20200302 Daily report

At the top of the moral hierarchy are the things you value the most in life.  The higher your goals, the better chance you have of achieving those things in a meaningful way.  For example, one of my highest goals at this moment is to be in control of my body’s weight.  But sometimes it is hard to keep your aim high and then you will fall into lower ones.  For good or bad, the reason I eat food is to feel satisfied.  When my aim is high, the feeling of satisfaction is difficult to achieve and highly rewarding.  That is, I finely balance the need to eat with portion control – the exact amount of the exact food that will create the greatest feeling of fulfillment.  

When my aim is low, the satisfaction comes from the emotions I associate with having a full stomach.  When others talk about “eating their emotions” I think I know what they mean.  

There’s no doubt that being in control of your body’s weight (and finding emotional fulfillment that way) is more meaningful than eating until full at every meal.  Eat just the right amount, then every carefully measured meal will be a reward and an inducement to prepare for the next meal.  Don’t overdo it!

Steak and cheese, please

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 12 ounces steel cut oats (340)

  • 340 calories

Lunch – Steak and cheese sandwich (500);

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – 6oz noodles (300); homemade beef ragu sauce (250)

  • 550 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); cookies (140); chips and salsa (140);

  • 400 calories

Total for the day: 1770 calories (limit 1800)

It is all tied together

I have been having trouble keeping my aims and goals at the highest level.  That has allowed my old eating behavior to return, though not for very long, thank goodness!  Anyway, I decided to make things easier on myself and stop writing posts for a while, and focus on my eating behavior.   Boy, was that a mistake.  It was like I pulled an important card out of a card house and it all came down!  So everything is tied together.  If I stop doing anything, it all stops.  So I will keep posting as I figure things out.  

I am pretty sure the trouble lies with my aims and goals at the highest level.  If I have those right, everything else will follow.  If I have those wrong, everything else is seems arbitrary and that makes it hard to find meaning in what I am doing.  And I think a lot of this is about finding meaning in my life.  The methods I have developed to lose weight are just tools, after all.  It’s the meaning they bring that makes them worth all the trouble.

Be careful when you choose aims!  They have to be worth it.

-The Doctor

20200210 Daily report

It is best to track your food intake daily.  Really, you track it by the meal, but a day is flexible.  You can have a small lunch and a large breakfast.  But the calorie total is a daily matter.  For me, 1850 calories per day, 13,300 calories per week, is the aim.  So you pay attention to the meal, the day, and the week.  If you have a good day, you can use it for momentum and keep having a good day tomorrow.  If you have a bad day, well, that day is gone.  There’s no point in starving yourself tomorrow to make up for your mistakes today.  Losing weight is a long term game and you win by keeping your average calories per day as close to your aim as possible. 

You can console yourself (since you are, while controlling your weight, depriving yourself of the feeling of being full) by making sure you have something to look forward to all the time.  Then you get the feeling of reward instead of deprivation.  

Vindaloo , absolutely fork-tender and delicious!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – granola (200)

  • 200 calories

Lunch – pot luck, estimated (600);

  • 700 calories 

Dinner – 8oz pork vindaloo (350); 5oz rice (160)

  • 510 calories

Snacking – Reese’s peanut butter cup (80); chocolate (80); noodles (300);

  • 460 calories

Total for the day: 1870 calories (limit 1800)

Emotional eating

It’s hard to describe, but one of the dangers of my old way of living and eating was to eat for reasons other than physical hunger.  I usually call it emotional hunger, but which emotion?  

Another (thin) coworker approached me today to compliment my weight loss.  I have noticed that people who are thin themselves, and work at keeping their weight under control, notice and appreciate this kind of effort in other people.  This supports my observation that for the vast majority of people, weight control is achieved by constant effort.  Anyway, what he (my coworker) said was much appreciated.  Like other people who have approached me, he talked about his own efforts, and asked me what I had changed in my own life to achieve results so far.  Luckily, this is something I think about every day, and write about here, so I have an elevator speech ready all the time. 

It’s very obvious, when you think about it, why thin people notice you losing weight and are willing to bring it up, while heavier people are less interested (or are more shy).  It’s because to become thin, and stay that way, it has to be high up on your list of values and you almost have to live your life thinking about it and maintaining your weight.  An overweight person is usually not thinking about that and is much less interested.  That was me, so I understand the thinking.  

