20200130 Daily report

Staying with a weight control lifestyle for the long term is a challenge to live up to – for me.  There are people who have learned to do this much earlier in life.  It so happens I have two challenges, and both are long term: (1) lose 120 pounds and find a weight I like, and (2) find a way to stay at that body weight.  I have been doing #1 for a full year now.  I am still not done.  246 pounds (my last recorded weight) is about 40 pounds away from my 120 pound weight loss goal.  When I started, I weighed about 325 pounds.  Luckily #2 has a lot in common with #1.  I can still use most of the weight control strategy and mindset.  Can I do that for a long time?  5 years?  More?  

I must weigh everything, I have no reliable sense of portion size

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – banana (50); pretzels (160); hummus (70)

  • 280 calories

Lunch – Mama Lucia’s stromboli (600)

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 3oz rice (100); 8 ounces New Orleans red beans and andouille (250); guacamole and chips (100)

  • 450 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); milk (100); black bread (300); chocolate almonds (75);

  • 555 calories

Total for the day: 1885 calories (limit 1800)

Adjusting the plan

My plan today was to have a small breakfast, a big restaurant lunch, and a medium dinner.  It didn’t work out quite that way.  For one thing, lunch and dinner were delayed past the usual times.  I find when I am in a severe calorie deficit, mealtimes should be punctual.  My body doesn’t react well to getting too hungry and there is an urge for food security if things are delayed.  Food security, for me, means part of me is convinced it is starving and makes a serious effort to eat all the food I can find.  It takes serious willpower to hold that back.  

A snack is not an ideal solution, but a snack at the right time means at least I don’t go into food security mode.  It’s not the best solution because it’s not a full meal and it’s not as satisfying (it’s not what I planned, or am looking forward to), and also I don’t get the rewarding feeling of having my meal with an empty stomach.  I have really learned to associate that feeling – satisfying an empty stomach that is just getting really hungry – with reward, satisfaction, even joy and exhilaration.  It’s much better than my old way.  Then, I was eating because it was mealtime, and eating until I felt full every time.  I’ve learned to see that as a poor goal and shallow.  

Anyway, tomorrow is a new day when everything can go right.  Enough went right today that I didn’t have any problems.  That’s kind of a success. Tomorrow will be the last day of this week for my food journal andthe first full week of this year I have kept up the weight control lifestyle.  After a few weeks of that, I will belive my head is in the right place at last.

-The Doctor

20200129 Daily report

Staying on a weight control system takes a lot of paying attention.  It becomes routine, so it’s doable, but you have to keep your focus on on it all the time.  Today, I paid attention to my system.  Today is my favorite lunch day: $5 Famous Gyro Wednesday at the Big Greek Cafe.  When you keep your mind right, so your focus is on your highest eating goals, you can use food as a reward.  To use food as a reward, you have to allow yourself to become physically hungry.  Satisfying that hunger with your favorite food is actually exhilarating.  The woman at the cash register in the cafe asked me twice why I was so happy.  

The truth is, I was happy because my mind was in the right place and I had paid attention to my needs and carefully built up to the moment of reward.  I was in calorie deficit but it was worthwhile.  

They folded the wrapper inside out!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – bratwurst (260) and 1/4 whole wheat wrap (25)

  • 285 calories

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

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 1/4 Spanish tortilla (525); mayonnaise (75); ham (100);

  • 700 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); 2x Reese’s peanut butter cups (160)

  • 280 calories

Total for the day: 1865 calories (limit 1800)

Start with your goal

In December, I didn’t try hard to stay with the weight control lifestyle, and it showed – I have gained (at least weighing) almost nine pounds since my lowest weight of 237.4.  I tried several times in January to start again, but couldn’t get it going.  I found myself eating between and after meals.  The hunger I was feeling wasn’t physical, because my eating goals had regressed to an unproductive place. 

About a week ago I decided to change my mind, to enshrine weight control back at the top of my moral hierarchy.  It’s been very fruitful so far, to focus on why I am eating.  When the goal is “full belly” then you gain weight.  When the goal is “be hungry for the next meal” then you have reasons to stop eating.  Then you are not focused on depriving yourself, but rewarding yourself for your work and achieving your goals.  

