20191027 Daily report

It’s a spooky weight control week in honor of Halloween.  Boo!  

Before January 2019, I was living a carefree life of eating whatever I felt like, and paying the consequences by gaining weight and being out of control.  It’s a subject to be developed another time, but the weight gain seemed to go in stages, rather than a steady slow increase.  It probably had something to do with how I was living my life and the things that were happening in my life during that time.  My guess was that since I identified eating and being full with comfort and cheap happiness, it was probably correlated to when I needed more comfort and happiness in life.  I don’t do that anymore, not with eating and food, anyway. 

No more expedience.  I work towards my goal of weight control, and I pay attention.  I portion and count the food.  I find I can get more happiness and satisfaction this way, and have more meaning in my life.

Four servings of chicken and rice, 450 calories each

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – half slice Costco pepperoni pizza (355)

  • 355 calories

Lunch – peanut butter and jelly toast (300); hummus and pickles on toast (200);

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – Homemade chicken and rice skillet portion: 7 ounces seared and fricasseed chicken breast (220); 10 ounces rice cooked in olive oil, chicken broth, wine, onions, flavored with garlic and lemon and mixed with green peas (230)

  • 450 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); Aldi peanut butter cups (400)

  • 480 calories

Total for the day: 1785 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Sunday cooking, meal prep, planning, and portioning

All of the prep and cooking I do on a Sunday is preceded by shopping I try to do Friday or Saturday.  This week, I bought chicken breasts and chicken thighs.  Eggs were on sale, and I also bought poblano peppers for fajitas.  The dish I cooked tonight is a family favorite – chicken breasts and rice and peas one-skillet meal.  From the parenting point of view, it’s great because there is no need to coordinate extra pots with side dishes and vegetables.  I am also thinking about cooking:

  • Chicken curry (chicken thighs and cauliflower)
  • Spanish tortilla (eggs, onions, and olive oil)
  • Chicken fajitas (chicken breast, poblano peppers and onions cooked in cream)
  • Chicken rice and peas one-skillet supper

I probably won’t get to all this this week, nor would I be able to eat it!  Some of it will get pushed till next week.  I am also spending more time at my office this week, so I have to plan for packed lunches that are worth eating.  

How do you know how much you are eating and how to portion it?  Tonight I ended up with six pieces of chicken and a large amount of rice and peas (cooked in wine, broth, onion, garlic….mmmm).  The recipe is the place to start.  Add up all the ingredients that you cooked and you will have the total calories.

  • 2.5 pounds raw chicken breast = 1250 calories
  • 1.5 cups of long grain rice = 960 calories
  • 2 Tablespoons olive oil = 220 calories
  • 1 onion – 40 calories
  • 1 cup of green peas = 120 calories
  • 1 Tablespoon of white all purpose flour = 30 calories

I don’t worry about the wine (it’s deliberately evaporated), garlic, lemon juice, or broth since those have minimal calories.  Adding all the rest together comes to 2630 calories.  One you take out the chicken (cut into 6 pieces of 220 calories each), the cooked rice and peas weighed exactly 3 pounds, 11 ounces.  At 16 ounces per pound, it’s 59 ounces total and so you can get 6 portions of about 10 ounces each, and 230 calories.  Chicken = 220 calories plus rice and peas 230 = 450 calories per portion.  And it is a very delicious and satisfying meal, especially when you have been cooking for the half hour just before, and allowed yourself to get to juuuust being physically hungry.  Timing is important.

I put the rest away, after we were done eating.  Sunday is a great day for family dinner.  And I have put enough away for another dinner later this week.  

Getting thin and staying thin take work.  This is how I work it, and how I translate the effort to the effect I want.  This week is Halloween.  Unlike previous years, I have not yet bought and eaten a whole bag of candy!  And I won’t and I don’t have to.  I am paying attention now, and find my satisfaction in ways that are deeper and more meaningful than eating candy until it is gone.  I do like candy – but I eat measured amounts now, and find a way to make it part of a weight control lifestyle.  

Change how you see the world and change how you live.  Change yourself.  

-The Doctor

20191026 Saturday weigh-in

Saturday!  The day of truth….weight control truth.  All week I have been keeping track of my calorie count, eating just the right amount of food at just the right time, to keep the various pieces of my brain, body, and soul aligned on the goal of weight control.  That’s what the food journal is for, though honestly the food journal has become handy for so many things I plan to keep it always.  

Truth is the number on the scale.  How did all the careful measuring of food and calories affect your body?  It’s very important to check reality, the truth, every so often.  I do it every week.  I know there are a lot of thin people who weigh themselves every day.  Every week is working so far…..

The lowest number so far!

I am amazed to report that since I started this diet in January 2019, I have lost………….