Anyway, after I had eaten my food today and written everything down, I felt compelled to eat another 600 odd calories for emotional reasons.  I didn’t record that above, but it’s in my calorie count spreadsheet!  So my calorie count today was actually 2400.  That’s not good for my daily count or weekly calorie average!  But as I find myself saying a lot, tomorrow is a new day.  Things can go better on the new day.

-The Doctor

20200208 Saturday weigh-in

Saturday!  I weigh myself every Saturday.  What will happen?  To me it is always a surprise.  By keeping my calorie count, I have a rough idea of whether I will lose weight.  Sometimes I don’t, even though my calorie count has been properly limited to under 13,300 for the week.  I have learned to associate that situation with getting sick, and the weight issue is temporary.  But usually, if the calorie count is acceptable, I lose up to 3 pounds (usually two) per week.  There are two complications this time: 1. Until recently I have having trouble getting my head focused on proper weight control goals and values.  I lost about 87 pounds last year using that focus, but then gained back nearly 10 pounds in December and January.  This was through not paying attention and letting my focus wander.  2. My calorie total this week was 14,000, mostly because I had one bad diet day at the beginning of the week.

Last week was the first time I had lost weight since November, 2019.  My total weight last week was 243 pounds, down from 246 two weeks ago.  So I still have some work to do to get below my previous low weight of 237 (November).  So what happened this morning on the scale was a surprise.

When I got on the scale this morning, my weight was 238.6.  That’s down 5 pounds!  I took a shower, and when I tried weighing again, my weight was 239.4.  Surprise!  On the good side, both weights were below 240, which I wasn’t expecting.  But what I actually weigh, I am not sure.  I always use the first weight the scale gives me, but it was very strange today.  One doesn’t normally gain a pound by taking a shower.  Usually washing away the dirt would make you weigh less!  

Unexpected weight gain and loss

When I diet well but don’t lose weight for the week, I know I am getting sick.  When I diet well (excepting one day) but lose 4-5 pounds, what does that mean?  I can only speculate as that kind of thing doesn’t usually happen.  Anyway, I seem to weigh less than 240 again.  I had that accomplishment once before (November 2019). 

My next goal: 230 pounds.  That is interesting because it’s on the way to 225 pounds.  At that point I will have lost 100 pounds from when I started.  My original goal was to lose 120 pounds.  That would take me down to 205 pounds.  How will I celebrate the loss of 95 pounds, 100, 110, and 120?  It will be pretty exciting.  Based on last year’s results, it will take about 4-5 months to reach that goal.  Maybe….July?

It’s exciting to think about.  Goals pull you forward, and I feel pretty inspired to have a good diet week.  Once I get below 237.4, I will start posting pictures of my scale again every Saturday.  

Have a perfect week!

-The Doctor

20200207 Daily report

Counting calories is my way of keeping score.  How else could you be precise about how much you are eating?  Well, I have watched thin people and they have a few different ways of doing it.  Some eat the same amounts of the same things every day.  Some portion out their meals every week.  Some restrict what kinds of foods they can eat (carrots, or fruit, and vegetables) during the day, and then do some calorie counting of “fun” foods at dinner.  I have seen people blend these approaches.  But there appear to be a few who just don’t eat very much food.  This is the kind of person who orders in a restaurant, eats seven bites, and just abandons the rest on their plate, usually more than half the serving.  Maybe those people count their bites, maybe they are very in tune with the feeling that they have eaten enough – I have not figured that out.

With counting calories, I don’t have to rely on that.  I just use the kitchen scale!

A measured portion of Shepherd's pie.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – half slice Costco pepperoni pizza (355)

  • 355 calories

Lunch – beans on toast (350); bread and hummus (250);

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 7.5 ounces Shepherd’s pie and 7.5 ounces mashed potatoes (685);

  • 685 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); cookie (95);

  • 215 calories

Total for the day: 1855 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Time for a good week ahead

Next week I have a chance to have a good diet week.  It’s a chance to get everything right.  This past week of weight control didn’t start so well, but I steadied down by the end of the week. 

Today was a swim day, and that was fun.  I am not sure if exercise is a necessary component of losing weight, or is just helpful.  It does burn calories, but it also makes you feel hungry.  That can be good, because food tastes best when you are hungry.  And I did enjoy dinner tonight, after swimming.  It was cold and windy outside, but I had Shepherd’s pie to keep me warm.  

