to your mind. I have been living out the consequences of my revolution since January and I am still not finished. I will never finish. Weight control is a life long endeavor. Your body requires fewer calories as it gets thinner, as it ages, as the amount of exercise you take changes. Controlling your weight has to be a lifetime commitment because the parameters are changing all the time. You have to really pay attention to how much you are eating – so measure how much you are eating.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – 1/8 apple pie (450)
- 450 calories
Lunch – Big Greek Cafe Famous $5 Gyro Wednesdays (600)
- 600 calories
Dinner – 1.5x Italian sausage (245); noodles (150); goat cheese (50); sauteed peppers and onions (25);
- 600 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (80); pretels and hummus before lunch (80); beef jerky (50)
- 210 calories
Total for the day: 1860 calories (limit 1800)
The sequence
I look forward to Wednesday all week. The sequence I have found successful is to first decide what I’m going to be eating, based on what I really enjoy. Then I prepare for eating it. The preparation is sometimes as simple as to make sure I am good and hungry just before eating. It is well known that food tastes better when you are hungry. So you can’t overeat at the previous meal, or snack before the favorite meal. It ruins the experience!
In other words, you are sacrificing a possible future. In that possible future, you eat as much as you like, whenever you like. The price you pay is to get overweight, more and more. The reward is the pleasurable experience of feeling full and comforted.
In exchange, you are substituting a higher quality experience and thus a more rewarding future. In that future, you position yourself (by getting hungry) to maximally enjoy your favorite food (say, a gyro sandwich from Big Greek Cafe). Then, you carefully don’t have a second sandwich, no matter how good the first one was. The second sandwich won’t be as tasty or fulfilling because you’re not hungry for it any more.
The price you pay for this second future is that you have to spend your precious time and attention on all this. The reward is that you control your body’s weight, and you refine your tastes, discover your preferences, and get a more fulfilling and maximally pleasurable experience. See how that is a deeper and more meaningful reward?
Done right, living like I have described is satisfying and rewarding. Much more so than the other future, where you just eat until completely full. That seems like a cheap and empty (haha) pleasure now that I have learned a better way. But it does take an effort and a mental revolution. I spend a lot of time now thinking about food and eating that I used to spend on other things. It’s a price. I will continue to pay it so long as I value controlling my weight. What do you put first? How do you spend your time? Is it worth it?
-The Doctor