20191119 Daily report

Staying with your weight control lifestyle in the long term is not always possible.  I read often about people who adopt extreme-sounding lifestyles.  People are clearly very motivated to try and control their weight, based on what they are willing to try.  One man said that he had good results on a low carb lifestyle and was planning to stay on it long term.  I tried that, living on 30 grams of carbs per day.  That’s the equivalent of an English muffin.  And a low carb diet isn’t magic.  You can eat enough low carb foods to maintain overweight or even gain weight.  I lost 30 pounds on a low carb diet.  But it didn’t work for me in the long term.  Why?

It wasn’t very satisfying, for one thing.  That means you get tired of it.  It starts to take more effort to stay on.  After a while, it’s not worth the effort.  But for losing up to 30 pounds short term, and not having to change anything else about yourself, a low carb diet is hard to beat.  How many people are willing to do it forever?  

My own invention. I think.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wraps with 3 slices bacon (210); 3/4 whole wheat wrap (80); lettuce, tomato and horseradish (25);

  • 315 calories

Lunch – 6 Kirkland meatballs (250); 2T hummus (80); whole wheat wrap (110); red cabbage, pickles, and horseradish (20);

  • 460 calories 

Dinner – 2 chicken enchiladas (450); sour cream (60);

  • 510 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); pretzels (260); ham (100); chocolate almonds (100);

  • 580 calories

Total for the day: 1865 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Discovery and Recovery

I am slowly recovering from a low grade stomach flu.  That’s my explanation for the last two weeks!  I lost my appetite for my usual foods, and started eating a lot of simple carbohydrates – out of control.  I also felt cold (it has been cold outside, but inside??) and needed more sleep than usual.  It took me a while to figure out that I must be sick, since there weren’t many obvious symptoms.  My first clue is that my weight went up two weeks ago – very unusual.  An issue of fluid retention shows up in my food journal almost every time I get sick.  (I also had some stomach issues but nothing that seemed serious at the time.)  

I’ve said this before, but how many people’s “plateaus” in their weight loss might be due to intestinal issues?  Looking through my records I have been sick 6 times since January, and several times it lasted 2 weeks or more.  During those times I didn’t lose weight, but quickly started losing again once the illness was over.  

Last week I didn’t even try to do more than keep a vague track of my calorie count.  My eating behavior was too erratic and the result to unsatisfying for me to keep it up.  The lethargy of feeling ill probably didn’t help.  Since Monday, I have been able to recover my lifestyle somewhat.  My appetite still isn’t back to normal but I’m not eating 3000+ calories a day, either.  I was doing that late last week, though it’s only an estimate.  It might have been higher!

I’m very lucky that I have been able to spend the whole last year devoted to my weight control lifestyle and working out a system for doing it.  The major weight loss portion is still going on and will be for months, yet.  My initial goal was 215 pounds, and my last pre-sick weight was 237 pounds.  That’s only 22 away from that goal (losing 120 pounds).  We’ll see what happens when I get there.  I might decide to lose more.  Anyway, I don’t have any bad feelings about this pause in my weight loss.  I am grateful that it has worked so well, so far.  I have a way to keep going, and a history to build on.

-The Doctor

20191118 Daily report

One of the underpinnings of the weight control system as I practice it, is that it’s attractive in multiple ways.  I want to live that way, for all the rewards it gives me.  Controlling my body’s weight is merely one of the attractions.  I have talked before about the amount of fulfillment and satisfaction I get from working hard to meet my own needs and desires.  And I am meeting them in a way that is very practical and also very high quality.  This lifestyle is the best I have ever lived.  It makes my old choices seem cheap; as they were focused on quantity and immediate fulfillment.  

Now I think about quality.  How could I raise everything about my practical life – like eating – to a higher quality?  One answer is to change the goal of eating and focus on the quality of the experience.  

