Weight control is a worthwhile goal and like all good things, it takes some effort to get there. And you have to maintain it – it is a lifestyle. Remember that every person you see who has maintained a thin weight has to work to get there. There is no naturally thin person…excepting people with medical conditions. This isn’t to say there aren’t people in the world who don’t get enough to eat. But let’s keep the focus on us, and our common problem: a lack of weight control and chronic overweight. Being in control of your weight doesn’t make you a better person. But it does mean you are paying attention to your body and you are in control of its weight. So far as you have a reputation in the world, some of it is how you appear to others. Yes, you can choose how you are going to appear. It takes some control, but not in the way you think.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – Costco half cheese pizza slice (380)
- 380 calories
Lunch – 2x Kirkland bratwurst (280); half a whole wheat wrap (55)
- 615 calories
Dinner – Meat Mania platter at Mama Lucia’s restaurant (600); garlic bread (100);
- 700 calories
Snacking – pretzels (120);
- 120 calories
Total for the day: 1815 calories (limit 1850)
Can't force it
You can’t make yourself do things. Everybody knows this. You can’t stop smoking, or drinking. You can’t make yourself go to the gym, or lose weight. OK, you can stop procrastinating (tomorrow). Yet people do manage to lose weight, sometimes a lot of weight. Some manage to keep control afterwards. I have thought a lot about the differences between thin people (in control) and overweight people (out of control). You can see differences in behavior. But you can’t easily make yourself act like a thin person, at least, not without understanding their thinking and being able to adopt it for yourself.
Part of it is the deprivation. Someone like me who was out of control, was unable to successfully diet because I used willpower to force myself to eat less food. Part of me felt deprived and unhappy, even though I was doing exactly as I said I wanted! I could never diet for more than a few weeks, using force.
Today, I had pizza, bratwurst sausages, and an Italian meat platter (meatballs, sausages, chicken, roasted vegetables) for dinner. And I didn’t feel even a little deprived, and my calorie intake was under control, and when I get on the scale Saturday I will be amazed if I haven’t lost 1-2 pounds from last week. The point is: I didn’t need to use any force because I didn’t feel deprived. I ate exactly what I wanted AND I stayed within a calorie budget.
Part of a secret is that the thin person’s goal for eating is to stay thin and in control of their body. They are always watching to make sure they don’t eat too much. They know their body and they know how it feels when they have had to much, and their goal is to make sure that doesn’t happen. You will find that satisfying physical hunger only takes a few bites of food. Everything after that is inertia – keeping on eating because the first bites were nice and it’s on your plate. An overweight or out of control eater, like I used to be, is much more concerned that they feel full. You can train yourself to eat quite a lot before you get a full feeling. If you do that for every meal, the consequences are obvious.
How is this miracle achieved, of changing your goal for eating, and taking deprivation out of the equation? Ah, keep reading.
-The Doctor