Reward is the best way.  Losing weight is then incidental; you are just setting up a system of happiness and reward.  That is the only way I have ever found to successfully lose weight.

There is that trade off – you have to pay attention a lot.  And I believe that the thinner you want to be, the more attention you have to put in.  But that’s for another time.

Set yourself up for reward and you can achieve weight control.

-The Doctor

20200128 Daily report

I have been paying attention to what I eat since January, 2019.  So it has been a year.  This is a long term weight control lifestyle, and it’s safe to say this is just the beginning.  There’s no point in doing this and letting all the weight come back.  That is, my old lifestyle (carefree eating and consequent weight gain) will always welcome me back. I won’t even have to think about it.  So living a weight control lifestlye takes discipline.  But I have set it up so that it is rewarding.  I can eat what I like, and that’s a reward.

It took some experimenting to get the onions cooked right

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2x bratwurst (260) and 1/2 whole wheat wrap (100) with onions and mustard

  • 570 calories

Lunch – leftover carbonnade stew (200) pretzels and hummus and cheese (400)

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 12 ounces New Orleans red beans (375); 5 ounces cooked rice (160)

  • 535 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); chocolate (55)

  • 175 calories

Total for the day: 1880 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Three days down

…four days to go, for the week.  I’ve been finding it difficult to keep my goals and values in focus.  I have a lot of practice over the last year thinking productively, so I am making it work, but it feels a little forced.  Hopefully that will change with time.  I didn’t keep records of how I felt during the time when I was just starting the weight control lifestyle.  My blogging only started in April.  I kept records of what I was eating, but not that kind of detail.  It could be that this kind of transition is to be expected.  

The crucial part of the mental change is to promote the value of weight control to the top of my morality, at least as I live it from day to day.  Giving it that kind of attention and putting that much effort into maintaining my vision is essential.  In December and part of January, I had let that slip away and was trying to motivate myself using tools rather than ideas.  That is, I would try to eat the favorite meals and foods that worked for me before, but since my food value had become “find satisfaction in being full,” it din’t help and I would just keep eating.  No, you have to put this right at the top of your daily life and it has to be your most important hobby.  

Once weight control is the king value, it takes much less effort to keep it there.  That helps.  

Today was a swimming day.  I keep wondering if I will get tired of it, but I don’t.  That’s another 600 calories burned, doing something I like.   That’s the best way to keep your weight under control and the best way to work out.  Save your willpower for something else!

-The Doctor

20200127 Daily report

Daily tracking of food intake is the mechanism I use to control my body’s weight.  It’s not a moral imperative that keeps me going.  It’s just a method.  What keeps me going is what I value.  People who stay thin through their adult lives recognize this.  If they see you getting thin, they know you value what they value.  They reach out to you.  Any number of thin people have asked me how I am able to lose weight.  I have had exactly one overweight person ask me about it.  

If you don’t keep track of how much you are eating, you are left with guessing.  Calorie counting is one way to keep track.  Eating an invariant diet is one way.  I know some people use volume based techniques, like a special bowl or cup to measure how much they can eat.  I think people do a fair amount of guessing.  That means people’s weight probably fluctuates a bit.  

My routine is building!

My food intake and calorie count

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

  • 350 calories

Lunch – cheese steak sandwich (500); few french fries (50)

  • 550 calories 

Dinner – 10oz beef carbonnade (600); 2.5 ounces cooked rice (80)

  • 680 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chocolate (115); grilled chicken strips (100)

  • 295 calories

Total for the day: 1875 calories (limit 1800)

More of a struggle than I would like

Wednesdays, I have gyros.  It is starting to look like on Mondays I have cheese steak sandwiches.  Over time, maybe I will develop a rigid routine for every meal, every day!  

Keeping my aim high is currently more work than I would like.  During most of 2019, I had a feeling of exultation, reward, and satisfaction, when I would successfully complete a day or a week of calorie controlled eating.  Right now, I am not feeling that.  Hopefully that will build with time.  I don’t remember it being this hard when I first started.  But so far this week, it has been possible to generally follow my calorie restrictions.  That is hopeful.