Steak and Cheese sandwich from the cafe

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Jimmy Dean sausage, egg, and cheese croissantwich (400)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – Steak and cheese sandwich (500); 

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – 10 ounces Hopping John (270); 5oz cooked rice (160)

  • 430 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); pretzels (100); Perdue chicken strips (90); Hershey’s bar (220);

  • 490 calories

Total for the day: 1820 calories (limit 1800)

I'm back, baby

I haven’t posted for a few days, because I haven’t been in control and haven’t had a lot of energy to spare.  Some kind of intestinal bug got me.  That has some strong effects on my lifestyle. 

One of the most important discoveries I have made in the course of losing ~85 pounds, is that if your lifestyle is attractive, you will pursue it hard.  You won’t need willpower to stay on a diet or maintain your system, at least not in the negative sense of forcing yourself to diet.  However, if that lifestyle suddenly loses its attraction, it removes all the motivation.  When I got sick, my usual foods lost their attraction and I found myself grazing in uncontrolled ways, at every kind of simple carbohydrate-based food I own.  

I’m willing to call that an aberration.  I had a strong desire to eat lots of calories, and lots of simple carb calories at that.  There’s no way to pursue a lifestyle based on those goals, not if you want to control your weight, anyway.  And it was not particularly enjoyable.  My body has gotten used to the cycle of (positive) hunger and satisfaction, and feeding my higher needs and goals with controlled quantities of high quality meals.  Instead, I was eating out of some kind of instinctual need (or some kind of chemical imbalance, frightening thought).  

But the feeling did not last.  Sunday and today, I didn’t want to eat a lot of food anymore.  However, my normal appetite hasn’t really returned.  I think I am getting better, but I am not all the way there, yet.  Once I am back to normal, I will start working my system again.  I’ve had this happen several times this last year due to illness.  Each time, I agonize a bit over whether I will be able to re-establish my successful weight control lifestyle.  And every time, I have happily put it back together again.  It does take discipline, but not force.  

Find a way to make what you want attractive.  That works.

-The Doctor

20191114 Daily report

The weight control lifestyle is all about finding a way to control your weight, that is worth living as a lifestyle.  If it’s not worth living, then you are forcing yourself to lose weight.  That doesn’t work in the long term. Can you force yourself to do anything for your whole life?  You won’t have any willpower left for anything else!

Being thin doesn’t make you a better person, or even a good person.  You can be a shallow person and keep thin.  It’s best to concentrate on a worthy lifestyle that you can be proud of.  Controlling your weight can be a side benefit of that.  Isn’t that a good ideal?

My food intake and calorie count

Total for the day: 2700 calories 

The waiting game

I finally figured out why I was cold, oddly hungry, sleepy, and having intestinal issues.  I’ve picked up some bad germ!  I’ve never been so relieved to be sick before. That means that yesterday, when I said it was strange to feel full, it was really just a strange intestinal feeling, apart from being full.  I should have guessed that I was getting sick on Saturday, when my weight was up 2 pounds.  That’s very unusual.  

According to my food journal, this kind of thing has lasted as much as a week, or more.  There’s not much I can do about it.  I will keep track of what I am eating but not try to control it, until I don’t have to use force.  It’s also in my notes that when this happens, my appetite for simple carbohydrates like bread, chocolate, rice, and noodles, is very high.  Meat and protein are oddly unsatisfying.  

With any luck I can get to bed early and have a good night’s sleep.  That’s another thing – I have had trouble getting out of bed all week.  Why didn’t I notice this sooner???

-The Doctor

20191113 Daily report

At the most practical level, a weight control lifestyle is lived one meal at a time.  However, it is convenient to set a daily calorie limit rather than limit that by the meal.  And the standard for losing a pound of weight from your body is to be in deficit 3500 calories per week.  I am also a proponent of weighing yourself once per week.  So the individual meal, day, and week are all important.  One way to keep all of that straight is with a food journal.  Mine is a spreadsheet, with columns for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack.  I also have a comment column where I keep track of exercise and illness and related matters, and finally a weight column where I enter my weekly body weight every Saturday.  It takes work, but I know exactly how many calories I am eating and I have learned a lot about myself and what my body and subconscious mind need to cooperate!  But there is always more to learn.

