Why do people gain weight when they aren’t paying attention? People seem to think that gaining weight is a default, normal, requiring no explanation. Everybody knows that losing weight is hard and needs a special diet! Actually, I think both gain and loss take effort. Staying at your current weight is probably the most default and normal situation. And why not? People get into a routine, they eat the same foods and probably the same amounts. At the holidays, when the routine is interrupted, people always complain about gaining weight.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – Pizza (450)
- 450 calories
Lunch – 4oz ham (150); Snickers ice cream bar (180); Hershey’s chocolate bar (220)
- 550 calories
Dinner – 12oz fried rice (400); cookie (100); chocolate (80);
- 580 calories
Snacking – none
- 0 calories
Total for the day: 1580 calories (limit 1700)
Facing the scale
I usually don’t get on the scale unless it’s Saturday. This week, I got on again Sunday and my weight had gone up a bit! I prefer a weekly trend because it can be demoralizing if I bounce around a little from day to day. But last week was such a big drop to 222 pounds, that I am sure it was not 100% real. I will be happy on Saturday if I am at 221.8! At least it will be movement in the right direction.
Facing the scale is easy, if you have your mind right. You face the scale because you want the knowledge: what do you weigh? How is that different from last week? If you don’t measure it, you don’t know if you are gaining or losing. You aren’t paying attention. Paying attention is hard. There are a lot of things you should be attending to. But we are talking about the scale. It’s just between you and the scale. You don’t have to tell anybody. It doesn’t know or care what you weighed last time. Unless it is a scale with a memory feature, and who would want that?
Getting your mind right just means you have decided that tracking your weight is very important. It’s more important than anything else you do Saturday morning. It’s even more important than what you are doing on Friday. You might be extra careful of what you are eating Friday so that the Saturday weighing shows all your progress! And that’s not cheating. It’s what you weigh!
It also means that your weight is so important to you that you will be getting on the scale every week for the rest of your life. Get your mind right and everything you eat becomes part of that important job: having a good Saturday weighing.
It’s only Monday! Get your mind right and the scale is just a tool.
-The Doctor