20200716 daily report nice and slow…cooker

Slow cooking and quick typing.  That’s how we roll at the Doctor of Things.  It’s been hot weather this summer, every day predicted to be over 90 degrees for a couple of weeks now.  Since I don’t want to heat up the house, it’s been outdoor cooking, toaster oven, and slow cooker during this time.  Today I had lots of eggs and wanted o make a Spanish tortilla, but that calls for baking at 450 degrees!  No thanks.  But I found there is a variation that uses the slow cooker.  That worked!  I looked forward to that.  The calorie count was tricky though.

Spanish tortilla: eggs, potatoes, onions, chorizo sausage. The yellow is Bell pepper.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – burrito with 80g meat (200); 80g beans (60); 30g cheese (110); tortilla shell (130); sour cream (20);

  • 560 calories

Lunch – 2x bratwurst (260); half a wheat wrap (55); onion (10);

  • 585 calories 

Dinner – 8oz slow cooker Spanish tortilla (450);

  • 410 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (40); 100g ice cream and a little chocolate syrup (280);

  • 320 calories

Total for the day: 1835 calories (limit 1850)

Who knew - unless you pay attention

How many calories in Spanish tortilla, slow cooker version?  3300.  That’s adding up the eggs, potatoes, olive oil, chorizo, and onion.  (Chorizo sausage has more calories than you would think.)  It made a 4-pound tortilla, and I had 1/8 serving or 8 ounces.  That rounded to 450 calories!  It’s a bit more than the piece you see in the picture, which weighed 6 ounces.  And it was difficult stopping at 8 ounces, because it seemed like it wasn’t that much bulk.  But because I knew how many calories were in it, I stopped myself there.  When I was gaining weight and not paying attention, I might have had several pieces of that tortilla for a meal.  That might have been 1200-1500 calories just for dinner.  Now I don’t eat much more than that in a whole day.  

I traded my reason for eating.  Now, I am eating for a much more simple and direct reason: to satisfy physical hunger in the most rewarding way I can.  Eating until you are full doesn’t satisfy your physical needs any better than a measured portion would.  

Part of it is priorities.  I wanted to get my weight under control.  This was a way to do it that worked, considering my personality.  I changed my thinking and rewarded myself for a job well done.  Quality of the food matters more than it did; I will now ignore or throw away bad cake or cookies bought from a store rather than eat them.  What did I give up?  Why, the feeling of a full stomach, which never lasted very long anyway,  

Always trade up!  What is your reason for eating?

-The Doctor

20200715 Daily report with bettering

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.

Caption

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

20200714 Daily report with snack

Today, let’s talk about paying attention.  I decided to pay attention to the times of day when I get hungry.  It’s a balancing act.  I WANT to get hungry, because (1) it means I have not been overeating and (2) eating when you are starting to get physically hungry is the best kind of eating.  You can reward yourself for getting properly hungry.

One of the problems people have when they are gaining weight is they lose that connection.  They start eating for reasons other than hunger, and are eating for some emotional purpose.  Emotional needs can never be satisfied that way!  Think of it as self-medicating for your emotional needs.  It’s much better to pay attention to WHY you are eating.  Then weight control is possible.

Snacktime! Chicken wrap with lettuce and tomato.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – bratwurst (260); 1/4 wheat wrap (25); onions (10);

  • 295 calories

Lunch – half Aldi pizza (585); 

  • 585 calories 

Dinner – 6oz Spaghetti (300); 6 meatballs (47); cauliflower (25)

  • 605 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chicken wrap (155); Bluebird ice cream cone (130)

  • 365 calories

Total for the day: 1850 calories (limit 1850)

The wages of paying attention

Just recording your weight is a step in a good direction, as far as weight control is concerned.  It’s absolutely true that people who stay thin throughout their lives weigh themselves regularly.  Just that amount of paying attention is enough to change your behavior.  Do you know how much you weigh?  I do, within a few pounds.  I didn’t used to be able to say that.  But I have more than a year of weight data written down, along with a complete food journal.  That’s some good paying attention!