You'd think warm chili would do the trick on a cold day.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Perdue chicken strips (100)

  • 100 calories

Lunch – Daycvare annual thanksgiving meal: turkey, ham, mac and cheese, sausage stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans. Estimate: 500 calories

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – chili and bread (350); ham (100); cookies (150); chocolate almonds (160); ice cream (210); Costco pepperoni pizza half slice (355);

  • 1200 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (160); ddd (00)

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1960 calories (limit 1800)

Primal urge

My theory right now is that the cold weather we are having in early November is pressing some kind of behavior button in my subconscious.  I am just feeling a need to eat at odd times, and I am eating large amounts!  I am not in control of my eating, though I am making a food effort to keep records of everything I do eat.  I hope this freakout ends soon, I don’t know what to make of it.  It is strange to feel full now, after months and months of living close to the deficit.  I used to live like this all the time, and now it feels strange.  

When I started my weight control plan in January, I did notice in the first few months that if I got particularly chilled or cold, I would have a bad diet day.  But I didn’t pay much attention to addressing that problem as it was getting warmer all the time.  So I have no real plan now and have to figure this out in the next week.  I am sure that my next weighing on Saturday won’t be good, just because my food journal says I am not in control.  Normally this kind of thing means I am being stubborn and punishing towards myself, resulting in a bad day or days, and I write the week off and try to do better next time.  But what do I do when faced with an internal insurrection like this?

I could try staying warm – lots of socks and sweaters.

I could try a change in meal scheduling, eating meals earlier or combining meals into a mega lunch or a large breakfast and dinner while skipping lunch.  My behavior during the cold weather is definitely towards eating a large amount in one sitting.  Today, I had lunch at noon, a healthy lunch of 500 calories, and then found myself eating an enormous meal of 1200 calories at 3PM.

Luckily the really cold weather ends tonight and tomorrow and next week it is more seasonal.  That may make the problem easier for now.  I will continue to think about it.

Pay attention to your needs and use self knowledge to figure out the best way to keep your aim high.

-The Doctor

20191112 Daily report

Day by day, the job is the same: regulate your food intake and weigh yourself regularly.  Those two elements are required for a weight control lifestyle.  If you know what and how much you are eating, you can control intake.  If you weigh your body regularly, you have data showing how your body changes over time in response to changes in your intake.  

We are not simply machines that we can program to do what we are told.  I can’t even get myself to do what I want!  So you have to look deeper into yourself to find a way to keep up regulating your food intake and weighing yourself all the time.  I have been doing it since January 1, 2019 and I have 315 entries in my daily food journal since that time.  I have never been able to do that before, in my life.  So what changed?

I decided to aim high.  I don’t have the willpower to make myself do things I don’t want for more than a few weeks.  But I can do things I want to do – that hardly takes any willpower.  So I had to make weight control into a lifestyle that was worth living.  But how to find that kind of meaning? 

One of my more inspired creations

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Costco pepperoni pizza half slice (355)

  • 355 calories

Lunch – 6x Costco meatballs (280); whole wheat flatbread (110); hummus (100), red cabbage kraut and horseradish (10)

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – 8oz homemade sausage chili (340); toasted bread (130)

  • 470 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 2oz ham and 2 pieces swiss cheese (200); 11 chocolate almonds (160); baklava (100);

  • 540 calories

Total for the day: 1865 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

McNuggets featurette!

Continuing from above, part of the problem I found in myself was my goals were shallow and limiting.  They fueled weight gain.  In short, my goal was to feel full and that is what made me feel comfortable and secure.  To find more meaning in my life, I decided that my goal should be replaced.  The goal now has several facets, but on one level my goal when eating is weight control.  My goal is also maximum enjoyment.  That means I build up anticipation for foods I strongly want to eat, and eat measured amounts when I am physically hungry for them (but not too hungry).  My goal when eating is also to not ruin the next meal.  Every meal has to be rewarding.  So I can’t eat too much at any one meal.  I find if I’m not slightly hungry for the next meal, food is not as satisfying.  