Pounds!!
0

Under 240 pounds and still going

The weight control lifestyle I am living…the one I share with you in story and pictures, is very attractive for me.  I built it that way, and have used what I learned along the way to make it better and more effective.  It’s amazing how it operates outside my usual definition of willpower.  There is discipline, and a lot of work, but I don’t feel I am ordering, dictating to, or forcing myself to be hungry or feel deprived.  

In the last few weeks, several neighbors, and not just the nosey ones, have mentioned they have noticed my weight loss.  In a way, hey, thanks for noticing after 85+ pounds have been lost!  But it’s nice of them to notice, and say something.  Interestingly, in general, it has been the thinner people who noticed first.  I think they are paying more attention (or maybe they are just more talkative).  As of now, of the ~10 people who have said something, three have asked for details.  Two of those were thin people, and one was a bit overweight.  That surprised me.  I thought the more overweight people would be more interested in the details.  Anyway, each person who asked suggested their own theory!  Clearly, there are many paths to weight control.

In general, I only have a couple of minutes to talk with these people before we go in different directions.  

  • Person #1 was a short lady, a bit overweight (say 40 pounds).  She was sure that I was losing weight by skipping meals.  That told me how she was trying to lose weight (willpower, force and deprivation!).  I told her about counting calories and keeping a journal.  I don’t think she was ready to hear about that.  She told me she eats mostly Guatemalan food homemade by her mother or other relatives.  She wouldn’t have much awareness of the calorie count, under those circumstances .
  • Person #2 was a lady of medium height from my office.  Her body’s frame is large, but she is reasonably thin within that type.  She suggested I had lost weight by starting to eat healthy.  People mean different things by that and I didn’t get a chance to ask what she meant.  In a way, paying attention to my body’s needs and counting calories is eating healthily.  But that also told me about how she kept thin!  Actually I think she might have lost about 10 pounds in the last couple of years.  It sounds like her goal is health, and she is monitoring her eating with that goal in mind.  
  • Person #3 is my neighbor, a very thin and wiry man of medium height.  He had a multiple-part theory.  He asked if I was exercising, eating right, or watching my health.  I assume he does all three – he is quite thin.  I playfully told him I am bribing myself to eat less, using foods I like as the bait.  That wasn’t what he was expecting, but as we passed his door he again complimented me several times.  Very kind.

There is only one conclusion: I should work on an elevator speech.  That’s a technique where you try to convince someone about something in under a minute.  I’ve been writing my thoughts about weight loss here in long form and developing the ideas, but using a lot of time and space to do it.  Something short and convincing, a story that can be told in a minute.  I will think about it.

It’s true: people will tell you amazing things if you know how to listen.

-The Doctor

20191025 Daily report

Once you have placed “weight control” firmly at the top of your moral hierarchy, you see the world differently. 

When I was gaining weight, my weight was not a thought that occurred to me while eating.  My weight was way down the list of things I was worried about.  I was much more immediate  – what do I want right now? – and took no thought of consequences on my body’s weight.  Food was for eating, whenever I felt like it, for whatever immediate pleasure I could get out of it.  More food generally equaled more pleasure.  It was kind of a carefree existence.  I enjoyed it for a while.  But I trapped myself there.

Now I live in a world where everything I eat is considered through the lens: how will this affect my body’s weight?  As a strategy for creating a sustainable and enjoyable lifestyle, it has worked wonders so far.  And I can eat whatever I want, so long as I pay attention to how much, and make sure I treat every meal as a reward I have earned.

Find out what you like and get enough to satisfy you.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Costco half pepperoni pizza slice (355);

  • 355 calories

Lunch – Costco half pepperoni pizza slice (355);

  • 355 calories 

Dinner – Uncle Julio’s Mexican restaurant dinner party.  Chips and salsa (300); Pork carnitas fajitas (600); a few bites of cake (100);

  • 1000 calories

Snacking – 4 cups of tea with 8 Tbsp half and half (160); 

  • 160 calories

Total for the day: 1870 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Prepare ye

I knew I had a dinner party tonight at a restaurant, but I had slacked off a bit today.  I went to bed late; I woke up later than I wanted, and I had no time to prepare food for the day.  So I had leftover pizza for breakfast and took another 710 calories of pizza with me for lunch.  I was going to swim and figured I would need it.  My plan was to just have a small dinner at the restaurant.  (That plan was a mistake – I know from past experience that my body likes a larger dinner.  A small dinner would make me feel deprived and resentful.  That could lead to late night snacking!  See have you have to plan to make weight control work!?)

