20200313 Daily report

Friday, the last day of the diet week!  I have found my body responds on a daily and a weekly scale to persistent weight control living.  I tried weighing myself every day for a week last year, and every day I weighed about 0.4 pounds less.  By the end of the week I had lost just over 2.5 pounds.  But there are sometimes swings, and I have found it best for myself to weigh in once per week.  It’s a more dramatic change, every even days.  The nice part about that is that while a bad diet day can affect you for a few days, each new week is a chance to have a good diet week.  If you have a good week and balance your food intake and make that worthwhile, you will enjoy it and your body will lose weight.  

This week I am not expecting any miracles.  I had a bad diet day on the first day of the week, and while I have had a good week after that, the bad day will color the result.  No worries.  Next week can be perfect.

Mia lasagna. No meat, in this recipe.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Bratwurst (260); 1/4 wheat wrap (25)

  • 285 calories

Lunch – 1/6 lasagna (640); 

  • 640 calories 

Dinner – Aldi pizza half (570); bread and pulled pork appetizer (200);

  • 770 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chicken pieces and cheese (200)

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1990 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

The pace has slowed

This year, my calorie average per week has generally crept up around 1950 per day, up from 1850 per day last year.  I still should lose weight, but not at the quick pace I managed last year.  Also, the fact that I had a bad day at the beginning of the week, and then had nearly 2000 calories today, will probably minimize any real loss I had this week as far as my weighing tomorrow.  But that’s ok – any inflation of my weight tomorrow means the loss I have during the next perfect week will look larger.

Even if the pace of weight loss slows a bit, I can probably increase that pace over time.  A small success – a pound per week, say, is the basis for a larger success.  This is a long term affair.

I am typing on a different keyboard from usual, a very cheap one (my backup wired keyboard).  You have to really thump each key pretty hard to get reliable keystrokes, and that increases errors.  So it’s a lot of effort AND creates a huge number of spelling errors I have to go back and fix.  I can’t stand it, I am getting a different keyboard.  Amazingly there is a project going along to recreate the old original IBM keyboard from the 1980s with their buckling springs, what I always used to call the “spring-click” keyboards.  It turns out those keyboards were very quality items and were originally designed and built for mainframe computers that cost big bucks.  Anyway it is nearly $400 for one of these recreated ones, no thanks.  A company called UniComp still makes a watered down version of the IBM keyboard and I ordered one of those instead, much less expensive.  I am looking forward to using a spring-click again to write some blog posts.

-The Doctor

20200312 Daily report

This diet week – weight control week, to be precise – was slightly spoiled by beginning with a bad eating day.  Of 3000 calories or more.  One mistake I’ve made in the past (and other people do this too) is try to make up for the bad day by restricting calories for the next few days.  It will all balance out that way, I would tell myself.  No, it doesn’t work.  You feel deprived and hungry on top of the fact that your body takes several days to recover from bingeing.  It took me until today – Thursday – to return to normal after overeating Saturday.  And I didn’t deprive myself at all during that time, so this was pure recovery with no added angst.  I kept eating 1850 calorie per day, give or take.  It was definitely the right move.  I have a long term strategy and a lifestyle of weight control that I am building.  Punishing myself and deprivation are no way to build your new life that you will be happy and proud to live.  

Jambalaya for lunch! Much more enjoyable than lunch meat.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – ham and cheese sandwich (370)

  • 370 calories

Lunch – 5oz rice (160); 12oz Jambalaya (420)

  • 580 calories 

Dinner – 5oz pulled pork (270); roll (220)

  • 490 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 2 Samoa cookies (150); chicken pieces (50);

  • 280 calories

Total for the day: 1720 calories (limit 1800)

Not sure how that happened

I only had 1670 calories today?  I didn’t notice.  I wonder how I did that!  I wasn’t even particularly hungry for lunch until past 12 noon.  Usually my stomach is calling for lunch by 11.15!  Still, this means I am still well focused on my highest goals for eating and living.  

It’s another early-to-bed night.  I hope my body resets for dalight savings time soon!