Interestingly, the recipe calls for a small amount of beer, and I used a wheat beer called Konig Ludwig, which is one of the few beers I like.  It made the recipe very tasty.  Last week I made a beef Carbonnade, which also calls for beer.  In that case I used 3/4 cup of a super expensive Belgian beer – 17 dollars for a 750mL bottle.  It was a very good beer, but not worth $17.  I will stick with Konig Ludwig for most purposes.  But cooking with beer is not my usual approach and I only have the two recipes I have tried.  I have read about something called beer can chicken, where the chicken is mounted on an open beer can and grilled, but I just don’t like the taste of most beers enough for that to be appetizing.  

But I am learning what does motivate and interest me, in terms of food.  I can use that knowledge to keep myself happy while eating measured portions.  It does work.

-The Doctor

20200206 Daily report

Tracking your calorie intake is best done right away, or as soon as possible after eating.  It’s a way of paying attention.  You also get used to the act of entering the calories as the last thing you do when eating.  Like Pavlov’s dog, only in reverse, when you open your spreadsheet you stop salivating and remind yourself that you are eating as part of a weight control lifestyle.  You can connect the individual meal to the larger purpose of goal-oriented eating, and see eating a measured portion as an expression of your values.  That all makes it more satisfying.

Costco pizza can be cruchy after all!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT (400)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – Costco pepperoni pizza (710)

  • 710 calories 

Dinner – 11 ounces Shepherd’s pie (550); ccc (00)

  • 550 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chicken (100); hummus (70)

  • 250 calories

Total for the day: 1910 calories (limit 1800)

Overcaloried!

I had a bad diet day Saturday – nearly 3000 calories.  That’s put me over the top for the week, as I have found I can’t make up for overeating one day with starvation the next.  No, it’s slow and steady achievement, day by day, for a week, that makes progress.  While I like losing weight, my goal is to have each day go well.  So if the week is shot in terms of calories and losing weight (I might lose a little, yet), I can still have 6 good days in the week, which at least feels good and sets me up for a perfect week next time.  Enough perfect weeks together means good and sustained weight loss (someday, weight maintenance).

So I don’t get too discouraged about a bad day, even if it has a bad effect on the week’s weight loss or calorie total.  As it happens, this time my overeating day was the first day of the week, so the extra food has had a good chance to work through my system.  That’s what I’m telling myself!  The truth will come out Saturday.  In the weight control lifestyle, that’s what Saturday is for.

-The Doctor

20200205 Daily report

Staying on your diet is, like I said yesterday, dependent on keeping your vision on your highest goals, and your moral compass fixed on weight control.  That helps you to pay attention to physical hunger, and to refuse to allow emotional hunger to get confused in with it.   If you don’t pay attention, you lose that focus and you won’t stay in control of what you eat….and what you weigh.

If you do pay attention, and keep your focus on being prepared for the next meal, you can use that to reward yourself for sacrificing having a full belly.  

Gyro to go! Hold the fries.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Costco pepperoni pizza half slice (355); chicken strips (100)

  • 450 calories

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

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – taco pizza: one flour tortilla (140); refried beans (100); ground beef (200); shredded cheese (50); sour cream (30)

  • 520 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); half a wheat beer (70); chocolate cookie (95);

  • 285 calories

Total for the day: 1855 calories (limit 1800)

Food security

A large part of success in weight control is to have your menu planned out in such a way that you have something to look forward to at every point during the day.  Each meal doesn’t have to be *more* exciting than the last, but each has to be legitimately interesting to you.  Your last bite of gyro for lunch might trigger the thought: I hope I enjoy dinner this much!  And that means not just eating whatever you have in a drawer or in the fridge, but deciding on something that is worth waiting for.  It does mean cooking ahead and portioning your meals.  You have more control that way than over most restaurant meals, anyway.  

For example, for tomorrow’s breakfast, I am going to have bacon.  I don’t want to ruin my appetite for that!

-The Doctor

20200204 Daily report

The goal of eating for my weight control lifestyle is constant: never eat so much at one meal, that you are not hungry for your next meal.   It takes a lot of paying attention to make that happen.  But it is very powerful as a goal.  The promise of the next meal pulls you forward.  Eating too much is sabotage!  So it’s important to pay attention and tend to yourself, since you are giving up the comfort that eating just a little more would bring you.  Have your next meal ready to pull you forward, which means planning and cooking ahead.  It means figuring out what you really want and getting yourself ready to properly enjoy it.  