I was reading Scott Adams’ new book Loserthink.  He makes the point that your hierarchy of values should start close to you and then move outward in importance.  You, your family, your house, your home, your work, your country, your world, and your universe.  You have to take care of yourself first so that taking care of the rest is possible.  It’s a useful way to think.

That’s another moral imperative, then.  Take care of yourself!

-The Doctor

20190126 Daily report

Keep you aim high!  My aim is to have and achieve a proper and worthwhile goal of eating.  To the question of “why do you eat?” I want to answer that I am preparing for the next meal.  That means I can’t eat too much at this meal.  I am thinking ahead while eating a controlled portion now. 

Eating an excess of food will ruin the next meal.  It will ruin it because (a) eating too many calories means I won’t be in control of my body’s weight and (b) food tastes best when you are getting physically hungry.  If I’m not getting properly hungry for dinner, it’s not enjoyable or rewarding. It’s no good getting too hungry, you won’t enjoy what you’re eating then, either.  There is a balance of hunger.  When you are just hungry enough, then your favorite food will be most rewarding.  

This is nearly a pound of red beans and rice

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – red lentil stew with rice (300)

  • 300 calories

Lunch – ham (150); and Swiss cheese (100); on toast (150); with pickles, mustard, and horseradish (25);

  • 425 calories 

Dinner – 16 ounces red beans and andouille (500); 5oz cooked rice (160); black bread and butter (200); salami (110);

  • 970 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); 

  • 120 calories

Total for the day: 1815 calories (limit 1800)

Today worked

Keeping my eating goal in mind, I set myself up for a larger dinner today.  I had a frugal breakfast and lunch, and I was very, very ready to eat dinner.  The red beans and rice wasn’t quite ready at dinnertime either, so I had some black bread and butter and some salami I keep around for this exact reason.  But it was bad planning, since I was a bit too hungry by the time dinner was finally ready, snack or no snack.  When I am living close to the margin of hunger, I find I have to pay a lot attention to eating on time.  

Getting my head right is still my main focus.  While I liked the way I felt while my food intake was under control and I was losing weight, that’s not enough to keep me going.  What keeps me going is my life values.  My top value isn’t to be thin.  It’s to achieve weight control.  Once I am in control, I can pick the weight I like.  One of Terry Pratchett’s characters (a policeman) said that while no policeman was the law, the law was the policeman’s alarm clock.  That’s exactly right, it’s what animates you and gets you out of bed in the morning.  One of my grandfathers was famous for his top value – not being cheated.  When he got out of bed in the morning, you could imagine him saying “who’s going to try to cheat me today?”  And he spent a lot of his time and energy coming up with ways to keep people from taking advantage of him.  

Weight control won’t be my top value forever, but it will have to be in the top 3 to be effective.

-The Doctor

20200125 Saturday weigh-in

Part of the deal – if you are serious about controlling your weight – is to keep regular track of how much your body weighs.  I weigh myself every Saturday.  During most of the last two months, I have been avoiding doing that.  I was keeping track of how much I was eating, but not very carefully.  As I said yesterday, my mind has not been in the right place.

The fruits of all that are now ready.  

I weighed 246 pounds today.  The lowest I weighed, in November 2019, was 237.4.  Two weeks ago I weighed 245.4.  Beyond that, I have not taken my weight since November 30, 2019.  

Heading in the wrong direction

The last two weeks, while I have been trying to get myself back into a productive way of thinking, I’ve been paying attention to the way my clothes fit.  I feel like they are noticeably tighter.  This is probably a great way for people (who are paying attention) to notice weight gain.  You don’t need a scale!  Just go clothes shopping for your size.  (The problem with the clothes you already have, is that they might stretch and give you the idea that everything is ok.)

I calculate I might have gained as much as 9 pounds since my lowest weighing.  It’s hard to tell because I’ve had a couple of bad dieting days this week – that always inflates the number.  The increase fits with my observation that my clothes feel tighter.

This week my job is to make sure I am aiming high in my goal of eating.  I’ve had a couple of good days, and I am re-committed now to weighing every week.  My goal for eating, again, is to make sure I am hungry for my next meal.  In return, I commit to myself that the food will be worth the wait.  

Get your mind right and the rest will follow.

