My new lifestyle, which I have been living since January 2019, is a weight control lifestyle. It’s not a punishing lifestyle, but a rewarding and fulfilling one. I use rewards at every level I can think of, instead of force. After all, most diets are about forcing yourself to eat things you don’t want, or at best, forcing yourself to eat less than you want. Look how much force is required! Most of us can’t keep that up for long, and after a while you give up dieting. Constant force, hunger, dissatisfaction and unhappiness are too heavy a price to pay for being thin.
This is a long term dieting project. The term is life. But truly, I am sentencing myself to a life of reward and fulfillment. I figure out what foods would make me happy and make sure that I am hungry for them. It becomes very satisfying to eat them after all that buildup.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – Pretzels and cheese (300)
- 300 calories
Lunch – 6x Kirkland meatballs (45); hummus (100); whole wheat wrap (110); with red cabbage kraut (minimal) and horseradish (minimal);
- 525 calories
Dinner – 15 ounces homemade lentil soup (300); 2.8 ounces toasted Italian bread (200); butter (80)
- 580 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 0.5 ounce of ham (25)
- 105 calories
Total for the day: 1510 calories (limit 1800)
Preparation
Like the Meal Prep King I talked about last week, I spent part of Sunday planning out my menu for the next week, and doing the heavy cooking. This week’s dinners are now planned and ready for portioning. This way, I can pick the foods I want to eat ahead of time, have them ready to go, and have figured out how much of each I can eat. The portion size is meant to be just enough so that I will get hungry again just in time for the next meal. Generally I want my meals to be about 400-600 calories each. It took some experimentation and learning some hard lessons to figure that out. The total for the day should be just under 1800. For some reason today I only ate 1510 calories, which is unusual. But I guarantee I will be hungry for breakfast.
My preferred sequence is: figure out what I want, make sure I have it in the house, prepare the food, then prepare myself. Preparing myself means that my stomach is empty and I am properly hungry just in time to eat. If I get too hungry, well, look out. That’s when one is going to overeat! Being too hungry for too long presses a button in part of my hindbrain that says PANIC and that’s it, I lose control. Figuring that out took some time. But it’s a great incentive to not overeat, since you will be only ruining the next meal. It’s indescribably rewarding to get hungry and then satisfy the hunger with something you really are looking forward to eating. Once you are used to it, it’s hard to go back to your old ways. They just seem so shallow!
Anyway, how am I prepared for this week? For breakfasts and lunches, I have a variety of my favorites ready to cook, especially bacon, lettuce, and tomatoes for BLTs. Some of my favorites are already cooked and portioned, while others are in the house and ready to be cooked on demand. I cook 95% of my food myself. I don’t like instant meals, they don’t satisfy me. If I am going to do all this anticipating and put in all the effort of getting hungry and prepared for a meal, it’s not going to be for some indifferent diet food. It had better be rewarding. Take the picture above. It’s my own invention but is reminiscent of Middle Eastern meat and hummus pita sandwiches. I look forward to it.
Anyway, I made lentil soup using the Silver Palate cookbook recipe, and had it for dinner tonight. I can have it during the week, too. I also made sausage chili. Another night I will have spaghetti and meatballs, and another night I will have dinner at Costco, and then make pizza another night. It’s all food I will look forward to, and I have developed techniques for counting out all the calories. Most people who lose large amount of weight successfully (I am planning to lose at least 120 pounds) count their calories.
Recognize that this is a life long task. Make it rewarding. I only eat the foods I like, just at the moment when they will be the most satisfying. I never overeat or even have a second helping, because it just isn’t satisfying. (Try it sometime! Get hungry, then have a single serving of your favorite food. You will notice that as great as the food is, a second helping just isn’t fulfilling.)
Is your current life rewarding and satisfying? ? What would that take?