Amazingly, once I had eaten half of my lunch, I decided I was satisfied and put away the rest.  (That reminds me – I should rescue it and put the rest in the refrigerator now that I am home.  Done.)  It’s important to point out that I didn’t deprive myself of lunch just to have a bigger dinner – I really felt satisfied and decided not to have more pizza.  I went swimming and headed out to the restaurant, a stylish Mexican place.  Unfortunately the kitchen was a bit slow, and you could predict what happened next: I decided to eat some chips and salsa.  An entire bowl of chips later, I managed to stop.  Man, those were good-tasting chips, mostly because I was so hungry.  Swimming does that to your appetite.  And it was cool outside – that also makes me hungry.  

Dinner finally came.  In a way, the fajitas failed the first test of fajitas – sell the sizzle.  Mine were not sizzling, probably because they were pork-carnitas based and heavy on barbecue sauce.  But again, they tasted really good at first.  The menu had all the calorie counts for the dish, and the fajitas were 1000 calories.  I considered eating all of them.  But really, after the third tortilla I had enough and it wouldn’t have been enjoyable to eat more.  I quit and got a doggie bag.

Interestingly, I was the only male adult in our party who quit with food still on the plate and the only person to take any leftovers home.  That’s right – I pay attention to that kind of thing now.  Nobody drank alcohol in our group.  I had a diet cola.  But I calculate that I had 1000 calories for dinner.  That’s a lot to have at one time – I usually get about half of that for a meal.  We shall see what effect it has on weighing, tomorrow morning.  

It’s been a good week for weight control, I feel.  I hope yours was likewise.

-The Doctor

20191024 Daily report

One of the challenging, but ultimately rewarding, parts about being on a weight control lifestyle is the need to set priorities.  One priority comes from self knowledge.  When you are restricted to 1850 calories per day (for me a deficit of about 1000 calories) you soon learn which foods will keep you satisfied and prevent hunger.  You also learn which foods won’t be satisfying.  Let’s break it down.

Three meals a day at 600 calories each is 1800 calories with no room left over for cravings.  So I have tried reducing the number of calories at each meal.  I have found through trial and error that my body doesn’t mind a smaller breakfast, or a medium lunch, but it needs a good dinner and maybe tea or a snack in the afternoon or evening.  400 for breakfast, 500 for lunch, 600 for dinner?  That makes 1500 calories and I still have about 350 for a snack…quite a nice snack.

Today I decided to have a large breakfast.  I followed that with a large lunch and a large dinner.  I did take some tea in the morning, but now there is nothing left in my budget and I want something sweet.  But I will have it tomorrow.  I’m not actually hungry now (I had 710 calories for dinner!), and so the sweet won’t be that satisfying.  But if I tell myself “tomorrow”, I will build up anticipation.  When I am actually hungry tomorrow, and I have been craving chocolate all night, and then get some and can eat it…. it heightens the experience and you really appreciate every bite.  But especially the first two bites. 

Today is recipe day  – a new feature on the Doctor of Things.  Behold the mighty Extra Large Quasi Cubano Breakfast Sandwich.  Instructions below.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Quasi Cubano Breakfast Sandwich.  2 slices of toasted Italian panini bread (260); 3 ounces Carando brown sugar ham (135); 2 pieces Swiss cheese (80); pickles and mustard (negligible); horseradish sauce (20);

  • 500 calories

Lunch – Half an Aldi Supreme pizza (570); 

  • 570 calories 

Dinner – Costco pepperoni pizza (710)

  • 710 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80);

  • 80 calories

Total for the day: 1860 calories (limit 1800)

Quasi Cubano?

A real Cubano sandwich is made on special bread, with roasted pork, ham, cheese, pickles, mustard, and mayonnaise, stacked, packed, pressed, and grilled or toasted and served warm.  

A Quasi Cubano is a bit simpler and easier to make at home.  I skip the pork loin (though I do have some roast pork that it’s tempting to add on, it’s cooked in the French style with French herbs and wouldn’t go well) and use pre-toasted Italian bread.  I don’t grill or press it either, though that is tempting.  I can control the calorie count easily and it is simple to prepare.

The bread is toasted as in the first picture, then spread with a layer of mustard and horseradish mayonnaise.  The cheese and ham go next; then a layer of pickles and finally the whole is assembled and cut.  For breakfast I normally have a smaller version of this, but the large one was so amazing today I decided to share it.  The small version has about 320 calories and this was about 500.  

I am always amazed and grateful that this counts as diet food and I am losing weight fairly steadily doing this.  Remember that once you learn your body and have a calorie count worked out, you can do a lot with it.  I had three pretty amazing meals today and I will lose weight anyway.  

You can do it too!

-The Doctor

20191023 Daily report

Once you have decided to think thin, what would that mean?  What would it look like?  

