20200624 Daily report, Greek style

It is possible to have three really good meals in a day while eating to a calorie limit.  By good, I mean impressive, satisfying, and filling/fulfilling.  It’s my preferred method – making it easy to eat controlled amounts of food.  Part of me doesn’t like being ordered to eat less and won’t do it.  That’s a place of deprivation, and why would I want that?  But that same part of me is just thrilled to eat what I really want, three times a day, plus dessert.  Here’s what I had for lunch!

The Big Greek Cafe rides again!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – ham, cheese, and olive tapenade sandwich with toasted bread (100), tapenade (50), cheese (100); ham (100);

  • 350 calories

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

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – taco salad with beans (190); cheese (100); tortilla (100); sour cream (50); salsa and tomatoes

  • 450 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 95g ice cream (220); cone (80);

  • 380 calories

Total for the day: 1780 calories (limit 1850)

All my troubles melt away

Melt away like ice cream!  Yesterday and today, I had so few calories for meals that I had space left over for a serving of ice cream each time!  Yes, welcome to my diet, where you get three wonderful meals and ice cream and will still lose weight.  You do have to pay attention to how much you are portioning, but you have seen my pictures – I am not suffering.  

I am very interested in this idea that you can re-learn the good habit of eating only when you are physically hungry.  Part of it comes when you have something to occupy yourself, like a project at work.  You are determined to get it done, so you only tear yourself away when you are physically called by hunger.   It all comes down to asking yourself: Why am I eating this?  Maybe you can answer: it’s mealtime, or I’m hungry (and are you really?), I’m tired, I need to relax, this food needs to be eaten before it goes bad, I need my favorite food right now….

Sticking to “I am physically hungry, and I can tell” is hard to do.  I mostly do it by counting calories and being careful with portions.  I have a whole spreadsheet of different foods I can make.  For each of them I calculate the total weight and total calories.  Then I know how much I can have for a meal, just by weighing.  The good part is, I don’t have to do any guessing of how much I have eaten, or remembering (did I eat that today?).  I write it all down as soon as I have eaten it.  Maybe that’s a bit too much work for you.  A lot of people have had success by creating a food routine – eating pretty much the same amounts of the same kinds of foods most of the time.  It can be effective and it’s less work.  But the good side of my method is it’s not dieting.  It’s control.  I will have this control even after I have found a weight range I like.  And I will be happy to keep doing this for a long time.  

Create a world you want to live in.  Then live there!

-The Doctor

20200623 Daily report – hot stuff

A few days into summer, and we are getting a taste of the heat.  Why does that matter to a dieter?  Well there are a couple of reasons.  The first is that, as I am noticing, hot weather doesn’t feel as bad if your body is thinner.  When I weighed over 300 pounds, hot weather was really unpleasant and doing anything at all got me sweating.  Cooling down took a long time.  Now, even though I am still heavier than I want (235 pounds, thank you), there is a difference and I have a bit more tolerance for heat.   This is yet more support for the idea that you should put yourself in control of your body.  

The second reason is that if it’s hot outside, you don’t want to heat up your house with lots of cooking inside.  Yet, one of the ways I keep myself happy while in calorie deficit is to cook a lot of my favorite foods.  So a dieter such as myself has to have a summer menu and a winter menu.  This does mean there is less bacon in the summer.  But there is more grilling, more slow cooker, more toaster oven, and more outdoor cooking.  So you can make it work for you.  

Another trick is to let someone else’s kitchen take the heat!

