Today is Saturday and that means it’s weighing time. When I was gaining weight and not paying attention to controlling my body, I practically never got on the scale. Partly, I didn’t want to know. Now, I have promoted weight control to the top of my list of values that I live by. So I weigh myself weekly. There are people who weigh themselves every day and I have tried it. But seeing the number change once a week is much more dramatic. It’s hard to get excited about losing 0.2-0.3 pounds, and my lifestyle has some excitement built-in. So I don’t even get on a scale, usually, until Saturday morning and so I never know if I have lost weight until then.
I am at a different location this week so the scale is different. I am pretty sure 230.0 pounds is accurate because I got on this scale last week too, just to check. And it had run out of battery. But once that was fixed, my weight was pretty close to what I get at home. So I trust this number pretty well.
Since starting to control my weight in January, 2019 I have lost:
Double milestones on the horizon
I don’t like to brag about what I will do in the future because it may never happen. But I always plan ahead for success. I always reward myself for achieving milestones, because I want to persuade all the parts of my being that living this way is better. Let me explain: I have forcing myself to eat less food and that doesn’t work for very long. It takes continual application of force. And if I did manage to lose weight that way, I would pretty quickly gain it back again. I would be the same person, after all, and you can’t force yourself forever.
However you can discipline yourself. You, the conscious willing part, can take on doing all the work, and create a new person who will be living the life you want. The new life has to be attractive and it can’t use force. But you can make sure that you are eating for the right reasons; that you can make the trade of quantity of food for quality; you can plan ahead and cook ahead so that the foods you want to eat are always there when you need them and in the right portions; and you can learn to see hunger as a positive force that enhances your joy in life. This is a hopeful lifestyle.
The milestones I use are decades. When I move from the 230s to the 220s, that is a milestone and I will prepare a favorite meal or food as a reward. Food as a reward??!?! All the diet experts say don’t do that! And I say that I have done it and lost 95 pounds. Questions?
The other milestone is 100 pounds lost. My original goal when I started was to lose 125 pounds and see how that looked. So 100 pounds is not the end. When I weigh 200 pounds (!) I will see if there is more that should be lost. But I will be pretty happy about weighing only 200 pounds for a while. That will be a big, big milestone.
But the weight control will continue. It’s no good losing weight to put it back on again. But I won’t stop being the Doctor – weight maintenance is a lifetime job.
-The Doctor