For one thing, it means you put controlling your body’s weight first, before all other food considerations.  An example: I spent time with family recently.  A polite and gracious family person, who puts his family first (like I was raised to do) would eat dinner with everyone else, and maybe try to be guesstimate how much food they were eating.  Did I do that?  No.  I made a pain of myself insisting on weighing and measuring food, and annoyed everybody counting out calories publicly.  Also, I didn’t adjust my mealtimes.  If dinner was 8PM, I still ate at 5.30PM.  If everybody was sitting and talking about something serious and it got to lunchtime, I got up and left to have lunch.   Thinking thin is a value.  That’s how you value being thin – putting it first in your life.  But there are compensations. 

My breakfast this morning - BLT wraps

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – BLT wraps: 4 slices of oven-fried thick cut Kirkland bacon (280); one whole wheat wrap (110) cut in two pieces; lettuce (0); and tomato (30); horseradish sauce (10)

  • 430 calories

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

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – roasted pork loin (350); 1.5 whole wheat wraps (160); homemade cucumber dill salad (50)

  • 565 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 4x Kirkland tea cookies (170)

  • 250 calories

Total for the day: 1845 calories (limit 1800)

What to put first in your life

In your food life, you can choose the path of weight control and put in first in your life.  Done properly, it is a lot of work, but is very rewarding.  When done improperly, taking the quick and easy way, it doesn’t work as well and it is not as rewarding.  Since it is not rewarding, why are you doing it?  Eventually, gradually, you will go back to your old life, old values, old rewards and incentives.  The weight you have lost will come back on again.

Having put weight control first in your life, and committed to doing it properly, you should keep a food journal and weigh yourself every week.  With that established, other things are less of a priority, but there is still a lot of room for your personal preferences and subordinate priorities.  Recall my parable of the woman who ate raw veggies and hummus all day so she could enjoy a big dish of ice cream every night.

“Do what you want, and pay for it.”  -Terry Pratchett, and many other people over the years.

Learn about yourself.  Maybe three meals per day, properly spaced out, will help you control your weight.  Maybe six meals will.  Do you need bacon, ice cream, a 3PM tea break?  Learn about yourself.  Pay attention when you are hungry, when you are breaking your diet.  Part of you is trying hard to tell the conscious ego part what is needed.  When do you need protein?  When will pretzels satisfy you?  

All this is different if you have serious health considerations, like diabetes or other metabolic issues you are concerned about.  In those cases, your health should be the number one priority, and everything you eat should be checked with the question, “how will this impact my health?”  Weight is part of that, but be realistic: health first when needed.  

Use your self knowledge to build a lifestyle that you enjoy and which uplifts you.  It will be difficult and it will take months.  Every time I break my diet, I go through and assign blame.  I assign 100% of the blame to my ego, stubbornness, pride, and my tendency to ignore evidence and go with my lazy assumptions.  Yes, it’s my favorite trio: greed, laziness, and stupidity.  I could write whole essays about that.  But I will leave it for another time.  My point is, it’s not my body’s fault that I have a bad diet day.  Every time so far, the blame has gone to me being stubborn (ignoring hunger signs), lazy (not preparing or thinking ahead, not preparing foods I want to eat), and proud (blinding myself to evidence and coasting on a whim or some mental theory, which might itself be wrong).  

All my willpower is spent updating my store of self knowledge, and striving to make my life better.  There is none left for dieting, so I don’t diet.  Instead, I try to live a better and more fulfilling lifestyle; one which takes work to maintain, but results in weight loss.  It is really easy to lose track, slack off, get careless, fall in love with your own ideas instead of paying attention to reality.  So don’t do those things.  Find a way to make your lifestyle self correcting or at least easy to get back to.  Pay attention to when it doesn’t work and figure out what you are doing wrong.  You are probably trying to force yourself to obey instead of persuading yourself to collaborate and achieve your goals, using all your parts together in harmony.

Achieve that and the weight will come off!  And stay off.  

-The Doctor

20191022 Daily report

Once you have decided that weight control means more to you than anything else about food, there are many paths to weight control.  All of them require you to change your goal of eating.  The change means that now you will not eat without considering what effect the food will have on your weight.  That’s what weight control means.  Control comes with a price, and you have to decide if you are willing to pay.  

When I was gaining weight, I did try many times to lose weight, and I was willing to pay a price.  But I thought the price had to be unhappiness, misery, and deprivation.  I couldn’t look forward to a life of that.  Eventually, I figured out that the price could be eating delicious sandwiches.  Ha, my price was constant vigilance.  That means keeping a food journal and counting calories.  But you can fit all kinds of tasty sandwiches into a calorie count.

Steak and Cheese, diner style.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2oz Carando brown sugar ham (90); Swiss cheese (50); toasted bread (160); sandwich with pickles and mustard and horseradish (call it 20 calories)

  • 320 calories

Lunch – Steak and Cheese sandwich (500);

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – 6oz cooked spaghetti (300); 5 Costco meatballs (230)

  • 530 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (160); 4 Kirkland tea cookies (170); pretzels (150); chicken strips (50)

  • 530 calories

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

Other ways to the goal

The goal is weight control (overall).