Costco strikes again! 380 calories.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wraps with bacon (280); whole wheat wrap (110); tomato and lettuce (round up to 400)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – 100g Mexican pulled pork (156); 2x corn tortillas (80); sour cream (30);

  • 280 calories 

Dinner – Costco cheese pizza slices (760); 

  • 760 calories

Snacking – chicken wrap with deli chicken breast (90), half a whole wheat wrap (55), lettuce and tomato

  • 145 calories

Total for the day SO FAR: 1585 calories (limit 1850)

More hot thoughts

Generally my standard drink during the day is diet soda.  Now, many people have noticed that only overweight or out of control people tend to drink diet cola.  Some even think that diet soda might cause some overweight through a mechanism we don’t understand.  I wondered about that, but it didn’t seem reasonable.  So, I wondered for quite a while if drinking diet soda was just a sign that you were out of control in your food.  That idea comes from the theory that many of us overweight people eat and drink for emotional reasons rather than phyiscal.  

Now, with the experience I have gained, I don’t believe that’s necessarily true.  I have given a lot of money to Coca Cola over the last year and a half since I started losing weight consistently, and it hasn’t been holding me back.  I don’t track how much diet soda I drink, but it’s daily, and for long periods I have happily been losing up to 2 pounds a week, while drinking all the 0 calorie diet soda I can drink.  But still, it’s true that drinking diet soda comes with an image problem.  Only overweight people drink that, you know!  Plus, it is starting to feel out of control.  So I have a new policy: drink a glass of water before having a diet soda.

Since I am trying to limit my calorie intake, diet soda was a good place to start.  It has no calories!  Once I have lost all the weight I want to lose, I wonder if I will switch only to regular soda and have one once in a while, like ice cream, if I have calories left in my daily allowance.  Or, will I keep diet soda as an indulgence?  There may be that social price to pay, though.  

-The Doctor

20200622 Daily report with pie

What do you do with 4 pounds of strawberries?  Make pie!  That’s one of the choices.  Generally, I prefer a strawberry shortcake roll, but I admit it won’t use up pounds of strawberries.  So pie they became.  While it is nice, it’s not nearly as nice as blueberry pie.  Apple pie.  Cherry pie.  Those are all very, very nice pies.  My grandmother was fond of making pineapple pie.  So while strawberry pie was nice to try, the others are not in danger.  Did I mention pecan pie?

This is 240 calories of pie.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 3x slices cold Aldi pizza (100)

  • 300 calories

Lunch – Bratwurst wrap (280); 2x corn tortillas (40); 100g Mexican shredded pork (156)

  • 516 calories 

Dinner – 13oz kale and beans (300)

  • 300 calories

Snacking – chicken (100); 1/8 strawberry pie (240); cool whip (75); 

  • 415 calories

Total for the day: 1531 calories (limit 1850)

Shortcut and shortcrust

For this pie, I cheated a bit and bought the crust from the store.  But I have never gotten the premade crusts to work properly.  The crust always shrinks and any fluting I put in always goes limp.  The advice on the internet is to make your crust and briefly freeze it before baking.  Maybe I’ll try that, but the store bought crust was kind of disappointing.  The dough seems very thin and not substantial.  When you are restricting your calories as much as I am, you have to find your rewards where you can, and for me that means food disappointments are very disappointing.  

I am finding that concentrating on my office work is really making this easier for me.  I am working from home on the computer, and you would think food temptation would always be a problem.  But keeping my focus on the work means I am less inclined to indulge my emotional needs with food.  Eating for non-physical reasons is what got me into this mess, and it never ends.  Physical hunger can be satisfied pretty easily, but emotional needs can eat you up if you let them.  

I am thinking about my body goals.  At the highest level, my goal is and ought to be weight control, and not any particular weight or look.  But in the course of losing weight, I will find a weight range that works for me, and while that range is not a goal, keeping in that range does mean my body is under control.  And that is the goal, to be in charge of my body’s weight.  What is that range?  I don’t know, but probably 180-190 is a good range for my height and shape.  I will see how that looks.  Maybe this kind of talk is overconfident.  After all, I just came off a 6 month pause in which I neither gained or lost anything!  (That does not count as under control, in my terms.  But at least it was not a disaster.)  

