Part of my daily job – what I try to accomplish in a day – is to keep a contemporaneous written record of my food intake and calorie count. I also work to keep my calorie count under 13,300 for the week – that’s less than 1900 per day. The two are related, but just keeping an accurate count of calories eaten is important. I am able to do this by keeping my focus on a worthwhile goal. What is your goal for eating? I can express mine in two ways:
- Maximize the satisfaction and joy from eating your meal
- Prepare for the next meal (don’t eat so much that you won’t be hungry next time)
Both are really the same idea – think about it. If you eat too much for breakfast, you can’t properly enjoy lunch. Food always tastes best just when you become physically hungry for it. And if you eat too much breakfast, you won’t enjoy breakfast as much either – after the first serving, you will find (if you pay attention) that you’re not as hungry and the taste is not as vivid, strong, or compelling.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – red beans and rice (200); slice of Spanish tortilla and 1/2 whole wheat wrap with 1 teaspoon mayonnaise (250)
- 450 calories
Lunch – 2x bratwurst (260); 1/2 whole wheat wrap (50); onions and mustard
- 600 calories
Dinner – Pork tacos at Chuy’s Mexican restaurant (600); chips, salsa, and dip (200)
- 800 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (80)
- 80 calories
Total for the day: 1930 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)
A good week is a good start
With my eating goals properly set, and my aim as high as I can make it (making control of my body’s weight one of my chief aims in life), it has been a good diet week after several failed weeks. (Weak weeks?) At my lowest recorded weight of 237.4 pounds (November 2019) I was sure I was going to keep losing as much weight as I wanted – I was in control. I had lost over 85 pounds! It’s strange that two months later, I will have a month of good dieting in front of me to beat that low number. I weighed 246 pounds last week.
I think a lot of that disruption came from letting my aims wander. I let other things become more important for a while. It’s still important self knowledge: I will gain 8-9 pounds in 2 months if I stop making weight control important! And I tried through most of January to start controlling my weight again, but I couldn’t do it. I hadn’t figured out the problem.
I went out with a friend for lunch this week – it was her birthday. We hadn’t seen each other since October. Her comment – you’ve lost a lot of weight! That was funny, because the last time she saw me I weighed about the same. But she clarified that over the last few months, my face had gotten thinner. That’s interesting. Body weight is more than just a number, and it might be true that your body continues to change for weeks after you have lost the weight!
Another friend lost nearly a hundred pounds, recently. When I saw him, I wondered why his head and body seemed out of proportion (the head seemed too big). Probably his face has continued to change and he looks much more proportional now. You’d probably have to keep at your goal weight for quite a while before all the remodeling took place. I have read discussions on Reddit about your body taking some time to remodel your skin around your middle following weight loss. I am not looking forward to that!
Controlled weight loss is good enough for now.
-The Doctor