-The Doctor

20200311 Daily report

Controlling my body’s weight using a maximum enjoyment strategy is very rewarding, but takes a lot of work.  The reward makes it worth doing.  I have learned it’s important that I not feel deprived, or I will need to apply a lot of force (willpower) to control my serving sizes.  Done right, set on a rewarding goal, I don’t feel deprived.  I am fulfilled  by the food quality and by paying attention to my own needs.  Done wrong, and your willpower is needed; eventually, the willpower runs out and you aren’t controlling your food intake or weight any more.  What is the goal?  Hint: it’s not losing weight.  That is just not a rewarding goal for most situations.  

The goal is self-control, control of your body’s weight, taking responsibility for yourself.  If that is your goal, any mechanism will work.  That’s why there are so may diets that have worked for so many people.  If your goal is to be thin, you will never get there.  No mechanism will work, and you will be tempted by magic diet plans.  Thinness is achieved best as a side effect of your real goal.  

Is barbecued meat on your diet? Should be.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2x Bratwurst (260) and half a wheat wrap bread (55)

  • 575 calories

Lunch – Mission Barbecue two-meat platter; 1/3 pound sausage (400); 1/4 pound brisket (240);

  • 640 calories 

Dinner – 1/6 lasagna (640); 

  • 640 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (40);

  • 40 calories

Total for the day: 1895 calories (limit 1800)

Slightly over the mark

I got to the Big Greek Cafe today for a Wednesday gyros sandwich…..and they were closed!  A sign on the restaurant next door said BGC had a fire.  There were certainly a lot of cleaners and construction people on site – I thought they were customers until I got inside.  I hope they are back in business soon.

I went to Mission Barbecue.  They have a nice operation but are a bit more expensive than Big Greek Cafe.  Still, I needed a lunch after anticipating a gyro all day.  So barbecue it was.  I got brisket and jalapeno sausage (the brisket looks a bit blackened in the picture but it was browned, not burned, and quite good with Kansas City Classic sauce).  

My calorie count was slightly higher than I wanted today.  Usually, that doesn’t matter.  But this has been an unusual week, and it had a bad start with a 3000-calorie day (Saturday).  When I get on the scale in three days, I will have no idea what to expect (as usual)!  But if this week doesn’t work out, there is always next week.  This is a life long project.  

-The Doctor

20200310 Daily report

I’ve decided that lunch is the hardest meal of the day.  That’s because I am working at my office during the day and I have gotten a bit spoiled being at home to prepare meals fresh.  Part of my weight control strategy is to maximize my enjoyment in each meal and balance that against the desire to eat a lot of food.  That is, I can dramatize mealtimes so that I let myself get physically hungry (just a little), prepare just the right meal, and eat a measured amount.  The first few bites are always the best, and if you eat too much you won’t enjoy your next meal to the full extent.  It’s a good system but it does mean you are spending a lot of time sopping, cooking, preparing, portioning, and then cleaning the kitchen.

On the other hand, you can make wonderful food to eat.

3/4 pound of my sausage jambalaya, pass the Tobasco!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 12oz steel cut oatmeal (320)

  • 320 calories

Lunch – ham, cheese, and salami sandwich (550); chips (150)

  • 700 calories 

Dinner – 5oz rice (160); 12oz jambalaya (420); half sausage (140)

  • 720 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); 

  • 120 calories

Total for the day: 1860 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Getting there

After my bad diet day Saturday, I have been waiting for my body to get back to feeling normal.  I am not quite there yet!  And this is the third day after the bingeing.  On the other hand, I have found it very easy to stay in my calorie limits this week so far.  Getting full now feels unrewarding in almost every way.  The one way overeating feels good is very immediate, and in my case has an emotional connection – emotional rather than physical hunger being satisfied. 

I can see I have run out the clock again.  Hopefully I will adjust to the daylight savings time soon and have more time in the evening to write.  Until then, goodnight and I hope you can figure out how to separate your physical and emotional needs, because it’s no good to get those mixed up.

