I was looking at my food journal for 2020, and I don’t eat as much meat as I thought. There’s a fair amount of vegetable dishes, rice, noodles, pizza, and some stews and soups flavored with meat. But it’s rare for me to have meat as the main part of the meal. My BLT is as much, or more, LETTUCE and TOMATO than bacon. The Big Greek Cafe gyro does have a fair amount of meat. But look at Wednesday. I had the gyro, and I had a ham and cheese sandwich for breakfast, and for dinner I had a vegetable taco salad with beans and cheese, sour cream, tomato, salsa, on a tortilla.
I noticed my meat pattern because when I woke up today, I did get hungry at all until 11AM. When I looked in my journal – yes, Thursday I had brats for lunch and meat mania platter for dinner. The calories were under control but it was a lot of meat in one day! I am not used to it.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – tea (80)
- 80 calories
Lunch – Leftover meat mania platter from yesterday with meatball (80); sausage (150); and chicken (100); plus some chicken pieces from Costco (100);
- 430 calories
Dinner – 250 grams baby back rib meat, not counting the bones (500);
- 500 calories
Snacking – pretzels (120) and cheese (80); 2x Reese’s PBCs (80); Snickers ice cream bar (180);
- 540 calories
Total for the day: 1570 calories (limit 1850)
Am I done?
1570 calories for the day is not a lot, and I have to be careful that I don’t start feeling deprived or resentful, by eating too little and not meeting my physical needs. That’s not good for the weight control mindset. To fix that, I may have more tea later. I had some for breakfast, and I count the half and half I put in my tea: 80 calories. So it may end up as 1650 calories for the day. Still, not a lot of calories. Either way, my average calories per day this week will be under 1800. Oh, I didn’t try to count the barbecue sauce that came on the ribs I had tonight – that would add a few calories.
Anyway, with all this meat in my system I also feel the need for sweets afterward. I keep all kinds in the house, so I that don’t feel like I am punishing myself. Many people say that when you are trying to lose weight you should remove temptation from the house. But I have ice cream, bar chocolate, peanut butter cups, other candy bars, etc., lying around. It doesn’t bother me, since I have managed to convince myself that I am not deprived. So there is not much temptation there. A lot of temptation is born of resentment.
What I do find difficult is the slow pace of weight loss. You can practice weight control all week and not look any different at the end of it. I had lost almost 70 pounds before any of my friends or acquaintances noticed or mentioned it. I shouldn’t complain, since it clearly took a long time for my weight to increase all that way.
I just bought a cookbook for pressure cooker meals. You’ll be seeing a few of those recipes soon!
-The Doctor