There’s more to it than that.  You have to pay attention to why you are eating, how much, and how much you weigh.  I also pay attention to which foods I find rewarding, and how much of them I have in the house.  I even pay attention to which foods I have available for tomorrow and next week.  I buy ahead, cook and prepare menus ahead.  I do a lot of paying attention.  

I didn’t lose any weight between November last year and June this year; my weight stayed between 240-246.  Even so, I (mostly) kept weighing myself.  A few weeks ago, I felt able to start losing weight again.  Now I am paying attention again to all the other things I mentioned.  In a few weeks I hope to weigh less than 230 pounds.  I haven’t had that weight in a long time.  And I will still weigh more than I really want.  But let’s leave that aside.  Attention is more properly paid to the job right in front of me.  

Why are you eating?  What are you paying attention to?

-The Doctor

20200713 Daily report and fresh start

Monday is the first day of the rest of your life.  Haha, every day is the first day of the rest of your life.  The author Terry Pratchett created a monk (called Wen the Eternally Surprised) who developed the theory that the only appropriate attitude towards the world was pleased surprise, which is mostly the same thing.  Another of Pratchett’s characters had a sign saying, “When you’re up to your ass in alligators, today is the first day of the rest of your life,” which is a bit less relevant to this blog (unless you like eating alligators).  

Classic bratwurst and onions. The wraps are my idea. Hold the alligator.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – bread toast (140); ham (100); cheese (50); 

  • 290 calories

Lunch – 2x bratwurst (260); half a wheat wrap (55); onions (10); 

  • 585 calories 

Dinner – 2x French toast (250); maple syrup (100)

  • 600 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (40); Cheetos (150); nectarines (100);

  • 290 calories

Total for the day: 1760 calories (limit 1850)

The long game

Losing weight is a long game.  To be fair, gaining weight is a long game too, but it takes a lot less paying attention…and discipline.

Paying attention is hard.  By nature, the Doctor likes to set up systems that do most of the work automatically, to save his attention for other things.  This does have advantages, but also drawbacks.  

But so far Sunday and today, I have returned to my normal eating habits and not felt any deprivation or had to recover from illness or anything.  It may take me a week, but I will get myself back to normal and get on with the business of lowering my body’s weight.  I am focused on the number 230.  It’s my next milestone goal.  It may take a couple of weeks, but it will happen.  

The discipline part comes from resetting my mind.  I have to make sure I am thinking like a person who is in control of their body’s weight.  It’s easy to fall back into your old habits.  You know, the ones you had when you were gaining weight.  The thoughts that you used to live by.  They say things like, “have some more food, don’t worry about it” and “you’ll feel better if you feel nice and full.”   You have to get around those thoughts and get some new ones.  “Put it off until you’re actually hungry, it will taste better,” is one.  Another is “let’s eat when we’re physically hungry, and not for other reasons.”  That’s a good one.  

Having told yourself this, it helps to put in some work.  This is the discipline part.  My subconscious is happy when I plan ahead, cook and have food in the house that I want to eat, and enjoy regular meals.  That planning and cooking ahead is something I had trouble doing this weekend, but I managed it by planning a very simple menu.  So far, it’s working.

Do the work and control your body’s weight.

-The Doctor

20200712 Daily report: relax

Today I rested.  That’s putting a gloss on it, though.  I woke up with an almost-headache.  That’s bad because it feels like you are about to get a headache and it’s very foreboding, like it’s hanging over you and you are reluctant to start anything.  So resting it was.  I had no interest in planning anything complicated or cooking anything complicated, as you will see.  The most complicated thing I cooked today was my sandwich, and I didn’t even take a picture.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – skipped 

  • 00 calories

Lunch – bagel (330); ham (100); salami (110); cheese (50); olive tapenade (30);

  • 620 calories 

Dinner – chicken pieces (100); chips (100); buffalo chicken wrap with tomato and lettuce (170);

  • 370 calories

Snacking – 99g ice cream (240); pretzels and cheese (300)

  • 540 calories

Total for the day: 1530 calories (limit 1850)

More rest!

The almost-headache didn’t go away until late afternoon.  I did manage to get a few things done, but between my headache-ish lethargy and the hot weather expected for this week, I have planned out a very simple menu.  Yes, part of the price for the weight control lifestyle is to spend part of the weekend planning and preparing for the next week.  That’s done and I won’t starve.  I was even able to cut up a watermelon, which is a very good one, and so I have snacks prepared too.  I know I have to take care of myself so that I will be happy eating a restricted number of calories.  