Honestly, food tastes best when you have an appetite for it – when you are truly and physically slightly hungry.  If you let yourself get too hungry, which is a different story, you won’t enjoy food either.  You also won’t be in control of yourself after that.  Part of your subconscious takes over, and it wants to eat and eat.  

Another facet of my eating goals is to reward myself constantly.  Every meal has to be planned, anticipated, savored, and worthwhile.  Else why go to all the trouble?  I find my body is willing to trade unlimited calories (and the resulting weight gain) for food experience.  That is, just the foods I want, delivered right at the moment when I would appreciate them most.  That is very satisfying.  

From the Instapundit I found another weight loss story that was very interesting.  This lady found a lifestyle that worked for her, though I think the reporter got it a bit wrong.  The first line is the problem.  This is the reporter’s summary:

Dieting doesn’t mean giving up your favorite food (but it does mean having a lot less of it).

Isn’t that backwards?  Leaving aside my problems with the concept of dieting, weight control is all about identifying your favorite foods and using them to reward yourself.  It’s definitely not giving up your favorite foods.  Who would want to live for a long time while giving up your favorite foods, or even regarding them as a problem?  But that is the reporter’s mindset.  The subject of the article has it figured out!

”I could eat a 20-piece chicken McNugget box and large fries by myself,” she explained to the news outlet. It was basically gluttony, just eating and eating…Food was my coping mechanism, so whenever I got upset about something I would just eat.”

This is what many have called emotional eating.  When I talk about being physically hungry, it is very different from eating for the goal of comfort and fullness.  Anyway, this lady has figured out a lot about herself.  The article doesn’t go into these details, but it is clear that she counts calories now.  She lost 100 pounds and plans to lose even a bit more.  The news hook is that she still eats at McDonalds, which is so amazing to the reporter.  Or at least, the reporter thinks that’s what people will find amusing.  It’s terrible to think that for most people, controlling your weight is all about deprivation and suffering.  Is the subject of the article suffering while she is losing weight?

 “I still find pleasure in my food, it’s my main thing.”

I have a good feeling about her long term success.  All the best to her!

-The Doctor

20191111 Daily report

In its essentials, a weight control lifestyle is about living in such a way that every food decision you make is interpreted through a single viewpoint: how will eating this affect my weight?  It does take dedication to do this.  That is the price of weight control – vigilance, attention, and time are required to make the weight control lifestyle attractive and interesting enough to be worth living.  

It is not all price.  Nobody would want to live that way.  That’s where ordinary diets fail.  To lose 120 pounds, like I am trying to do, a willpower-based diet of forcing yourself to eat less would never work.  If by a miracle of character you pulled it off, how would you live afterwards?  You might gain it all back the moment you stopped paying attention.  In a way, the old you, who was gaining weight, takes back over.  That’s why you need a new life and why it has to be a new you that is living it.  This is for life, or the long term, anyway.  

Hopping John is usually for the new year, but a new you will do.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 1C steel cut oats prepared in milk  (250); scant 1tsp brown sugar (20);

  • 270 calories

Lunch – Costco pepperoni pizza (710);

  • 710 calories 

Dinner – 13.5 oz vegetable curry (350); 5oz cooked rice (160);

  • 510 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); pretzels, hummus and cheese (250)

  • 330 calories

Total for the day: 1820 calories (limit 1800)

An attractive lifestyle is a draw

If you are on an attractive lifestyle, you will constantly trying to get it to work, and to stay on it.  It doesn’t directly take willpower to do that, because it is what you want.  Part of the attraction for me is that each meal is maximally rewarding, in my ideal life.  I make the food myself (mostly).  I have a good idea of what foods I would find rewarding.  Another part of the reward is the anticipation.  There is an emotional buildup when you plan for a meal, buy and cook the food, and prepare yourself to eat – that is, work up an appetite.  It’s very fulfilling and rewarding to eat a food you really want, prepared to perfection, and just when you are getting hungry for it.  This sequence allows you to control you intake, too, because you have to be careful not to eat too much.  That reduces the enjoyment of the meal, and prevents you from getting properly hungry to enjoy the next meal.  