-The Doctor

20200309 Daily report

When you’ve had a bad diet day (Saturday for me) it takes days before you feel like your body has returned to normal.  It’s yet another reason not to have a bad day, or to keep the damage to a minimum.  This raises the question of why would you have a bad day in the first place.  And I think the answer to that is obvious: everybody does.  One bad day, once in a while, doesn’t hurt too much.  It’s when you start thinking of the bad day as a normal day, that the trouble begins.  When you are keeping track, every day, you can see the cost and the effect of such a bad day.  You are paying attention.  That’s how I know that even today (Monday) things are not back to normal.  Maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after.  That will feel…good.

I change em up with American cheese today

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2x bratwurst (260); half whole wheat wrap (55);

  • 580 calories

Lunch – steak and cheese sub (500)

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – cheese lasagna (640)

  • 640 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120);

  • 120 calories

Total for the day: 1850 calories (limit 1800)

Early to bed and rise at all would be nice

Daylight savings time is hard if you are keeping a schedule.   I have to be in bed in 5 minutes.  So I will be brief.  I am working hard on envisioning the future I want and the person I want to be.  That person has his body’s weight under control.   Once you have your mind right, then your body will catch up eventually.  It’s a pattern that has worked well for me.  Keeping your weight under control is a full time job and requires constant work and attention.  That is the price, and the price is higher the thinner you want to stay.  Having a bad day when I weigh 185 will be a lot different that when I was 244 pounds.  But you have time to study yourself and figure out how to get yourself there and keep yourself there.  Just pay attention.

-The Doctor

20200308 Saturday Sunday Mix

Saturdays, I do a weekly weighing.  It keeps the whole calorie-recording and food-journaling businesses honest.  I might think that I am doing well and keeping within my calorie limits, but am I really?  Weighing is the reality test.  So far, I have been pleased to find that my food journal is predictive of the direction my body is going.  It has even been useful as a predictor – if my weight unexpectedly goes up, I know I am getting ill.  

This week, I am trying to re-establish my central goal as a person who is in control of his body’s weight.  It’s been hard to keep that going for the last few months.  

I weighed 245 pounds on Saturday.  It’s more than the 237 I recorded as my lowest ever, but not hopeless.  

Abbreviated post today

If your vision of yourself and what you are trying to achieve is strong, you can tolerate a little uncertainty, a little trouble, a little stress, and keep on achieving progress.  But you can be pushed off balance and lose sight of your goal.  How then do you find your way again?  How did you do it the first time?  Can you remember?

I am finding that relatively minor levels of personal or emotional turmoil are enough to derail me right now.  I had a good diet week, but then on Saturday (after weighing) I had a bad day for weight loss.  It takes several days after a bad day to feel yourself again.  It is the price you pay for losing your way.  I am willing to pay – I have had a lot of bad diet days over the last year, and always recovered – but it feels extra discouraging.  Maybe I am being too hard on myself.  This is a long term (life long) project, after all.  But it would be nice to have two good diet weeks in a row.  

Well, I am willing to work towards making things right.  I have prepared for the week: lunch and breakfast foods are cooked, portioned, and ready.  Dinners are premade and ready to go.  I shouldn’t have any anxiety about food availability this week! All the clocks are set ahead for daylight savings.  Preparation makes it easier to perform during the week.  Now I will go to bed and read a bit more and think about the person I want to be.  And how I can make that happen.

Good night!

-The Doctor

20200306 Daily report

The last thing I want is to backslide on weight control, but that is the easiest thing in the world to do.  Weight control is a long term strategy.   First, you imagine yourself as a new person.  This new you values controlling their body’s weight more than just about anything.  The new you is almost obsessed with this goal and has it near the top of their mind all the time.  As Terry Pratchett might say, nobody is naturally thin, but when you wake up in the morning, it is weight control that is your alarm clock.  It’s the first thing you think of when you wake up and the last thing at night.  When you eat, you hardly finish before you rush to your journal to write down what it was.  Sometimes, I write down the meal before I even eat it, but wait to fill in the calorie count until I am done, haha.  

Backsliding is easy because the old you is still in your brain, and maybe you have years of experience thinking and acting like the old you.  Lose concentration for a while and you will go back to the old way.  A month of not paying much attention might cost you 10 pounds.  You can’t lose sight of why you are doing all this.  The new you knows the answer to that and you should listen.