How you get to the goal can vary.  I recommend maximizing the pleasure of eating, if you can find the time and energy and attention to do so.  Look at the Food Prep King – I have talked about him before, and his strategy of extreme weekend meal prep.  He hardly has to prepare any food during the week because he cooks on the weekend and portions everything out; he has developed recipes that work for him and can fit into that kind of schedule.  

I love to find and read stories on the Internet about people who have successfully lost large amounts of weight and kept it off over time.  They have achieved control, and it takes constant attention.  I have found a way to make the effort worthwhile, and that allows me to raise my lifestyle to almost a luxury experience.

This story is interesting.  Sara (for ’tis her name) lost 100 pounds over a year.  When asked how she did it, her standard answer is “I’m still doing it.”  That is just perfect.  The Doctor agrees that the price of (1) getting thin and (2) staying that way is constant vigilance.  Sara also is quoted, “The best diet plan for weight loss for you is one you can stick with long-term and improves your health.”  Exactly right again.  If the diet is deprivation and misery, and you have to live that way forever, then you just won’t do it.  It sounds like her goal of eating is not just being thin, but feeling healthy as well.  That can be a winning system, though it’s not mine.  Some people eat only with their health in mind, they are often thin, too.  

I tell you often that becoming thin is a side effect of my wonderful lifestyle.  I am not joking around about that.  It removes so much effort and willpower from losing weight.  I spend my willpower making sure my lifestyle is wonderful, so win-win.

Cosmopolitan magazine has regular articles about weight loss that often have nuggets of good advice.  Here are some of my favorites from women who have lost 100 pounds:

Find a healthy meal you like, and eat it all the time. “In college, I researched the food available in the dining hall to find the healthiest options, settling on a turkey sandwich on whole-wheat bread with mustard. I ate that for most lunches and dinners—and I was so focused on achieving my goals that it didn’t even feel repetitive.”

That is another strategy that works for a lot of people.  This woman’s goal of eating has been transformed.  She is so focused on the goal (being thin) that what she is eating is now less important.  She picks a simple meal that she likes and so removes some of the temptation from life.  She is also making it easier to regulate her food intake, as she will know exactly how many calories are in her sandwich and won’t have to figure that out each time.  By contrast, I do a lot of looking up how many calories are in things.  I also spend more time than she does shopping, preparing meals, cooking, and cleaning the kitchen.

Prepare for heavy meals. “When I know I’m going out for dinner, where I’ll probably want to eat extra calories, I eat lighter meals throughout the day, like a smoothie for breakfast and a salad for lunch.”

That is calorie counting, in one woman’s life.  She is paying attention, and her goal is to eat the right amount of calories to stay thin.  She is also increasing her satisfaction by anticipating the restaurant meal.  By preparing and waiting and getting a bit hungry for it, she will enjoy it more.  It will be very satisfying.

Eat more often. “I switched from three meals a day to six small meals a day.”

This is amazing self knowledge.  This lady, who lost a lot of weight, learned about her body and did what she needed to do to create a lifestyle where she could be happy and be thin.  It takes less willpower if everything you do towards your goal makes you happy. 

On a regular diet, only the goal itself (getting thin) makes you happy.  The rest is unhappiness.  Learn about yourself and build an attractive life you can be proud of.

Stash snacks everywhere. “I carry protein bars in my purse and car. This way, I fend off hunger so I don’t overeat later.”

Brilliant!  Especially when you are still figuring yourself out, don’t try to tough out getting hungry.  If your body is hungry, listen and give it something to eat while you are still in control.  Once your need to be fed takes over, it is really hard to stop eating until you are full or run out of food.  This quote is about not punishing yourself.  Hunger at the right time is a good pursuit, but the goal should be a system or lifestyle that will make you happy and thin.  You should never, ever diet in a way that is punishing.  

You can lose all kinds of weight using rewards.

-The Doctor

20191021 Daily report

Have you tried dieting and it hasn’t gone well?  Who hasn’t?

Who has heard the expression “think thin”? 

I used to think that meant some kind of Zen visualization: picture yourself thin and hold the image in your mind.  Then you will be successful!  That didn’t work.  But now I understand it differently.  Think Thin can mean Think Successfully – think like a person who is already thin, and is staying that way.  Being in control of your weight is almost a mental exercise rather than a physical one, in this view.  You come to understand that being thin takes work and doesn’t just happen.  There are no naturally thin people, then.  

But!  There are naturally thin people who can eat whatever they want!  

Ah, that can be you, too.  This is me:

9PM teatime! How is this a diet?

