Today better than yesterday. That’s a good motto. Something to work towards. Is your life terrible? That’s too much to fix, let’s aim lower. Today sucked? Make tomorrow better. Doesn’t seem like that will happen? Make it a tiny bit better. Then keep doing that, every day a tiny bit. After long enough the bettering will be fully realized. What are you making things better for? Well, your life being good is better than it being bad. This brings us to vision. I sometimes ask, why are you eating? What is your reason for eating food? But the more important question is always, why are you living towards? What are you hoping and wishing for?
Because hoping and wishing won’t get you there, but you need hope, wishes, and dreams, just so you know where you are going.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – sandwich with bread (140); ham (100); cheese (50); olive tapenade (30); and pickles
- 320 calories
Lunch – Big Greek Cafe $5 Gyro Wednesdays!!!! (600);
- 600 calories
Dinner – taco salad with 80g meat (200); 80g beans (70); 30g cheese (110); tortilla (130); sour cream (50);
- 560 calories
Snacking – ice cream (250);
- 250 calories
Total for the day: 1730 calories (limit 1850)
1730 and not feeling deprived
1730 calories is not a lot for me. My target is about 1850 calories per day, or 13,000 per week. When things are going well I lose just about 2 pounds a week that way. The usual rule is that you have to be 3500 calories in deficit to lose one pound, so I must be about 6 or 7000 calories in deficit for the week, nearly 1000 per day. That doesn’t seem right! I feel like if I was eating 1000 more calories a day I would be gaining weight. (This will all be fun to figure out when I reach my weight target. That’s about 45 pounds away.)
My point is that I had 1730 calories and I don’t feel any need to eat more tonight. I know that I could eat more, up to 1850. But it can be hard to stop, and if you’re not eating because you’re hungry, you are being counter productive. So I won’t eat any more. Tomorrow is a new day and I say that often. But part of the meaning is that I can’t eat those foregone calories tomorrow. Just like if I have overeaten and that doesn’t carry over to tomorrow, under eating today doesn’t translate to extra calories tomorrow. For my body, weight loss seems bound up with a measured, slow and steady approach. I think of it as a zone of weight loss.
It is crucial to pay attention to your body and be sure why you are eating. If the reason is not physical hunger, then you might be going wrong. Tonight, 1730 is enough. Tomorrow, maybe 1850 will be enough. The other side is deprivation. You don’t want to feel like you are punishing yourself or get to a place where you are “withholding” from yourself. So while it is good to ask if you really are hungry before you eat to the max of your allowance, it’s not good to let yourself get resentful about it either. It’s a balancing act.
I will keep thinking about that balance.
-The Doctor