Other people have different ways of controlling their food intake.  They might eat the same thing all the time, or prepare all their food on the weekends, portion it then and eat it later.  But the way I am describing is very fulfilling.  Some people don’t need that.  There are some thin people who don’t have a strong interest in food and don’t care what they eat, so long as they stay thin.  But what I value right now is maximum enjoyment.  I can get enthusiastic about that.  

And isn’t that the true secret of finding a fulfilling lifestyle?  Some people are fulfilled by keeping fit, or at least thin.  Others are fulfilled by enjoying food.  I have found that you can have both fulfillment/food enjoyment and weight control, but that weight control has to be first in your mind and in your life.  It’s not possible to do it the other way around. 

Where do you find your enthusiasm?  If you are significantly overweight (50+ pounds) and gaining weight, you are probably not as enthused by getting thin as you might hope.  It’s time to ask yourself: what do you get out of eating?  I was getting pleasure and comfort from eating, which turned out to be shallow and non worthwhile goals once I thought about them in those terms.  But I get very enthusiastic and excited about preparing food and eating foods I find enjoyable.  My goal of eating changed.  The goal before was being full and enjoying eating (quantity).  Now I pursue maximum (quality) enjoyment and fulfillment, which is better and more responsible.  It allows me to control my weight, too.  

What is your goal of eating?  A thin person’s goal is to stay thin.  I appreciate that goal, but I don’t find it very meaningful by itself.  

-The Doctor

20191110 Daily report

Thank goodness for the ability to live life on two levels.  One level is day by day.  The other level is long term: week by week, month by month, year by year.  I have been living a weight control lifestyle for nearly 11 months, and I have been totally committed and dedicated to he goal.  It shows, but there has been a price (which I have been willing to pay).  The price is that everything else comes second.  

Now I am trying to find a new balance, and it is demanding.  Work, family, career, hobbies, and other things have all been neglected correspondingly and need energy and attention.  Luckily, I have 11 months of knowledge and data to help me do this.  What have I learned?  First, I am willing to eat less food if every meal is a reward.

My idea of a good time: bratwurst

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – steel cut oats (100)

  • 100 calories

Lunch – 2x bratwurst (260); 1/2 whole wheat wrap (55); onions and mustard

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 10oz Hopping John (240); 5oz cooked rice (160)

  • 400 calories

Snacking – Baklava and cookies (300); tea with half and half (80); more cookies and candy (500); chocolate almonds (160); cheese and pretzels (300);

  • 1340 calories

Total for the day: 2440 calories (limit 1800)

Time of change

For some reason I don’t yet understand, the last two days I have been more out-of-control than usual.  My mealtimes have been all over the place, I have not paid attention to the cycle of anticipation and reward, and my calorie counts and eating habits over the last two days have been way off.  Thank goodness that tomorrow is a new day.  I don’t try to eat fewer calories tomorrow to make up for eating more today.  That has never worked.  But tomorrow can be a new day where I get it right.  And next week can likewise be a good week. 

Tonight, I need some rest.  Tomorrow, after all, is a new day.  

-The Doctor

20191109 Saturday weigh-in

Every week, on Saturday, I weigh myself.  This act is so important to weight control that I get my whole family to participate.  If you don’t know how much you weigh, and in what direction you are going, it will be hard to lose weight over a long term period, or control your weight for an even longer period (the rest of your life).  It is also important to learn how your eating affects your weight in subtler ways.  For example: how many calories per day, and per week, can you have and lose weight?  Stay the same?  Gain?  That kind of self knowledge comes from weighing.  What else can cause weight gain?  Illness?  A large meal the night before you weigh yourself?  

On another level, counting calories and keeping a food journal only goes so far.  The proof is your body’s weight.