-The Doctor

20200621 Daily Report and Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day to all fathers!  One reason to start controlling your body’s weight (and other things about how your body looks and works) is so tha you can teach your children how to do that.  You can also teach them by example.  For example, a BLT is a good example for sons (bacon) and for daughters (lettuce and tomato).  Everybody wins, especially Dad, who gets a bacon, lettuce, tomato sandwich of 400 calories (when paired with a whole wheat wrap).  

There is some extra bacon. You can eat it later.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wraps with 4 slices bacon (70 each); 1 wrap (110); tomatoes and lettuce (round it up to 400).  

  • 400 calories

Lunch – 1/8 Strawberry pie (240); cool whip (75);

  • 315 calories 

Dinner – Costco cheese pizza (760); 

  • 760 calories

Snacking – Strawberry pie part II (240); cool whip (100)

  • 340 calories

Total for the day: 1765 calories (limit 1850)

Changed the details, kept the overall

I have experimented with eating the same number of calories per day, and with having a couple of “cheat” days where I can eat more.  Both seem to work, but as my exercising is not what it used to be in the time of Corona, there is less incentive to reward myself extra on exercise days.  So I am currently aiming for 1850 calories per day.  Even without the exercise, I am still losing about the same amount as before – 2 pound a week, sometimes a bit more or less.  

Paying attention to why I am eating has been very useful to me during my weight control lifestyle.  I want to be eating for only physical reasons (hunger) and not emotional or mental reasons (comfort, support, coping, etc.).  For most of the last 6 months I was having tea every day, and I think that’s an example of having food for comfort reasons rather than physical ones like: hunger, waking up, clearing your throat, illness, etc.  So I have cut back on that, really without trying very hard.  I am also paying a lot more attention to my work, which is good for everyone.  

This means I have picked a set of life goals: weight control and vocation (work).  I am making myself into the kind of person who can lose 120 pounds, do his job well, and then go from there.  Anyway, focusing on doing my job better has changed how I am looking at food and eating.  I am amazed at how little food I physically need and still don’t feel hungry.  Some days this last week or two weeks I have had less than 1600 calories and gone to bed without hunger.  Most days I only want or take a little breakfast.  For the last two weeks I have had ice cream several times a week because I had lots of calories in my daily allowance left over by the end of the day.  

So much of all this is how you look at it!  You will sacrifice your old self and how you used to do things.  But that old self had his problems.  You can build a new self that will do better.

-The Doctor

20200620 Saturday weighing & Triumphant Return

Yes, it is the triumphant return of The Doctor.  I have been away for almost two months and not written anything.  But now I have something to write about.  I have gained more wisdom and experience, but have lost some more weight.  Maybe the two are connected.

The lowest weight I reported on this blog was 237.4 pounds, from November, 2019.  What did I weigh this morning?

The scale does not lie. Not today.

This means since November, 2019 I have lost 2 pounds!  Oh, and since starting my diet in January 2019, I have lost:

Pounds!!
0

So why the pause?

Since November, 2019 I haven’t had much to say since my weight loss was not progressing and that was getting a bit embarrassing.  I was running out of excuses and didn’t have any good reason why that might be.  After 10 or 11 months of very, very successful weight loss (from ~325 to ~237 pounds), why would I suddenly stop?  My first thought was that I had hit some kind of physiological barrier.  More recently I thought it might be a psychological one.

No, not fear of success!  A growing up, maturity problem.  I am transforming myself into someone who is responsible for his own direction in life.  I don’t want to talk here about my previous mindset, but I will say that several things in my life started going wrong all at the same time, last year.  That was a clue.  

I have been thinking about my goals in life.  That shapes how you see and experience the world, since everything either becomes a thing you use to advance yourself towards your goals, or something to not waste time on.  Very recently I have started to pick a direction, a thread to follow.  I can’t express what it is yet, it all seems to have happened subconsciously.  Suddenly things have started working for me again.  And here we are.  