Really, 1850 calories is not a small amount.  But it is a restriction and part of me doesn’t like to be restricted.  That part has to be kept appeased.  Instead of forcing myself to eat “less” than I want, I plan ahead to make sure that at least the 1850 will be very, very nice food.  Just what I want.

Have a good week!  It’s a new week and a new week can be a good week.  Don’t worry about last week, you can’t change it now.  

-The Doctor

20200711 Saturday report, white feather edition

I was too scared to get on the scale this morning.  That’s because I had an extra 1000 calories before bed!  And the latter half of the week was also calorie loaded.  So I have no idea what I weigh this week.  But it wasn’t going to be a triumphal number.  It’s just a lost week.  Next week can be better.

No picture today, since I didn’t get on the scale.  I only post pictures of victories, anyway, so even if I had gotten on, I wouldn’t have taken a picture.  

It's just a number

For the week, my daily calorie average was 2248, usually 1800-1900. In fact, the last two weeks my average daily calorie count was just below 1800 and my weight didn’t budge.  I blamed illness, and it might have been.  Can I blame my recent food bingeing on recovery?  It’s tempting.

But if I have recovered then I can get back to weight control.  I’ve made a start.  Let me explain.  My last five days of calorie counts were:

  • 3155 (Monday)
  • 1870
  • 1955
  • 2275
  • 2855 (Friday)

…and today, Saturday, I had 1850.  Right on the target.  I do not feel like eating any thing else and I am not feeling deprived, resentful, or have anything like appetite for any more food.  As a matter of fact, I feel tight across the middle, and heavy.  It’s hard to put into words.  But I don’t have the bouncy, energetic feeling I get when I am much closer to an empty stomach.  It will take a few days for me to get that back.  That’s the consequences.  And there is no guarantee that next week’s weight will be an improvement over 235.2.  But the week after that probably will be.  This is a long game with my body as a lagging indicator of my mental state or mindset.  

I was talking to a friend who has stayed thin through her adulthood and she complained that she has gained 10 pounds since everything here shut down for Corona virus craziness.  That is, since late March.  She explained her weight gain by saying that her routine, her lifestyle was disrupted.  Normally during her workday (she has an in-person service job) she skipped lunch or just had a bite on the go.  Now, she finds she had more time and is eating lunch.  

This story is very interesting.  I always listen to what thin people tell me.  She knew her weight had increased and by how much.  So she has been checking!  I went for years without checking my weight.  As part of my observation of thin people, I learned that people who stay thin usually monitor their weight.  She also introduced me to a new concept: thin people maintaining their weight by skipping meals.  I kind of knew that, I know another woman who only eats carrots for lunch (sometimes a hummus serving also) so she can eat ice cream at night and still stay thin.  This also has social benefits because everyone who knows them sees that they hardly eat a thing.  Remember Gone with the Wind, where the main character says in so many words that one should eat like a bird when anyone can see you?  Then go to the kitchen later and eat the rest, haha.

I can add this meal skipping to my other two strategies: calorie counting and total food management.  I count calories and keep a food journal, which takes some effort and fuss but is accurate.  I know other people who just eat the same thing all the time (food management) or some variation, like the man I met who cooks once a week and then eats a 1/7 serving daily for the rest of the week.  Now there is meal skipping, too.  I wonder how else thin people manage their bodyweights?

Keep your eyes open!

-The Doctor

20200710 Daily report: end of week

It’s very lucky to live in a world where each day gets to be a new day.  You don’t worry about what happened with your lifestyle yesterday and what problems you had, and you don’t try to fix what happened yesterday by sacrificing today.  You try to live today right.  In the long term, your weight will be under control even if not every day goes well.  