-The Doctor

20200124 Daily report

When trying to control your weight, almost everything flows from your mentality, your psychology.  What is your reason for eating?  If you can answer that question, you are a long way towards understanding your own psychology of eating.  My desired answer to that question is, “I am eating so that I can be properly hungry for my next meal.”  When I was gaining weight, the answer was “I am eating enough so that I get the comfort of feeling full.”  In both cases, the answer was the same.  “I am eating until I feel satisfied.” So the key component is, what would satisfy you? Are you aiming high or low?

Recently my head has been in the wrong place.  When I started asking myself why I was eating this month, the answer was back to “I am eating for the comfort of feeling full, but not too full.”  It was the worst of both worlds.  My goal was low (full belly) and I wasn’t meeting it all the way (not too full!).  That’s terrible.  Eating the same controlled amounts of the foods I found satisfying in 2019 – with a higher goal of eating – didn’t satisfy me when my goal was the feeling of a full stomach.  

Satisfaction is mental. This is a pizza. Don't confuse them.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wraps (400)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – red lentil stew and rice (350)

  • 350 calories 

Dinner – Aldi pizza half (585); extra pizza (100); 

  • 685 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); Reese’s peanut butter cups (160)

  • 240 calories

Total for the day: 1715 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

It's Your Head, You Fix It

Nobody will fix your weight (or your head) for you.  But it is possible to figure out where your head is.  Just answer the question – what is the goal of your eating?  Why do you stop?  Why do you start?  For some people, eating is routine and by the clock.  For others, hunger calls them.  But when you are gaining weight, you often are eating just because you have room, because the goal is an emotion rather than physical hunger.  

Pay attention to your physical, rather than emotional, hunger.  Try to aim high in your goal of eating.  What is a high goal?  Quality over quantity, and increasing the joy and satisfaction that comes from eating a food that you are really looking forward to.  You increase that joy and satisfaction by being prepared, by letting yourself get hungry for it at just the right time.  You have to pay attention to your body.  When your head is in the right place, you get real joy from eating a controlled quantity of your favorite food, at just the right time. 

When your head is in the wrong place, you will eat an entire package of your favorite food.  It starts to all taste the same after the first serving, though.  And where’s the satisfaction in that?  

-The Doctor

20200123 Daily report

One of the keys to losing weight is obsession.  Yes, obsession can be good.  I think of it like a hobby you are really dedicated to: putting a lot of energy into paying attention to what you are eating, and recording it in your journal.  When it gets to feel like a chore, and not a hobby you are excited about, you know your mind is not in the right place.  When you are doing it right, it’s not like work at all.  It’s fulfilling!

Always excited for bacon!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wraps (400); extra bacon (70)

  • 470 calories

Lunch – chocolate, cherry, pecan, oatmeal cookie (300); macaroni cheese (100); lentil curry (150); rye bread (150);

  • 700 calories 

Dinner – 9 ounces Carbonnade a la Flamande (440); 5oz rice (160)

  • 600 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chocolate almonds (150)

  • 230 calories

Total for the day: 2000 calories (limit 1800)

About those 2000 calories

Today has not been a total success in terms of weight control.  But then, I’m sure my head is not in the right place.  By that, I mean I am not looking at the world in a way that helps me reach my goals.  I’ve fallen into a place I don’t recognize.  I don’t know exactly what my goal of eating is at this moment.  It’s not to control my intake or my weight!  When I was gaining weight, I wanted to feel full.  Now I want ????  I’m not sure where my search for satisfaction is leading me, but it’s not productive.  

I will have to think about it.  Or else change my mind.  That worked once before.  

-The Doctor

20200121 Daily report

No pictures today!  That’s partly because late last night I had a thousand calories.  Tsk, tsk.  So my appetite was affected today.  That’s something I am working on.  My plan going forward is to wind down earlier in the evening and go to bed on time.  That will prevent a lot of late night eating.  Eating late at night has been a long term problem for me.  For most of 2019, I managed to keep it to a minimum.  