So there is a necessary ingredient to weight loss, and it starts at the top: pick where your life should be going and pick how you are going to experience the world.  You are also picking how the world experiences you.  Right now it is experiencing me as a 235 pound man.  Maybe by the end of the year it will experience me as a person of completely different appearance.  What else will change?  

-The Doctor

20200506 Daily report

Just paying attention is the first step in controlling your weight.  If you are weighing yourself regularly, writing down what you eat (in calories) in a food journal, and noticing patterns in what you like to eat, and when, and why – that is all valuable information.  You don’t even have to be trying to control your weight.  Just the act of watching, of paying attention, will give you all he ammunition you need to construct a weight loss lifestyle.

I can’t eat cake for breakfast.  (I’ll be hungry again in an hour.)  I can’t stand feeling deprived or hungry for very long.  I like my meals spaced out at 9, 11.30, and 5.30.  I learned all that about myself before I had lost any weight.  Another thing I noticed is that I am willing to put up with calorie restriction if I have a favorite meal to look forward to.

Yes, it's Wednesday. Time for gyros!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – colcannon soup with bacon (300); cold chicken pieces (100);

  • 400 calories

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

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – barbecued chicken pieces (400); 

  • 400 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); mac and cheese (100); yogurt (100); pretzels (100); cheese (100);

  • 480 calories

Total for the day: 1880 calories (limit 1800)

Late night

Part of weight control is deciding you are going to be responsible for your body.  There is no magic food, magic diet, etc.  That is just a way of blaming magic for your problems. 

Now, I have noticed my body reacts well to some foods better than others.  Some are very filling and satisfying for hours.  Some leave me feeling hungry quickly.  And some I just don’t like.  I don’t like rolled oats.  I discovered I do like steel cut oats, and those are very satisfying.  They take a bit of time to cook, which is a tradeoff.  They take 40 minutes or so, and a lot more trouble than pouring a bowl of cereal.  But one way I keep from eating at night is promising myself a breakfast to look forward to.  And who looks forward to cereal?  Hot steel cut oats with maple syrup, though, are special.  You might be willing to put off eating (at night) foods that are not as good.

Eating at night has always been a troublesome behavior for me.  But I have found this way around it.  So far it works, if I make it work.  

What are you looking forward to?

-The Doctor

20200504 Triumphant return and Daily Report

The Doctor has been away for a few weeks.  I wish I could say that it was a spiritual retreat or related to Corona Virus things, but it was nothing so useful. 

In the last two weeks, I have started to get a grip on myself and re-establish my weight loss mindset and lifestyle that I have used so effectively during 2019.  My weight is near my low point, but not quite there yet.  I am approaching 240 pounds for the third time, or maybe the 5th time.  It’s been a hard nut to crack.

Pizzarific!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 1/16 birthday cake (550)

  • 550 calories

Lunch – 10oz walnut chicken (450); flatbread (110);

  • 560 calories 

Dinner – 5oz rice (160); 8oz red lentil curry (400)

  • 560 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); kit kat (210); chocolate almonds (300);

  • 590 calories

Total for the day: 2250 calories (limit 1800)

Where's the pizza?

Yes, that is one of my stock photos.  I had no pizza today.  

I discovered something – again.  I can’t have cake for breakfast.  I get hungry again within an hour and I spent the rest of the today feeling deprived.  It is for this reason that my Snacking section contains a lot of chocolate and my calorie total for the day is high.  I am doing pretty well otherwise.  I lost a pound last week, for example.  Not bad considering I haven’t been allowed to swim (the Corona shutdowns have closed them all here).  My physical activity is relatively low.  Maybe that’s a factor and I would be losing more weight per week, but I just don’t know.  

It’s getting late so I will be brief tonight.  The Doctor has returned!  More weight control and food intake control adventures to come.