Wright's bacon today. Thick sliced!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wraps (400)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – chips (300); pretzels and cheese (300)

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – Costco pepperoni pizza (710)

  • 710 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1790 calories (limit 1800)

Tomorrow is a chance at a perfect day

Not only does the promise of the next meal pull you forward, but so does the promise of tomorrow.  Tomorrow is a chance to do everything right.  Get enough days right, and your weight and eating will slowly come under control.  But what holds it together?  Why do these things?

It starts at the top, with a decision to put weight control at the top of your mind, the highest of your moral values, your dearest hobby and almost the reason you are living!  One you have done that, then the mechanism you use comes more easily and it is possible to find a way that doesn’t rely on force and willpower.  If you are forcing yourself, you will fail as soon as you run out of will.  So don’t.  Find out what you want and make sure you get some – use it to reward yourself and keep yourself on track.  Pay attention to your needs and pay attention to what works and what doesn’t.  I can’t let myself be late for meals without paying a price later. 

Learn yourself.  The saying goes: know your enemy and know yourself, and you will always be victorious.  In this case, the enemy is also you, which makes it easier.

-The Doctor  

20200203 Daily report

Weight control is the ultimate long term project.  It lasts as long as you want to maintain your weight.  Do you want to be in control of your body’s weight as long as you are alive?  Then that’s how long you will have to work at it.  It’s probably true.  I have seen thin people eat, and they are very careful.  

Controlling your weight is mostly mental.  Once you get your food intake under control, your body will follow along and your weight will decrease.  That’s what has happened for me so far.  

Steak umm

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2 cups Cheerios (200) and 1 cup whole milk (150)

  • 350 calories

Lunch – steak and cheese sandwich (500); 

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – bread and butter (300); ice cream (300)

  • 600 calories

Snacking – dessert bread (400)

  • 400 calories

Total for the day: 1850 calories (limit 1800)

Roller coaster days

The weight control game is almost 100% mental, and to me that includes having a well regulated emotional response. I completed last week under good control of my food intake, for the first time in a while, and reduced my weight a bit.  It might have been a bit too much pressure for me though, because I had a roller coaster weekend, eating nearly 3000 calories Saturday and then 1500 Sunday.  That kind of thing really plays havoc with my internal workings.  My stomach still doesn’t feel normal, and I got so hungry by 4PM today that I ate my whole dinner and snack before 5.  Hopefully tomorrow will be back to normal.  

I am still figuring all this out, but my guess right now is that if I can keep my focus on my higher eating goals and values, it will be possible to counter any need for eating for emotional reasons.  Basically, I have learned to couple emotional hunger and the comfort of eating and food.  I want to uncouple them, and have physical and emotional hungers separate and to develop a system for keeping both of those hungers satisfied, in the most practical yet highest quality ways I can.  That has worked well for me so far, on the physical side of things.  

One other thing keeps coming up – I have to take better care of my rest and sleep needs.  I’ve let myself get tired and not go to bed on time, night after night.  That’s not good for various reasons.  I wonder if that’s emotional too, or coupled to something else.  I will continue to think about it.  Maybe I can try finding a rewarding way to develop some regular habits.  It will be good for me.

-The Doctor

20200201 Saturday weigh-in

Today is weighing day, and I do that every Saturday.  That is the plan.  Some people weigh daily.  (Mr. Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood weighed himself every day.  So did my one grandfather.)  I find once per week is generally enough.  It shows that the work I did during the rest of the week – counting calories and portioning – was true and accurate, or at least reasonably true and accurate.  This week, I did weigh myself every day in the morning, just because it has been a while since I have seen my weight go down.

Good news!  My weight this morning was 243.6 pounds.

Since I weighed myself several times this week, my only real question going on to the scale this morning was: exactly how much would I have lost?  I knew I had lost more than two pounds from last week’s 246 pounds.  That’s unusual that I know I have lost weight and have a good idea how much – most of the time I get on the scale 7 days from the last time and I never know for sure what’s going to happen.  

Also, I normally make more of a bigger deal out of it if my weight is lower than my previous total, but I know that right now, my weight is higher than my lowest ever.  My lowest ever weight was 237.4 pounds.  So I am happy because it looks like my weight is under control again, but not quite happy all the way, since I will spend February getting back to my lowest ever.  Still, this is very positive news: I am capable of continuing my weight control system.   