My food intake and calorie count

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

  • 400 calories

Lunch – Steak and cheese submarine sandwich with American cheese (500)

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – Roasted pork loin (300), whole wheat wrap (110); cucumber salad (50);

  • 460 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 5x Kirkland tea cookies (210 total)

  • 290 calories

Total for the day: 1650 calories (limit 1800)

So what makes cookies weight loss food?

If there are no naturally thin people, then the system collapses.  On the one hand, that means there is nothing wrong with you, the non-thin person.  I have met a lot of thin people, and they are not on any kind of higher moral plane.  You can be a mess and stay thin.  

On the other hand, if there are no naturally thin people, doesn’t that make you a failure who can’t stay thin?  Maybe you are just in a place in your life where being thin is hard?  The Doctor rejects this view and so should you.  What is missing is the mental transformation.  Understand what thin people value and see the world the way they do.  If you want to be thin, that is how you think thin – not by forcing yourself to eat less food.  That can’t be borne and you will quit and feel like a failure.  Saying you can become thin by eating less food only works for prisoners or rats in a lab whose diet and behavior are under external control.  Eating less food has to be part of a successful and rewarding system of living, or else why do it?  

(Actually, there is a famous Dilbert cartoon where the character Dogbert advertises how to get thin by eating less food.  The author, Scott Adams, is on record agreeing that the systems approach is a great way to weight loss.  But that is his system.)

What would this system of rewards look like?  Here’s one: I cook most of my meals.  Today is a bad example of that.  I had pre-packaged breakfast, restaurant lunch, and store-bought cookies for tea.  But it was very rewarding.  Each meal was worth the wait, worth getting hungry for.  I always tell people that a little hunger, at the right time, makes the reward more enjoyable and worthwhile.  Soon you will be looking forward to getting hungry just so you can have the pleasure of sating it with a favorite food (in a measured amount).  Anyway, by cooking my own food, I make sure it is at its best when I eat it; I anticipate it and dramatize that with plannning, buying ingredients, cooking, and portioning.  That turns out to be very rewarding.  You wouldn’t go to all that trouble otherwise.  

What do thin people value?  I have thought about that a lot.  On one level, it is really simple.  Thin people value being thin.  Is that a duh?  Duh, you say!  But consider this: overweight people don’t value being overweight.  That isn’t their goal.  Thin people value being thin and that is their goal.  When they eat anything, they are asking: how will this impact my weight?  Now, when you are thin, you get to value other things too; I recall one very thin woman who liked ice cream more than anything.  She basically survived on raw vegetables and hummus all day so she could have ice cream for dinner.  Would that work for me?  No!  But she paid a heavy price for her ice cream, since her goal was to stay thin.  

Frankly, when I was gaining weight, if I wanted ice cream, I just ate it.  It didn’t matter to me what else I had eaten that day, or what I weighed, or how I would feel in the morning.  My goal was to enjoy some ice cream.  More ice cream, more enjoyment.  Now it is different.  I would anticipate the ice cream all day, and just when I started to feel hungry, I would eat a measured amount.  The pleasure of the first few bites of the anticipated and best-loved food, when you are just getting hungry, is worthwhile and satisfying, and makes eating a lot of ice cream seem kind of shallow and unfulfilling.  

Do you see it is your system of values and how you live them out that separates a thin person from an overweight one?  

-The Doctor

20191020 Daily report

When you are living a weight control lifestyle, it is most important to keep a food journal.  That journal must be completely honest.  You, dear Reader, get a slightly skewed picture of my journal, since if I have a bad day and eat late at night after posting, you wouldn’t hear about it!  And that has happened (not often).  Part of the food journal is counting calories.  Many people are unhappy about that.  It’s too much work!  It’s to hard to keep track, et cetera.  And that is all true.  But most people who have successfully lost weight count their calories.  Just check the weight loss forums at Reddit.  It then all becomes a question of your world view – by which I mean, your view of food and eating.  That is what must change, and that is the hardest thing to change.  But if you do change your thinking, you can eat anything you like while controlling your weight!  

My recipe book calls it Enchaud Perigordine! In English, roast pork.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – bratwurst (260); 1/4 whole wheat wrap (30); onions and horseradish (10); pizza slices (150)

  • 450 calories

Lunch – breaded chicken pieces (200), whole wheat sandwich wrap (110); with tomato and lettuce and horseradish (40)

  • 550 calories 

Dinner – roasted pork loin (250); 2.5oz cooked egg noodles (125); mixed vegetables (50);

  • 425 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 2x orange Jaffa cakes (50); 1/4C ice cream (80)

  • 260 calories

Total for the day: 1685 calories (limit 1800)

Mystery upon mystery

Several times this last few days, I have found myself well short of my daily calorie limit.  For those of you who have read a lot of these daily reports, you know that’s not a common occurrence.  Usually, the problem goes the other way.  The number of calories I allow myself is meant to be satisfying and completely fulfilling, but small enough to lose weight.  This weight control system is not about feeling deprived, in fact, the opposite.  If a person was trying to control their weight, I would advise them to choose foods which are rewarding and worth waiting for. They should also be worth getting slightly hungry for.  Under those conditions, eating feels very satisfying, because there is nothing like the first few bites of your favorite food when you are just hungry enough.  “Hunger is the best pickle,” as Poor Richard said, and as I often remember.  