I still look forward to pizza night!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Noodles and red sauce (250); Doritos (150)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – 4 ounces rice (120); 12 ounces vegetable curry (330);

  • 450 calories 

Dinner – half Aldi pizza (570);

  • 570 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); bread (150); Reese’s peanut butter heart (170); 

  • 440 calories

Total for the day: 1860 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Third time hopefully the last time

I didn’t weigh myself regularly the last month and I am not sure what tomorrow will bring.  But I am pretty sure I will be above 240 pounds.  I had a good week and there is every chance to have another good week now, so I am pretty happy on that front – the prospect of progress is alluring.  But if I am right, and even headed in the right direction, it will be the third time crossing that mark.  I weighed 237 at the end of last year, went up to 246, then back down to 239 just a few weeks ago.  All this zigzag!  

But that is the danger of losing focus, letting go.  Your old weight gaining life is waiting for you.  This is the price of weight control and I am coming to understand that every thin person I meet is working to stay that way.  The thinner they are, the harder they are working at it.  That’s my guess.  Someday, I might know for sure.

Do you see the attraction of the system where you eat the same foods every day?  How much simpler it makes the work!  But it doesn’t make it any easier.  That comes from the top.  Make it your alarm clock. 

-The Doctor

20200305 Daily report

Day by day is how you live the weight control lifestyle.  One good day after another turns into a good week.  Three or four good weeks in a row and a month has been completely and fully lived.  Paying attention to what you are eating and making that an important part of your life can be very rewarding and worthwhile.  Paying attention to the constructive things you are doing every day in service of your goals and values…..wonderful.  It doesn’t make it any less difficult.  Controlling your body’s weight takes discipline, but very little willpower.  

By discipline I mean work.  The work of controlling your body is difficult but fulfilling and achievable.  Discipline also means you are doing a little every day.  Willpower is different.  Willpower in its negative sense means you are forcing yourself to do something.  It won’t last because you can’t force yourself forever. When controlling your weight, you don’t want to be using a lot of willpower.  You want your system to be self reinforcing and attractive.  Part of that is in the mind.  You create a new image of yourself who is in control, and live as is you are that person.  Your body then slowly catches up to the person you are now.

I am a person who cooks and eats delicious foods….just not too much of them.  I relish the fulfillment that comes with getting hungry and then satisfying that hunger with a controlled amount.

Curried vegetables with rice. The thing on the right is cauliflower.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Costco pepperoni pizza (710)

  • 710 calories

Lunch – 5oz cooked rice (160); 1 pound vegetable curry (440)

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – Italian bread (130); deli ham (100); deli chicken (100); Swiss cheese (100);

  • 430 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120);

  • 120 calories

Total for the day: 1860 calories (limit 1800)

A good almost-week

It was good because I have been keeping my aim on the worthwhile goals of eating that I have been talking about.  It was an almost-week because I only really got going on Sunday, and my diet week starts on Saturday.  So I had one day of about 2300 calories while the rest have averaged very near 1850 per day, which is about perfect.  Next week can be a perfect week.  I feel it all coming back to me. 

It’s been a difficult start to the year, as I lost sight of my good aims and have been on-again, off-again in 2020.  I have been using more willpower than attractive power, to try and get my successful pattern back.  But as I said, I have been concentrating on aims and goals this last week or two.  It may surprise you that my goal has little to do with being thin.  My goal is weight control.  I am (or should be) in control.  If I am not, what can I do about it?

-The Doctor

20200304 Daily report

One you are focused on your new goal of eating, it can be very rewarding.  You have no idea how exciting it is to be physically hungry for every meal until you try.  Not hungry in a deprived sense.  If you are feeling deprived and unhappy you have waited way too long.  I am talking about a narrow window where you are looking at the clock anticipating your next meal.  The combination of anticipation and fulfillment in the first few bites is very dramatic.  Today, I really made that work for me because I was looking forward to one of my favorite lunches.  Don’t judge me, to each his own!

Return of the living Gyro!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – half slice Costco pepperoni pizza (355)

  • 355 calories

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

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 5oz  cooked rice (160); 12oz vegetable curry (330)

  • 490 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); hummus (70); chipwich ice cream and cookie sandwich (240);

  • 390 calories

Total for the day: 1835 calories (limit 1800)

What is this Gyro and why is it so important to you?

