These days I am having success with a skimpy breakfast plan. I have a quite small breakfast and a normal lunch, then a snack, and after dinner there are often 300 or more calories left in my budget that I can spend as I like! The amazing part is that with my focus on hunger as my reason for eating, I am often not even using the whole 1850 calories I budget per day. On a regular diet I would probably be eating right up to, and a bit over, the limit, and being unhappy about it. But by setting my mind right first, the 1850 becomes more of a guideline than a goal. If I get hungry I check my food journal and say “no wonder, I’ve only had 700 calories so far today” or “I shouldn’t be that hungry, I’ve already had 1600.”
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – baked beans (180)
- 180 calories
Lunch – 5oz cooked rice (160); 12 ounces vegetable curry (330)
- 490 calories
Dinner – 8oz chili (340); 60g garlic bread (250)
- 590 calories
Snacking – pretzels (100); 2x Reese’s PBCs (80); 110g ice cream (250);
- 510 calories
Total for the day: 1770 calories (limit 1850)
Yes, I decided to have ice cream
But I didn’t have a cone. And I do like my waffle cone with the right kind of ice cream. They are 80 calories. But I didn’t need it today. To really enjoy it, I would have to be hungrier.
In preparation for the 4th of July weekend, I bought a pineapple and a watermelon and some blueberries. With any luck I will make blueberry crumble tomorrow morning. It will be a hot day, so cooking in the morning is sensible. And I will have watermelon and pineapple in the refrigerator, ready for the predicted 97 degrees! I have decided that blueberries and watermelon are essentially calorie free (not 100% true) so I often don’t record eating them. Plus I don’t have them that often.
Weight control is partly about having things to look forward to. But at the highest level it is about resetting your view of food and eating. Instead of thinking like an out of control person who will gain weight, you can learn how thin people think. There’s lots of emphasis in the diet world on aping some of the behaviors of thin people, but a lot of it won’t work if you don’t have the thinking right. If you think like a person who has successfully stayed thin through their life, those behaviors will make more sense and you can implement them consistently and with purpose. Your body, a lagging indicator, will slowly catch up to your change of mind. Watch thin people and figure it out. Talk to them and they will tell you all about it.
My system is complicated. Not every overweight person is willing to solve their problems by keeping a food journal for the rest of their life, and many people who stay thin don’t do that. But I have a special situation with my former weight gain. I feel like my ability to judge how much food is enough, and remember what I have eaten, is unreliable. The journal evens the odds. It is my hobby.
Listen to what the thin people are telling you. Keep an open mind.
-The Doctor