So do not try to push the limits.  This is a long term weight control strategy that is working well, and you should have no interest in feeling deprived and unhappy.  Cutting calories is often a strategy of someone who has overeaten and feels bad about it.  They decide to eat fewer calories the next meal or the next day.  But that feels like a punishment, and nobody can punish themself into losing weight.  Even if they succeeded by sheer will, that’s a loser of a long term strategy.  Once you have put all this work into losing weight, you never, ever want it to come back.  That’s why you kiss your old lifestyle goodbye and invent a new self, and new life, and a new way of thinking and looking at the world.  That is much better and more successful in the long run.  And isn’t the rest of your life the long run?

The pictured Sunday pork roast is a favorite.  The roast is butterflied, seasoned, rolled and tied, then seared briefly and baked at low temperature with apples, onions, garlic, wine, and some French herbs.  This is a fine example of how I reward myself.  I find the food visually interesting and it tastes wonderful, it’s worth anticipating for a whole day, especially a cold and rainy October Sunday.  (To be clear, it takes about 2 hours to cook.)  This kind of food also seems to last a long time in my body, because I won’t be hungry until tomorrow.  So invest in that kind of self knowledge.  Find out what foods are interesting and exciting for you, and satisfy you for a long time.  I cook mine, most of the time, to make sure it is the most dramatic and pleasurable food possible.

One tradeoff of this weight control system is that it takes time, energy, and some work.  You have to enjoy it, make it a favorite hobby.  Other people have other strategies, like eating commercial frozen dinners and other pre packaged food, and that might work for them.  But there’s no denying that my approach is very, very rewarding.  That system of reward is how I keep myself eating a measured amount of calories.  The fulfillment takes place on different and deeper levels than just being full of food.  I am so happy to be doing this, even though it takes time.  That happiness is really the product of my lifestyle, and weight loss (And weight control) are side benefits.  

Isn’t that a great way to think about this?

-The Doctor

20191019 Saturday weigh-in

Every Saturday I weigh myself.  That is new.  In the past, I would rarely weigh myself, really only when I was trying to start a diet.  Years ago, on Instapundit, I read a list of habits, or common characteristics, of people who were thin and stayed thin.  Very few people did all of those behaviors on the list, and I only remember a few of them, but one of them was “they weigh themselves regularly, daily or weekly.”  That was never part of my life, until now.  And it makes sense – who wants to get on the scale and see just how overweight you are, every day or week?  Especially if you are not trying to lose or maintain a weight?  Now I just do it.  True, I am trying to lose weight, but I plan to keep on weighing myself, even after I reach a body weight I like.  For the rest of my life, anyway.  I have picked Saturday.  Here’s me on the scale:

The lowest number yet

I am constantly surprised by my body.  However, the scale tells no lies and that is why I weigh myself every week.  Since I started my diet, I have lost: 

Pounds!!
0

The Doctor is In

Well, this is a surprise!  Why did my weight go down?  It’s against a lot of previous experience.  I had several good dieting days this week but Sunday was terrible, with travel and lots of extra eating.  And I have been very congested, so I assumed I was getting sick.  Generally, all that has meant my weight loss stops and has to be written off for the week.  But this is my lowest weight ever!   

It sounds funny to say my lowest weight ever.  I did weigh 240 at one point in the past, but my weight was on the way up.  This is the lowest weight I have achieved while trying to control my weight, though.  

My original plan was to lose 120 pounds, to go from my highest weight, 325, to 205.  The choice of ending number was a little difficult.  I don’t remember what I weighed when I was thin.  That was probably 20 years ago.   I read, though, that the US Army will take new recruits only in a certain weight range for their height.  I thought the Army would have to know something about physical standards, so I picked a figure at the top of their acceptable range for my height and age.  So 205 it was.  I am as shocked as anyone that I am making progress.  I am officially more than two thirds of the way there.  What is the reason for all this success so far?  And what is the potential for reaching the target?  

The weight control lifestyle I am living is partly based on a system of incentives and rewards.  Every meal is a potential reward (it can be something I really want to eat), and every time I lose 10 pounds, I also give myself a reward.  The 10-pound loss rewards are more extravagant than the everyday rewards.  In the past I have made myself a cake, made special desserts, and gone to restaurants.  Often I have picked my reward far in advance, but right now I don’t have anything in mind, and I am only one pound away from  losing another 10.  What will I choose?  I think of these rewards as a promise to myself and I need to keep it.  And that leads us to another reason for success – I have inverted the usual system for losing weight.

