In my week, Saturday is different from the other days. During the week, I concentrate on writing my food journal and making sure my food intake is balanced with my goals. I have a numeric goal (averaging 1850 calories per day) and an eating goal (maximize the pleasure of eating). While I was gaining weight, for the last 20 years, my goal was to feel full, and I learned to associate that feeling with comfort and satisfaction. Now, I see that as a shallow goal without a lot of meaning. Now, I desire to be hungry. Not hungry all the time! Just when it’s time to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When you are physically hungry, and eat a measured portion of a special food you have been anticipating and are looking forward to, it tastes better than anything else. A second helping, viewed this way, isn’t nearly as tasty. Also, if you get too full you won’t be hungry for your next meal and you will ruin the pleasure of it.
So how is this lifestyle working for me?
My highest weight was 325 pounds. Since starting this new weight control lifestyle in January, 2019, I have lost a fraction under:
From hobby to obsession
Talk to any person who is thin and who has stayed thin as an adult, and you are talking to someone who works hard at it. Nobody gets to be thin for free. The idea that some people are naturally thin is a comforting lie. (Of course some people burn calories at a higher rate than others, but the differences are pretty slight.) Go check out some of the calculators online that will take your sex, weight, and age and predict how many calories you need per day. For me, my body requires 3200 per day, just to stay the weight I am. Just sitting in a chair all day (called the basic metabolic rate), my body burns 2260 calories per day. The rest of the calories are burned by moving about.
Let’s analyze this. I am having 1850 measured calories per day, times seven days per week = 13,000 calories per week. Using the calculator linked in the last paragraph, my body needs 3200 calories per day to break even, times seven days per week = 22,400.
22,400-13,000 = 9400 calorie deficit this week.
It’s practically universal that it takes 3500 calories of deficit per week to lose a pound of body weight. In theory, I’ve lost 2.7 pounds this week. Certainly, 246.2 pounds is the least I have weighed since…..the year 2003?
People sometimes ask how I have the willpower to do this: keep the daily food journal, keep my food intake under control, and win the fight to assert my values, every day. The answer is Willpower!!! Ha, no way. I have very little sustained willpower and have failed on countless diet attempts. So, what’s different this time? This time I have built a weight control lifestyle that is attractive. It is so compelling and rewarding that I want to live it. Then I don’t have to use willpower to force myself to go against my nature.
It is my belief that weight control has to be your obsession if you want to become thin and stay thin. At least it has to be your favorite hobby. That means it has to be important to you, more important than practically anything. What would you give up to be in control of your body’s weight? I have given up a lot of free time, and my old lifestyle, my old goals, and my whole old self. I’ve had to rebuild my relationships with my family, even. I’m a new person who cares a lot about how much his body weighs.
Weight control is a lifetime goal. It will never be done. I have learned that anyone who stays thin is working hard to stay thin. And it’s appreciated. Several people who are thin were the first to notice that I was losing weight. They pay attention to that kind of thing.
What are you paying attention to?
-The Doctor