When your focus is on weight control, you can make it work for you whatever the circumstances. Right now, I am working from home, the pools are closed, and most of my social outlets are cut off. But my lens for looking at my world is still: what can I do to control my body’s weight? And from home, for me, there’s a lot I can do. For one thing, I can make my patented (not really) Reuben wrap sandwich, with corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and Thousand Island dressing toasted and wrapped up in a flatbread. It works and it is very, very good. I even make it on the kitchen scale so I can weigh out the corned beef. My toaster oven makes it easy to melt all the cheese.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – 2x bacon slices (70) on a toasted bagel (300)
- 440 calories
Lunch – 1/4 pound corned beef (140); wheat wrap (110); 2Tbsp Thousand Island dressing (130); Swiss cheese (150);
- 530 calories
Dinner – 8oz chili (340); 3oz soda bread (280);
- 620 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (120); chocolate almonds (150)
- 270 calories
Total for the day: 1860 calories (limit 1800)
Diet without exercise
You can lose weight without any extra exercise, just by controlling your food intake. However, you do’t have to feel good about the lack of exercise. But how and why would you control your food intake? First, you have to commit to measuring it. You can only do that if you have decided to make weight control one of the top values of your moral existence. I’ve found (after failing on lots of other ideas) that I am willing to do this, so long as I don’t feel deprived, punished, and miserable while I am controlling my weight. That does take a fair amount of work because you have to anticipate the needs and desires of your own body, and learn about yourself and what you want, and be willing to put in the work (or spend a lot of money getting other people to work for you) so that will happen.
Just sitting around all day, your body will burn a regular amount of calories. Today, I hardly left the house (does walking to my car count?) so my calorie burn was at the minimum. Tomorrow I hope to do some walking. When I swim, I have calculated my normal routine burns about 600 calories. Think about the numbers, though. I swim twice a week and burn 1200 calories. In that same week, I will eat about 13,400 calories (ideally, if I want to lose weight). So exercise is a small fraction of my total calorie throughput and a lack of exercise should only marginally affect my calorie calculations. But there are other benefits – exercising makes you stronger, for example, and you might look better. On the whole, I like swimming twice a week.
Find a way to make weight control into something you like and appreciate, and work to keep yourself liking it. Then you will always do it, and failing that, can always come back to it.
-The Doctor
Bravo!! I walked 3 miles at 8 a.m. I didn’t much feel like it, but I forced myself and afterward, I was (somewhat) glad I did.I think I’m getting LAZY!
My yoga class is closed so I need to get busy with it at home.
I think the exercise gives me a chance to do something for myself, so I remind myself of that when I balk at starting my routine.