Based on my past dieting and how I thought about foods and eating and dieting at that time, I always tried to force myself to eat less, with one exception.  That was the low carb diet I tried, where I let myself eat as much as I wanted as long as it didn’t have carbohydrates!  That diet really gave me an insight on how to lose weight while still eating rewarding food.  But in general, I usually used force, and punishment, to try and lose weight.  I am convinced that’s why most diets fail.  You can’t force yourself consistently, long-term, and have a weight loss lifestyle you will enjoy.

As for the future, I think this weight loss will continue under the weight control system.  There will be surprises, and chances to learn, and disappointments.  I hope I choose wisely.  But as your body gets thinner and closer to actually thin, I am sure it behaves differently.  I will be keeping an eye on that and reporting it here.  Here’s to more success!

-The Doctor

20191018 Daily report

It is in a fatalistic mood that the Doctor posts tonight.  It has been a hard week, one way and another.  There was travel, there was overeating, there was despair…and that was only Sunday!  But my weight loss lifestyle is still operational, though the outcome is delayed.  One of my top values is weight control.  It is how I am living my life now.  It’s part of the way I get around the willpower trap.

Diet, noun.  A plan, generally hopeless, for losing weight, which tests your willpower but does little for your waistline.  -Herbert B. Prochnow, whoever that is.

Weight control is not about willpower.  It is about satisfying yourself physically, mentally, psychologically.  I investigated how I was satisfying myself in my weight-gaining days.  Largely, I was finding cheap satisfaction in the feeling of having a full stomach.  Yes, I convinced myself that eating until completely full was comforting and worthwhile way to life satisfaction.  Boy, was that wrong.  

The answer was of course Bacon.

A field of Kirkland bacon. Thick-cut.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2oz Carando brown sugar ham (100); Swiss cheese (90); toasted bread (160); sandwich with pickles and mustard and horseradish (negligible calories)

  • 350 calories

Lunch – BLT wraps: 4 slices Kirkland bacon (70); 1 whole wheat wrap (110); 1 tomato (30); lettuce and horseradish sauce (negligible); 1 extra piece of bacon by hand (70)

  • 500 calories 

Dinner – half an Aldi frozen cheese pizza (500); with 1oz pepperoni (140);

  • 640 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (120); 

  • 120 calories

Total for the day: 1610 calories (limit 1800 + 500 bonus from swimming, total 2300)

Less than it appears

If you look, you will see my calorie count was very low today – 1610 is calories rather lower than the limit of 1850 I have been trying to achieve.  Maybe that’s because of my willpower?  I am the Doctor of Things, filled with the almighty willpower!  No, that’s not true.  Willpower can’t be used to satisfy hunger.  Part of weight control is finding a lifestyle that you find satisfying and rewarding to be living.  You don’t need to use willpower if you are being satisfied and rewarded for your behavior.  And not just you behavior.  Behavior flows from your thinking and your view of the world.  You can’t successfully force yourself thin by changing behavior.  That’s diet-thinking:

“A diet is just code for a time when you eat food you dislike and still feel hungry.” -unattributed

Truer words were never spoken.  That quote is a distillation of the force required to succeed on a diet.  I have never made a diet work.  On the typical diet, you are trying to temporarily force yourself to change behavior to lose weight.  You will eat food you don’t like and feel deprived and hungry all the time.  But what you are really hoping is that you can do this without changing anything about your inner self.  That is why people who manage to lose some weight often complain that they gain it back.  Their old self and their old lifestyle are there, waiting.  Eventually, they will take back over if you are unhappy with your diet life. 

Atkins (of the famous eponymous diet) was correct when he said weight loss didn’t have to be about deprivation.  On the physical level, of course it is – you are eating less food than your body needs to sustain its weight.  But he was talking about your psychology.  One of the biggest barriers to losing weight is the feeling of deprivation.  Imagine, if you have to, that eating and being full make you happy.  Eating less is like withholding happiness from yourself.  It’s painful to even think about, and doing it is worse!  To inflict that kind of pain on yourself, you need lots of willpower, and who has that?   Not me. 

So you need to change your mind instead.  Find eating satisfaction in a new goal.  Personally, in a way, I chose hunger.  I want to be properly hungry when I eat food.  The food has to be something I am really looking forward to eating.  The source of satisfaction and fulfillment in my new life comes from maximum enjoyment.  There is no substitute for eating food you are really craving, just at the moment you are physically hungry and need to eat.  That is much more satisfying than what I used to do. 

I used to get satisfaction by eating until I was full.  When I was doing that, I had a different definition of hungry than I do now.  Hungry just meant that I wasn’t full.  

Now everything is different.  I see a different world now.  You could, too.

-The Doctor

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