Homemade Swedish meatballs and gravy. With the right condiments they make a good sandwich wrap! That's dill on top.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Costco half pepperoni pizza slice (355)

  • 355 calories

Lunch – 7x Swedish meatballs (47); whole wheat wrap pieces (80); chicken (130); hummus (70);

  • 610 calories 

Dinner – pizza (600); 

  • 600 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); pretzels (110); chicken (100);

  • 290 calories

Total for the day: 1855 calories (limit 1850)

Feeling it

I am sitting here and typing and am having an urge to eat more food.  It’s not hunger – I had a good dinner with two kinds of pizza, including stuffed crust.  There is some other reason for me having an urge to eat something.  I am currently resisting because I indulged this urge yesterday and the day before, and that didn’t do me any good.  I didn’t feel any better emotionally and I felt over full physically.  Maybe I am still recovering from having some stomach issues last week.  

As far as the pizza goes, the DiGiorno stuffed crust was kind of disappointing.  The pepperoni was tasteless and the stuffed crust cheese was also tasteless.  The texture of the pizza was sub par.  Much better was the Freschetta cheese pizza.  No stuffed crust, but the sauce and cheeses were tasty.  On balance, I don’t like the rising crust style of frozen pizza.  Much better is the crispy thin crust style from Aldi or similar.  

I am a little tired, I think.  On the weekends I usually look forward to cooking ahead for he week, and today I am not feeling that excited about it and can’t think what I would like to cook.  It’s also the hottest part of summer here and I don’t like to heat my home up too much.  So I am looking at simple meals this week for both reasons!  

I hope you had a good week.  Now the weekend.

-The Doctor

20200709 Daily report with extra crow

Crow is the wrong word.  But you can see it that way.  

I’ve been trying to get my head in the right place, but it’s not going according to plan.  Yesterday I talked about making a success of weight control by creating the world I wanted to live in.  I didn’t make it today!  Luckily, tomorrow is a new day and soon there will be a new week.  

Dinner once, breakfast three times

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Costco pepperoni pizza half slice (355);

  • 355 calories

Lunch – 11oz pork vindaloo (480); 

  • 480 calories 

Dinner – 9x Swedish meatballs (48); cucumber salad (100); lingonberry jam (50): noodles (100); 

  • 680 calories

Snacking – chicken wrap (200); pretzels (150); chocolate (110); almonds (140); 2x kit kat bars (80);

  • 760 calories

Total for the day: 2275 calories (limit 1850)

400 more than I wanted

These days, feeling full doesn’t feel nice and comforting the way I used to believe it did.  Now, it feels strange.  It also gives me a bad feeling, like failure.  Luckily, it’s for today only.  Tomorrow is guaranteed to be a new day that could be good.  

Today, I felt hungry when I woke up – unusual.  I also got quite hungry around 10AM, but didn’t do anything about it until 11.30 when I had lunch.  Then I was hungry again at 2, and I had a chicken wrap with lettuce and tomato, at 3PM.  I can see I was already making myself feel deprived!  Too much waiting.  This kind of thing has gotten unusual, most of the time my food routine is predictable.  In the past I have tried to satisfy these kind of sudden, urgent hunger feelings.  Sometimes that works.

At dinner I was quite hungry, and felt like having more dinner.  I did!  But after dinner, I felt, not quite hungry, but rather deprived.  And here I am, 700 calories later.  

Tomorrow I will try again.  That’s the beauty of the system: every day is a new day that you can get right.  My goals are achievable, but difficult, and that challenge makes this worthwhile.

-The Doctor

20200708 Daily report and deprivation avoidance

When you are getting yourself invested in weight control, you have to set things up to avoid feelings of deprivation.  There is no surer way to fall off a diet – weigh control or otherwise – than to make it punishing and painful to do it.  You have to create a world you want to live in, and then you can watch in amazement at how happily you want to go live there.  

In my world, this is Wednesday.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Half Costco pepperoni pizza slice (355);

  • 355 calories

Lunch – Big Greek Cafe Famous $5 Gyro Wednesdays (600); 

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 9oz chili (390); bagel (330)

  • 720 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 80g ice cream (200)

  • 280 calories

Total for the day: 1955 calories (limit 1850)

I like this world better

Yesterday, I let myself feel deprived.  I tried to make up for extra calories I ate the night before.  That didn’t work.  It never works.  Every day is a new day, and part of the meaning of that is you don’t make up for yesterday’s problems today.  Today has its own problems.  Just try to make today work.  Yesterday is gone.  You can learn from it but you can’t cheat your way out of it.  You ate too much yesterday?  Well, don’t try to make up for that by eating less today.  Eat what you are supposed to.  Maybe weight loss will take a little longer, but falling off your diet and getting resentful about it won’t work at all, ever.  