-The Doctor

20200326 Daily report

When living to control your body’s weight, a big enemy is deprivation.  If you are working hard to convince yourself to eat less food, the last thing you need is to feel deprived after all that effort.  If you don’t pay close attention to your body and its needs, you are in danger of pushing yourself too far.  Then, the risk is that part of you will take over and you won’t be in control of your food intake any more.  

You’d think that being at home more (due to coronavirus quarantines and restrictions on a lot of us) would make it easy to stay on top of food intake and avoid deprivation.  Who could feel deprived with roasted pork and apples for dinner, with roasted Brussels sprouts?

Roasting Brussels sprouts makes them sweet and tender

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Johnsonville bratwurst (260); and 1/4 wheat wrap (25); with fried onions (15);

  • 300 calories

Lunch – 1 ounce Ukrainian bread (100); Aldi half pizza (570);

  • 670 calories 

Dinner – Pork loin (180); baguette bread (150); roasted Brussels (50); banana (50);

  • 430 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); hummus (100)

  • 180 calories

Total for the day: 1580 calories (limit 1800)

Deprivation is bad for dietation

You will notice I had 1580 calories today.  Part of that is because I ate a small breakfast.  And that is because last night I lost control and ate 300 calories after dinner!  I knew right away that I had been feeling deprived but hadn’t paid a lot of attention.  And where did the feeling come from?  I had plenty of calories yesterday, including a gyro for lunch at my favorite Greek cafe!  

The answer is I put lunch off too long.  I didn’t eat until 1 o’clock, when I was hungry (and knew it) at 11.30.  I got busy while I was out picking up my sandwich, and did a few chores and errands….I convinced myself it would only take a few minutes, but it took longer.  By the time I got to the gyro, I was too hungry and I didn’t really enjoy it – ate too fast for that.  You would think by now I would notice these things and try to head them off!  I threw away a lot of work last night, because I didn’t pay attention to my body and meet its needs.  

Today, I explored the possibility of eating less and was comfortable eating 300 less calories for breakfast.  But if I had felt deprived I would have eaten the full 1800 calories for the day.  It’s no good ruining two days with deprivation and making myself angry and resentful.   But today I was more careful and ate my meals more on schedule, though I was still slightly late with lunch (12 PM instead of 11.30).  I did notice that I was a bit too hungry at dinner time, maybe that was because I had lunch a bit late.

Don’t let yourself feel deprived!  It is too much to ask – actual deprivation on top of food intake restriction.  That’s a way to break your diet and demoralize yourself.  Aim higher and pay attention to how your body is acting.  Learn the danger signs and put weight control first over your other priorities!  If you want it to work, anyway.

-The Doctor.

20200325 Daily report

Suppose, dear reader, that you wanted to gain control over your body’s weight.  There are many, many successful tools to use.  However, none of them seem to work.  It might be useful to consider: why are you eating?  What is the goal?  This has an obvious answer: to stay alive.  But it only takes a small amount of food to keep you alive.  How much is hard to say – if you look it up online, you only get lots of opinions that you shouldn’t do it, and few hard figures.  Someone on a survival site mentioned 1300 calories a day would be enough to stay alive for a few months, if you don’t have to do a lot of physical activity.   

So why eat any amount above that minimum?  What is the goal of that?  Well, you can eat more because you are physically hungry, or because you are growing, or want to gain weight.  (Being physically hungry can result from increased physical work – just look at how much the armed forces members have to eat!)  You can eat more food just for pleasure.  You can eat more because it fills an emotional need.  Or it can be some combination.

Do you know how many calories your own body needs to stay the same weight?  To gain or lose weight?  It does vary from person to person.  

Personally, I am eating for pleasure, but a productive and rarefied kind of pleasure that is consistent with weight control.

