My food journal is a simple document but it has several levels of meaning. Each meal is described, sometimes days in advance, sometimes just before I eat. The calories are entered, ideally a few minutes after they are eaten. I never count my calories before they are hatched, er, eaten. The calorie total is kept daily. I decided many months ago that 1800 calories per day was the right amount. Sometimes I allow a few extra calories, up to an average of 1850 per day.
How do I keep on doing it? Well, I don’t rely on my willpower. It would only be two weeks before I stopped tracking food, with my weak willpower! It does take discipline, as my late grandmother would say. Discipline, I have. Discipline means I can persuade myself to follow the rules that I negotiate with myself. That’s right, I have to negotiate with myself. And I am not more mentally ill than you would think.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – ham (100) cheese (70) toasted bread (160) sandwich with horseradish, mustard, and pickles
- 330 calories
Lunch – meatball (275) wrap (110) with red cabbage and pickles and tabbouleh (25) and horseradish and Thousand Island dressing (50)
- 465 calories
Dinner –10.5 oz jambalaya (360); 5oz rice (160)
- 510 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (80); Perdue chicken strips (200); Aldi chocolate coated wafer cookies (120)
- 400 calories
Total for the day: 1715 calories (limit 1800)
Controlling calories for home cooking
Because I negotiated rules with myself, and didn’t dictate them, I find I can live with them. What does that mean? It means that if I told myself to eat less food, I wouldn’t obey. Or I would try, but only for a short time. Then I would be disappointed in myself and feel weak.
By negotiating the rules, I managed to get them the right way around. The rules, instead of orders to the parts of me that are built in deep, are instead obligations on my conscious will. Basically, they are a set of promises I made to myself. “If you agree to eat less food, I will do X for you.” Those promises must be kept. (I am thinking about writing up those promises as a separate post in the How to Start a Diet series.)
My body’s weight is now a major interest in my life, and I think in terms of my food rules all the time. I accept this as the price of controlling my body’s weight. I make it worthwhile because I make sure to reward myself at every level for following the rules. It is amazingly satisfying to plan a favorite meal, allow yourself to start getting hungry for it, and then eat it. That sequence is so satisfying in practice, that you are willing to eat a measured amount of that food. Because you anticipate it so much and because it tastes so good when you are hungry for it, it becomes easy to put down the fork when the portion is done.
That’s partly because if you pay attention to how you are feeling, you will notice that a second helping just doesn’t taste as good. It kind of ruins the experience of the first portion. Then it also ruins the next meal, because instead of being hungry for it, you will feel ambiguous about it. That feedback is an important part of this system.
Measuring how much you eat only takes a few simple tools. A kitchen scale, some measuring cups and spoons. And of course the package information. Let’s look at my jambalaya. The whole sausage had 1020 calories, the tomatoes 200, the oil 150, and the onion 44. The other vegetables (celery and bell pepper) and spices didn’t add much more. Let’s call the whole dish 1440 calories and a 1/4 portion 360 calories. How do I make sure I am really having a 1/4 portion? I weighed the entire thing on my kitchen scale. It made 2 pounds and 10 ounces of jambalaya – 42 ounces. My quarter portion was 10.5 ounces.
Because I was hungry for dinner, because I wanted Jambalaya and knew it would be a good meal, that portion was enough. And now there are leftovers! That’s another meal to look forward to.
How do you reward yourself? What obligations are you willing to put on your conscious will?
-The Doctor