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – skipped 

  • 0 calories

Lunch – ham (100); bread (250); chips (150)

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – pretzels and hummus (300); lentils and rice (200)

  • 500 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (160); chocolate almonds (100); chicken (100); cheese (150); cottage cheese (50); banana and mandarin oranges (100)

  • 660 calories

Total for the day: 1660 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

It will all average out; have faith

One thing I learned from the last year is not to make up for a bad diet day by starving (punishing) myself the next day. That’s two days ruined.  Instead, I try to make the next day and every day afterwards perfect.  The bad day will average out over time.  If the vast majority of your days go well calorie-wise, you will still be in control of your body, mostly and effectively.  

But what I wanted to talk about today was exercise.  Recall that I have been swimming twice a week for several years.  When I lost significant weight in 2019, I was surprised that my lap times didn’t seem to decrease.  Somehow I thought it would go faster, since I was pulling less weight through the water.  At the same time, I worried I would burn fewer calories since I had less weight to work with!  

Strangely, this year (2020), my lap times have decreased by several seconds.  I think my body is starting to catch up with being a little lighter.  That’s one explanation.  I’ve also been working on improving my strokes, which is another explanation.  They’re related.  Since I lost some weight, it’s easier on my legs and wrists to swim and so I have been able to concentrate on swimming efficiency rather than just avoiding discomfort.  Also, my breathing is easier while exercising.  That might be due to the weight loss.  Halfway through my workout I took my pulse and it was around 80bpm.  That’s not bad for an exercising heart rate.  

I am a little worried about not getting back on my weight control diet yet.  What am I missing?  How can I get myself focused, or interested, motivated, or sufficiently rewarded?  I will have to give it some more thought.

-The Doctor

20200120 Daily report

The Doctor is trying to cheerfully return to his former weight control diet glory!  And there is a lot of trying involved.  So far, it has been a mixed bag of some days on, then some days not going so well.  In 2020, I haven’t had one solid week of good weight control.  And I really don’t want to gain weight back.  So even though things are not going as consistently well as I would like, I am very interested in keeping on writing down everything I am eating and a calorie count.  

To entice myself back into good habits, I made cookies this weekend.  

a chocolate, cherry, pecan, and oatmeal cookie is 300 calories!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Costco pepperoni pizza (355)

  • 355 calories

Lunch – Costco cheese pizza  (375)

  • 375 calories 

Dinner – chicken wraps  with hummus (450); chocolate (210); chocolate, cherry, pecan, and oatmeal chocolate (300);

  • 960 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); bread (150); rice and red lentils (80)

  • 310 calories

Total for the day: 2000 calories (limit 1850)

Starting and stopping

So I am not having much success dieting consistently right now.  Obviously it’s better when things are going more smoothly, rather than on-and-off again.  I have several possible explanations why I am having so much trouble.

  1. All the work I did last year had an emotional and maybe physical toll.  Maybe I needed a break from all the careful dieting.
  2. I am not feeling well.  That always makes it difficult to diet.  I had all the classic symptoms: weight gain, sudden hunger, craving for carbohydrates, intestinal problems.  
  3. Seasonal/daylight.  It’s possible I am having some kind of reaction to the winter weather and short days.  I seem to need more sleep than usual, find it hard to get up in the mornings.
  4. The weight control method requires a lot in your life to be stable so you can concentrate on the weight control side.  It’s not automatic.  I am having to pay a lot more attention to work and family over the last few months, so I have limited energy and attention for weight control.
  5. I’ve gotten a bit lazy or arrogant and have gotten disconnected from what I need to be successful at controlling my food intake.  

These aren’t mutually exclusive explanations.  The solution to almost all of these, though, is to keep trying.  I have gotten into a bad place mentally – I didn’t even weigh myself Saturday.  My excuse, that I was sick, was also an expression of worry that I wouldn’t like the number on the scale.  Things can have more than one explanation.  

So: just keep trying?  This is a short week (Monday was a federal holiday and I didn’t work).  I can try being really careful about going to bed on time and getting up on time, getting a lot of rest.  I can make sure all the foods I will want are in the house and ready.  I can (and have) plan all the meals for the week.  Of course, I tried to do these things last week, too.  But I will just have to keep trying.  I have no better plan.  The danger is that I will get tired of all the unrequited effort on the days I am successful, ruined by a couple days of slackness.  It is then you are in danger of quitting the entire thing.

Weight loss and weight control are for your whole life and have to be paid attention to all the time.  Don’t let yourself get discouraged!  

-The Doctor

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