Big Greek Cafe Gyro Wednesday laughs at Coronavirus!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Bratwurst (260); and 1/4 wheat wrap (25); with fried onions and mustard (15); a homemade chocolate chip cookie (215);

  • 515 calories

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

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 1/6 Spanish tortilla (333); 1Tbsp mayonnaise (100); 1 homemade chocolate chip cookie (215)

  • 648 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1843 calories (limit 1800)

Walking

I am having a hard time getting an exercise routine going.  Before Coronavirus quarantine, I exercised 2x per week at the pool, and I made time for it in my workday schedule (flexible).  I also did a fair amount of going up and downstairs for car trips to various stores, which I didn’t appreciate until they all closed and we were encouraged to stay home.  Swimming uses arms and legs, and my main exercise at the moment is walking (including steps).  I hate to think about the lack of exercise, which I enjoyed.  I always liked swimming and I make sacrifices to do it.  It’s not like forcing yourself to do situps and pushups, though I guess there must be people who actually like doing those too. 

Anyway, I read that George Washington used to walk 7 miles per day for exercise, after he had retired from the Presidency.  People back then also rode horses and generally had more physically active lives, but even so 7 miles is a lot, nearly 2 hours.  I am doing 20-30 minutes, so only a quarter as fit as George in his 70s.  I’ll have to think about this some more.  I always liked cycling a bit, but was never the kind of person who buys bike gear and spends big bucks on a bike.  I was also never interested in going 100 miles per day or anything.  I was happy to be able to cycle to and from work, usually well under 10 miles each way.  But I am definitely not loving walking to the point where I will sacrifice and move around my day to do it.  But a routine would be nice.  Fifteen minutes walking in the morning and at lunchtime, and some more after work or after dinner, might be acceptable.  

What activities are you missing?

-The Doctor

20200324 Daily report

Another day!  I made cucumber salad, but didn’t eat it.  I made cookies, and successfully resisted them.  This was all part of preparation.  Part of being in charge of your body’s weight is being willing to do the work so that the rest of you willingly comes along with the program.  If you work to please yourself, then you don’t resent the restrictions on portions.  It’s a trade.  It’s like you are two people: one who is gung-ho about weight control and a second person who is not interested and can ruin it for the first person.  But that second person can be negotiated with, bribed, and satisfied so that they will play along.  

The last of the corned beef.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wraps with 4 pieces bacon (280); a wheat wrap (110); lettuce, tomato, and horseradish sauce.

  • 400 calories

Lunch – Reuben wraps with corned beef (140); cabbage, carrots, potatoes, a wheat wrap (100); and thousand island dressing (130); Let’s say 50 calories for the veggies.

  • 410 calories 

Dinner – 5oz spaghetti (300); 5 meatballs (230); sauce and cheese (20); 

  • 550 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); wheat beer (140); pretzels and cheese (300);

  • 520 calories

Total for the day: 1880 calories (limit 1800)

Balance the load

Yesterday, I had a beer.  Today, I accounted for drinking the beer.  In effect I had 140 more calories yesterday and 140 less today.  It’s a trick I only pull sometimes – like when I forget to count something.  It’s too hard to remember once you start trying to make up for overeating one day by under-eating the next day.  

Remember above I talked about the second person, who is also you, living in your head?  That person is not interested in weight control, that person is interested in being kept happy.  But they are willing to put up with weight control as long as you, the first person, do all the work of keeping them happy and satisfied. It takes work and discipline, but the result is that very little willpower is needed to resist food.  Did I mention above that I made chocolate chip cookies tonight and didn’t even eat a bite of any of them?  It didn’t take any willpower.  I just know that I will be happier eating them tomorrow, when I am properly hungry and full of the right kind of anticipation.   

I also know that the first cookie will be the only one worth eating, from the physical-hunger standpoint.  Eating more than one chocolate chip cookie (unless you are skipping meals) does not satisfy your hunger if you are eating regular meals.  

But I will have a cookie tomorrow, and blog about it.  This is control of intake.  Control of intake leads to control of the body’s weight.  We will find out on Saturday.  

-The Doctor

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