When you are paying attention, you will notice favorites and start to anticipate them.  Years ago when I was gaining weight, a gyro was just another sandwich I had infrequently, but it came with Greek fries (basically a whole lot of fries, Greek servings are very generous that way) and that doubled the calorie count.  Don’t believe me?  1 large fries at McDonalds has 500 calories!  Greek fries were larger, say 600 calories, and the Gyro sandwich another 600.  Add a soda and two other equally large meals per day and you will gain weight.  Anybody would.  My goal at that point was fullness; if eating some was good, eating more would be better.

Once I changed my mind about why I was eating and picked a new set of values for living my life, it was time for a rethink.  I was paying attention.  Now, I think that if a few bites are good, you should make those few bites the best they can be.  That means enhancing the experience and eating foods you really like a lot.  

Enhancing the experience is often just looking forward to what you know is coming.  If it’s Wednesday, I don’t pack a lunch.  And I eat a light breakfast, just to make sure I am hungry for the sandwich, which makes it even better.  That’s another enhancement!  And it is a great sandwich, prepared by the Big Greek Cafe restaurant.  By contrast, on Mondays I often have a steak and cheese sub from the short order grill in my office building.  It’s good, but not great.  I don’t spend the day planning around it.  It’s nice.

As long as I am going to all this trouble to control my food intake and lose weight, I need to reward myself very highly.  This works for me, as a trade.  But it all starts with “why are you eating”?  It’s a question with many layers of answer.

-The Doctor

20200303 Daily report

I’ve never been able to lose significant weight before.  But in 2019, I was able to lose 80+ pounds.  OK, there are still 60 pounds to go.  But even so, that’s significant.  What changed?

I developed a vision of the person I wanted to be.  Nothing so one-dimensional as “being a thin person.”  I want to be a person who is in control of his body’s weight.  I decided I had to value that more than practically anything else, even if doing so costs me time and money or other things I value.  

With the aim in mind – being in control of myself, or put another way, being responsible for myself – I developed methods that worked for me.  What works for me?  Maximum enjoyment and fulfillment at every meal.  That means two things: I had to prepare for each meal by allowing myself to be a little hungry, and I also had to be responsible for making sure each meal was worth the effort, the sacrifice.  

That’s a matter of taste.

Tasty sandwiches work for me.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – ham and cheese sandwich on toast with pickles (300);

  • 300 calories

Lunch – half-pound short rib burger (600); toasted bread (100);

  • 700 calories 

Dinner – Costco pepperoni pizza (710); 

  • 710 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); cookies (140)

  • 220 calories

Total for the day: 1930 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Get the top level right

The top level of your mind, or your thinking, that is.  If you have your mind in the right place, then everything else follows.  It takes discipline and effort, but it is very rewarding to be on this weight control lifestyle.  The reward does not come from losing weight.  That’s kind of a bonus.  

No, the effort and discipline are all in service of fulfilling yourself and maximizing enjoyment of every meal.  You make yourself do that because it is rewarding and feels much better than living the old way.  In my old thinking, enjoyment came from eating until I was full.  You might say “I eat until I’ve had enough” but how can you tell what is enough?  If one of the main joys in your life comes from  feeling full, then you will start filling yourself at every meal.  Who can do that without gaining weight?

In my old thinking, I would try to force myself to diet and punish myself for not doing it.  I’ve come to think that is a very lazy way to try to lose weight.  You’re asking your body (really, your subconscious mind) to do all the magical weight loss things for you.  When you run out of willpower, the temptation is to punish yourself and make excuses for the failure – weak willpower, genetics, etc.  Then you are into self-loathing and good luck getting yourself to diet again, after a few repeats of that game.  It’s all in your head!  Change your thinking and become a new person living inside your head.  That person puts a lot of effort into making sure the body and mind are fulfilled at every meal.  That person trades quantity (measured portions of food) for quality – the exact foods that will make you happy delivered at the moment when you would most appreciate them.  

Keep the top level of your thinking where it needs to be!  

-The Doctor

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