It is in a fatalistic mood that the Doctor posts tonight. It has been a hard week, one way and another. There was travel, there was overeating, there was despair…and that was only Sunday! But my weight loss lifestyle is still operational, though the outcome is delayed. One of my top values is weight control. It is how I am living my life now. It’s part of the way I get around the willpower trap.
Diet, noun. A plan, generally hopeless, for losing weight, which tests your willpower but does little for your waistline. -Herbert B. Prochnow, whoever that is.
Weight control is not about willpower. It is about satisfying yourself physically, mentally, psychologically. I investigated how I was satisfying myself in my weight-gaining days. Largely, I was finding cheap satisfaction in the feeling of having a full stomach. Yes, I convinced myself that eating until completely full was comforting and worthwhile way to life satisfaction. Boy, was that wrong.
The answer was of course Bacon.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – 2oz Carando brown sugar ham (100); Swiss cheese (90); toasted bread (160); sandwich with pickles and mustard and horseradish (negligible calories)
- 350 calories
Lunch – BLT wraps: 4 slices Kirkland bacon (70); 1 whole wheat wrap (110); 1 tomato (30); lettuce and horseradish sauce (negligible); 1 extra piece of bacon by hand (70)
- 500 calories
Dinner – half an Aldi frozen cheese pizza (500); with 1oz pepperoni (140);
- 640 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (120);
- 120 calories
Total for the day: 1610 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)
Less than it appears
If you look, you will see my calorie count was very low today – 1610 is calories rather lower than the limit of 1850 I have been trying to achieve. Maybe that’s because of my willpower? I am the Doctor of Things, filled with the almighty willpower! No, that’s not true. Willpower can’t be used to satisfy hunger. Part of weight control is finding a lifestyle that you find satisfying and rewarding to be living. You don’t need to use willpower if you are being satisfied and rewarded for your behavior. And not just you behavior. Behavior flows from your thinking and your view of the world. You can’t successfully force yourself thin by changing behavior. That’s diet-thinking:
“A diet is just code for a time when you eat food you dislike and still feel hungry.” -unattributed
Truer words were never spoken. That quote is a distillation of the force required to succeed on a diet. I have never made a diet work. On the typical diet, you are trying to temporarily force yourself to change behavior to lose weight. You will eat food you don’t like and feel deprived and hungry all the time. But what you are really hoping is that you can do this without changing anything about your inner self. That is why people who manage to lose some weight often complain that they gain it back. Their old self and their old lifestyle are there, waiting. Eventually, they will take back over if you are unhappy with your diet life.
Atkins (of the famous eponymous diet) was correct when he said weight loss didn’t have to be about deprivation. On the physical level, of course it is – you are eating less food than your body needs to sustain its weight. But he was talking about your psychology. One of the biggest barriers to losing weight is the feeling of deprivation. Imagine, if you have to, that eating and being full make you happy. Eating less is like withholding happiness from yourself. It’s painful to even think about, and doing it is worse! To inflict that kind of pain on yourself, you need lots of willpower, and who has that? Not me.
So you need to change your mind instead. Find eating satisfaction in a new goal. Personally, in a way, I chose hunger. I want to be properly hungry when I eat food. The food has to be something I am really looking forward to eating. The source of satisfaction and fulfillment in my new life comes from maximum enjoyment. There is no substitute for eating food you are really craving, just at the moment you are physically hungry and need to eat. That is much more satisfying than what I used to do.
I used to get satisfaction by eating until I was full. When I was doing that, I had a different definition of hungry than I do now. Hungry just meant that I wasn’t full.
Now everything is different. I see a different world now. You could, too.
-The Doctor