No picture day; clothes shopping

Sadly, the Doctor did not lose weight this week.  In fact, my weight went up to 239.4, which is very unlikely.  I hope I’m not getting sick.  I did have a very large Indian buffet lunch Thursday, and I have been hitting the candy and cookies hard due to the cold weather (or that’s what I’m telling myself, anyway).  

But looking through my food journal I can see half a dozen periods in the last year where I didn’t lose, or else gained weight.  It’s almost always illness related, though not always.  Since the weight control lifestyle is attractive and I find it fulfilling, it’s easy to keep going even in the face of a week of gaining weight.  Every other time it’s happened, I have always started losing again 1-2 weeks later.  It’s not too disheartaning either, as the long term trend is good.

Weighing yourself is important, but it is only one way to look at your body’s condition.  No matter how much weight you have lost, going clothes shopping is another great way to measure your body and see where you really are.  The sizes don’t lie (much), there are mirrors everywhere, and you have to be really realistic about what fits you and how.  The clothes and mirrors don’t care that you have lost 80 pounds.  They only can hang on your body now.  

In dress shirts, I was able to fit  nicely into a 17″ neck, but the sleeve length was crucial.  I was up to 18 or 18 1/2 neck size when I weighed over 300 pounds.  In winter coats, 2XL was a better fit than anything else, but slightly large on me now.  I could fit into XL, but it was slightly tight.   My old winter coat was 3XL.  And in suit and sport coats, I was between 46L and 48L (closer to 46).  I know that my waist is taking size 44 pants comfortably.  Size 46 pants are rather big on me now. 

The reality, though, is that I am roughly 40 pounds heavier than I should be (looking at the weight charts online).  The size and fit of the clothes on my body reflect that.  I will know that I have reached a good weight, I think, when I am in size 38 pants and they are comfortable.  I’m not sure how coat size and shirt size will change.  I am between sizes right now.  

I will try to make sure next week is a good week.  The better I live, the better I like controlling my weight.

-The Doctor

20191108 Daily report

Thank goodness that the weight control lifestyle is a long game.  If I was focused on short term ups and downs I’m not sure I could lose weight successsfully.  I have had weeks where I controlled eating well but didn’t lose much weight, and a few times I have had bad days but still lost weight overall.  Of course, I have learned a lot about myself in the last 10 1/2 months, which explains some of the ups and downs.

It’s a long game because if you have a bad day, or a bad week, you can try again next time.  Eventually, enough goes right so that you lose weight.  Keeping off the weight you have lost is actually easier in some respects.  Losing weight is a careful balance and it is somewhat difficult and stressful to be in calorie deficit.  It’s also a long game because it’s self reinforcing.  The weight control lifestly is very rewarding and living it is attractive.  

Last, I have learned that most of the time, having a bad diet day or week is entirely my fault.  That kind of self knowledge comes slowly and learning to apply it even slower.  It’s a long game too.  But the reward is a better life, plus you control your weight better, too.  Part of a better life is learning what foods are your favorites that you can look forward to.

Prepare to assemble the BLT!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wrap (220); chicken sandwich wrap (180)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – chicken fajitas (500); baklava (200);

  • 700 calories 

Dinner – meatball, hummus, red cabbage slaw, and pickle wraps (500)

  • 500 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); chocolate almonds (160)

  • 240 calories

Total for the day: 1840 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

The season has found his overcoat of wind, cold, and rain

This week it was really cold for the first time.  I know what that means!  Because I keep careful records and a food journal, I know that when it is cold outside I feel a need for food.  Maybe I’m actually hungry, maybe it’s comforting, maybe there is some primal move towards making sure you have enough food when the weather really starts to get cold for the winter.   I’m not going to question it.  I just know that it is coming.

Today, I had breakfast and lunch both in the morning, and I was very, very hungry for lunch – before 11AM.  I was also hungry for dinner, but that doesn’t mean much – it was dinner time, and I exercised today.  