Responsibility and relief

In January, while I was agonizing about how to restart the weight control system (I stopped doing it in early December), it was tempting to blame my inability on outside issues: it was winter outside!  Genetically, I was predisposed to gaining weight to last through the winter!  The days were shorter!  Eating more was a natural reaction to the stresses of winter cold and darkness! 

Ultimately, those were not satisfying explanations.  Being on a weight control system, losing weight, and maintaining weight, are difficult.  It is doable but you have to accept it is a values question, rather than an impersonal one.  If you do all the things that dieting people do, you still won’t lose weight over the long term, because you have to force yourself to maintain those behaviors.  Your old values are waiting for you and you will fall back into them the second you stop applying force.  You must adopt new values and one of the top values in your life has to be: I will be in control of my weight.  

I’ve talked before about what living out that value means in many different contexts.  But part of my success has been to recognize that I can’t force or order my body to do the dieting for me.  (Eat less!  Go on a budget!  Stop smoking/drinking etc!  It never works.)  That’s another form of pushing off the responsibility to someone “else”. If my conscious mind wants this and values it, then my conscious mind has to put in the work: all the planning, shopping, cooking, portioning, and balancing I do, is done using the time and energy of my life, and limited amount of consciousness, which takes a lot of effort and discipline.  So I try hard to make it worth my while.  That’s a good trade.  

(I think this is why so many diets work for so many people, at least in the short or middle term.  All the mechanisms work because our bodies work the same way.  The difference is what’s in your mind.)

It’s the same for anything in your life.  If you want it, you have to act it out in your life as if it’s the only thing that matters.  

-The Doctor

20200131 Daily report

Part of my daily job – what I try to accomplish in a day – is to keep a contemporaneous written record of my food intake and calorie count.  I also work to keep my calorie count under 13,300 for the week – that’s less than 1900 per day.  The two are related, but just keeping an accurate count of calories eaten is important.  I am able to do this by keeping my focus on a worthwhile goal.  What is your goal for eating?  I can express mine in two ways:

  1. Maximize the satisfaction and joy from eating your meal
  2. Prepare for the next meal (don’t eat so much that you won’t be hungry next time)

Both are really the same idea – think about it.  If you eat too much for breakfast, you can’t properly enjoy lunch.  Food always tastes best just when you become physically hungry for it.  And if you eat too much breakfast, you won’t enjoy breakfast as much either – after the first serving, you will find (if you pay attention) that you’re not as hungry and the taste is not as vivid, strong, or compelling.  

Out to dinner!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – red beans and rice (200); slice of Spanish tortilla and 1/2 whole wheat wrap with 1 teaspoon mayonnaise (250)

  • 450 calories

Lunch – 2x bratwurst (260); 1/2 whole wheat wrap (50); onions and mustard

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – Pork tacos at Chuy’s Mexican restaurant (600); chips, salsa, and dip (200)

  • 800 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80)

  • 80 calories

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

A good week is a good start

With my eating goals properly set, and my aim as high as I can make it (making control of my body’s weight one of my chief aims in life), it has been a good diet week after several failed weeks.  (Weak weeks?)  At my lowest recorded weight of 237.4 pounds (November 2019) I was sure I was going to keep losing as much weight as I wanted – I was in control.  I had lost over 85 pounds!  It’s strange that two months later, I will have a month of good dieting in front of me to beat that low number.  I weighed 246 pounds last week.

I think a lot of that disruption came from letting my aims wander.  I let other things become more important for a while.  It’s still important self knowledge: I will gain 8-9 pounds in 2 months if I stop making weight control important!  And I tried through most of January to start controlling my weight again, but I couldn’t do it.  I hadn’t figured out the problem.

I went out with a friend for lunch this week – it was her birthday.  We hadn’t seen each other since October.  Her comment – you’ve lost a lot of weight!  That was funny, because the last time she saw me I weighed about the same.  But she clarified that over the last few months, my face had gotten thinner.  That’s interesting.  Body weight is more than just a number, and it might be true that your body continues to change for weeks after you have lost the weight! 

Another friend lost nearly a hundred pounds, recently.  When I saw him, I wondered why his head and body seemed out of proportion (the head seemed too big).  Probably his face has continued to change and he looks much more proportional now.  You’d probably have to keep at your goal weight for quite a while before all the remodeling took place.  I have read discussions on Reddit about your body taking some time to remodel your skin around your middle following weight loss.  I am not looking forward to that!

Controlled weight loss is good enough for now.

-The Doctor

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