Today, I tried to return to normal, but I was still feeling deprived so I let myself go over the top – 1955 calories total.  Normally I try to stay under 1850.  Well, tomorrow is another chance to have a perfect day, and I want to concentrate on that world.  Letting yesterday go is a hard lesson to learn.  You can still learn from it though.

Feeling deprived can come for a number of reasons.  It can be emotional.  It can be illness.  You might slack off and not take care of yourself well – normal human laziness.  It can be a combination, or totally unknown!  If it happens a lot you should try to figure it out, and prevent it from interrupting your weight control lifestyle.  

But in the best world I can create, I am motivated to eat by physical hunger that comes at pretty regular and predictable intervals.  I anticipate satisfying that hunger with a measured amount of the food I am most hungry for, and make sure that it is ready when I am most ready for it – when I am getting pretty hungry!  The food tastes wonderful when I am hungry and when I am anticipating it.  It’s a satisfying experience to eat what you want when you are just ready, and you might have three wonderful meals like that in a day.  In this world, you will control your weight and be pretty happy about it.  Eating like this is a richer and higher experience.  

Create a world you would like to live in and you will try hard to get there.

-The Doctor

20200706 Daily report with skipping

I didn’t post yesterday!  What a thing to forget.  I had taken pictures, too.  If I get a chance I will go back and post it.  

Talking of which, this weekend I made pancakes from scratch.  They are much better than boxed pancakes and no harder to make.  I did notice that putting blueberries inside them doubled the cooking time, though.  I count each 3-4″ pancake as 75 calories.  I use a Splenda-based syrup so essentially no calories there.  The blueberries were rather tart so the pancakes were, too.  Anyway, the buttermilk pancakes cooked up tall and fluffy, exactly the kind of thing you can look forward to. 

There may be butter. I'm not saying.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – last 1/10 piece of Texas blueberry cobbler (280)

  • 280 calories

Lunch – 12 ounces pork vindaloo (525); pretzels 110

  • 645 calories 

Dinner – sloppy Joe (500); fries (100);

  • 600 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (70); chocolate almonds (200); Reese’s PBCs (160);

  • 430 calories

Total for the day: 1955 calories (limit 1850)

Catching up on calories?

I don’t know why but I was very hungry today starting around 3PM, and then again at 5PM.  I had breakfast around 10AM because I wasn’t that hungry!  

Anyway my calorie total is high today (1955) and yesterday it was low (1745).  It evens out, but I didn’t mean for it to work out like that.  I was just hungry this afternoon and evening.  Since my stomach has been a bit off I wonder if this means it is back in business!  

Anyway, back to pancakes.  Part of the Doctor’s insight into system of weight control comes from the observation that small rewards are motivating.  It’s hard to motivate yourself to accomplish anything with punishments.  I think that’s why many people fail when trying to tame vices like overeating, smoking, drinking.  Psychologically they are punishing themselves because they see those vices as essential comforts and withholding them as punishments to be resented.  It’s hard to do things out of resentment.  

You have to do the work, though.  Rewards don’t come to you just because you wish for them.  If you can’t force yourself to lose weight, you can make it easier and rewarding to lose weight.  You can set up your life and your diet so that there are lots of incentives.  I reward myself every day by making sure that the food I get to eat is food I want and enjoy.  That’s the trade: I eat for physical fulfillment, which is a measured amount of food.  In return, I make sure that food is worth eating and worth waiting for.  It avoids the trap of forcing myself to eat less food using willpower.  Scott Adams talks about changing how you see the world – decide you are going to eat healthy, for example.  That way, each meal is a chance to succeed.  If your goal is to eat less you will fail every time because you could ALWAYS eat less.  Terry Pratchett calls that playing games with words!  You use the words to describe the world in a way it’can’t ignore.  Change yourself and change the world.

-The Doctor

End of content

The End

Newer Posts
Older Posts