I have said before how surprising it is that I don’t feel a lot of change in my body, considering I have lost a fair amount of weight.  My exercise of choice is swimming, and it’s not like losing 87 pounds has increased my lap times.  The difference is more subtle.  I also haven’t noticed that it is much easier to walk, stand up, or go up stairs.  I have noticed that I am a bit smaller when it comes to squeezing through small spaces.  I can fit into smaller clothes, and am within range of buying clothes for average-weight people.  As for that, I am finding my size 46 pants too big, and size 44 just right.  I bought a new swimsuit, and it was 2X, down from 3X size.  

So what I have I noticed in terms of physical change?  It used to be that swimming was harder on me.  When I was done, my wrists would be sore, or my legs would get injured more easily when I pushed away from the wall of the pool.  Now, I don’t get that.  I can do my swimming and not feel any aches.  Also, I feel more bouncy when I walk.  But I think your body adjusts quickly to change.  Maybe the effects will get more drastic and noticeable when I am merely 20 pounds overweight, instead of 40.  And won’t that be a strange feeling?

Recently, other people have started noticing that I have lost weight.  About 20 people have mentioned it to me directly in the last few weeks.  And every one of them has also asked what I did differently, and almost all of them have a theory!  One neighbor just asked me today if I had increased my exercising schedule to lose weight.  I love people’s theories of weight loss, it tells you all about how they approach the problem themselves.  They are looking for common ground with you.

At a lunch for my work group this week, people asked and then the group expressed a lot of support.  They are nice people, and most of them are average weight to thin.  When they asked what I was doing differently, I started off talking about my lack of willpower.  That method of explaining weight control does seem to flow well.  Based on that, they seemed to follow how I constructed an attractive lifestyle based on rewarding myself for eating controlled amounts.  If you are doing that, willpower is not such an expense as on a regular diet.  Of course, that lunch was at the Indian buffet and I didn’t show a lot of restraint after I talked about eating less!  I have decided, though, that the Indian buffet lunch was my reward for getting under 240 pounds.  I like rewards.   The next one is 230 pounds.  After that is quite a special one – 225 pounds.  When I weight less than 225 pounds, I will have lost 100 pounds.

First things first.

-The Doctor

20191107 Daily report

Every day, the weight control lifestyle requires that I keep a food journal.  Doing it with willpower won’t work, I don’t have that kind of willpower.  But I can make staying on a weight control lifestyle attractive and fulfilling and interesting and worthwhile.  Then I am looking for reasons to make it work.  Setbacks are not calamities but speed bumps.  I don’t get resentful or unhappy – instead, I am the most engaged I have ever been.  My life has new evels of meaning from the way all the parts of myself come together around the goal of living a better life.  

One way to make the lifestyle attractive is to make sure every meal is rewarding.  Once a milestone is achieved, I also reward myself with a special meal – all within the calorie budget.

Indian buffet is a special meal for me! Hard to count calories, though.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wraps (430)

  • 430 calories

Lunch – Minerva Indian buffet (1200);

  • 1200 calories 

Dinner – crackers (200); chocolate (150)

  • 350 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80)

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 2060 calories (limit 1800)

Balance is getting tricky

A person can only pay attention to so many things.  Juggling other obligations, family, work, household, etc., can take your attention away.  I have kept weight control at the front of my mind for 11 months and I have to learn to find some balance.  

On the good side, I have finally gotten my reward for bringing my weight below 240 pounds!  Indian food, and Indian buffet food, are some of my favorites.  My Indian friends say it’s all kind of tarted up with food coloring in those buffets, but I don’t mind.  It tastes good AND looks good.  I feel rewarded.

On the bad side, given my calorie record this week, I won’t have much to celebrate come Saturday.  That’s all right – next week is a chance to do better.  It’s all part of finding balance.  I have been paying more attention to work, and it’s difficult to also prioritize weight control.  But it’s not impossible. It will just take some planning and better preparation on the weekends.

Tonight I have to rush off to do other things.  Remember to think about balance in your life.  

-The Doctor

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