20190411 Report

I am very sleep deprived today.  The kids took forever to fall asleep and the Toddler of Things was forever getting out of bed.  However, it was a good day for weight loss.  Notice that I am reporting my food journal every day.  It is part of my commitment to a new lifestyle.  I am not dieting just until I reach the goal of 205 pounds.  I am on a weight control lifestyle, for the rest of my life.  I have accepted being thin as an important value, and I have found a way to make it meaningful and celebrate it as something worthwhile.  I accept that everyone struggles with their weight (in a society where food is super abundant) and I am no different.  Nobody healthy is naturally thin.  They all have to work at it.  If they can do it, I can!

Another key commitment is to pay a lot of attention to my eating.  It follows from my moral transformation.  Since being thin is high on my list of values now, and for the rest of my life, I commit to putting in the time, care, and attention to making it work.  I have put a lot of time into understanding myself: what I crave, when I am hungry, my little preferences and habits.  What foods work for me.  What I am willing to sacrifice to be successful. 

Some sacrifice!  That’s about one serving of bread, by the way (2 oz).  Talking of sacrifice, here is my daily intake and calorie count.

Breakfast – BLT wrap (200) and fried chicken piece (300)

  • 500 calories

Lunch – homemade chicken enchilada with sour cream (200), chicken wraps with hummus (300)

  • 500 calories

Dinner – Homemade sausage chili (300), brussels sprouts (30), bread and wine (170).

  • 500 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80), beef jerky (90), Nestle Lil Drums ice cream cone (120)

  • 290 calories

Total for the day: 1790 calories (limit 1800)

It was a pretty good weight loss day.  I was hungry for all my meals, and was only hungry for a snack around 3-4PM.  I ate the same things my family did for dinner.  My aim is to be a person able to lose weight and keep it off.  My goal is to be hungry for every meal, but not between meals.   I have a purpose and a way to get there.  The struggle to pay attention is all the willpower I need.

-The Doctor

20190410 Report

Last night, I stayed up way, way too late.  It was my own fault, I was busy until late doing some personal financial management.  I may do a series of posts on that too, sometime.  I am a Doctor of Things, after all. 

Today I woke up very, very hungry.  That often happens after an exercise day, and I was a few hundred calories short of my budget yesterday, too.  But it’s Wednesday, and that means Gyro sandwich for lunch day!  I look forward to that all week.  Remember, my diet strategy is to want to be hungry because the upcoming meal is going to be so good.  The Big Greek Cafe near me has a $5 Gyro deal.  Behold my diet food:

The Gryo in its natural habitat

You are seeing 600 calories of hot, yummy gyro with sauce, cheese cube and pepperoncini.  Notice on my diet, I am not restricted in what foods I can eat. 

That is great because I can eat the same things the family does, just a regulated portion of them.  I was reading about keto today, and people were definitely missing their favorite foods.  Too much willpower required for me!  I would definitely be concerned that about eating that way for the rest of my life.  I am trying to make a lifestyle I can joyfully adopt, which improves my appearance.  Wouldn’t you be happy about this lunch? 

Notice that I didn’t get any fries or dessert.  But my stomach is really happy to be on this diet.  I love how with a mental transformation, I have sidestepped the willpower problem: with food like this, what willpower do I need?

My daily food intake and calorie count:

Breakfast – Bratwurst wraps (2 x 300)

  • 600 calories

Lunch – $5 gyro from the Big Greek Cafe (600)

  • 600 calories

Dinner – Spaghetti (200), meatballs (230)

  • 430 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80)

80 calories

Total for the day: 1710 calories (limit 1800)

Now that I have my Costco flatbreads back in stock (110 calories each), my bratwurst sandwiches are down to 300 calories each (1/4 flatbread at 28 calories, 1 sausage at 260 calories, horseradish sauce for the rest).  I don’t count the fried onions.  Onions are basically crunchy water. 

I had the same spaghetti and Costco meatballs for dinner as my family – and just about the same amount as the kids.  Please, remind me sometime to do a post about my system for portioning! 

After such a rich set of meals, I am really thankful that I have discovered a way to keep myself so happy while depriving myself of at least 800 calories per day (I should be burning 2500 per day for an average male, per the USDA).  Well, the calorie burn total is a little more complicated than that, but I’ll go into that another time.  The point is, I don’t feel deprived and I hope I keep listening to myself.  

-The Doctor

20190409 Report

Last night, I had a full night’s sleep and was not inundated by any children in the small hours!  I find that bad sleep is a risk factor for overeating.  It’s harder to pay attention, and also eating food seems to take away some sleepiness, so it’s doubly tempting.  I always track my sleep quality along with my food and calorie intake.  And it was a good day – I went swimming.  

Exercise is tricky for many dieters.  Many people have lost a lot of weight and kept it off by dieting alone.  Very few the other way around.  But I like swimming and always have.  Going is not a struggle, I like being in the water and I enjoy the exercise.  I burned off 600 calories (I will explain that calculation later) and I added 500 calories to my food budget for the day.  It’s win-win; I get to swim, which I like, and I am down another 100 calories on the day.  And I don’t feel like swimming is punishment because I’m not hungry afterwards – I let myself have most of the calories back that day.  

I have noticed now that I have lost 40 pounds that swimming is easier.  My times are a little faster and I don’t get sore legs and hands like I did while at my most overweight (325 pounds).  What will it be like when I have lost 60, 80, or 100 pounds?  It’s hard to imagine, since I have been heavy for so long (8-10 years over 300 pounds).  

  • My daily food intake and calorie count:

Breakfast – Jimmy Dean breakfast croissantwich (sausage and egg) (400)

  • 400 calories

Lunch – BLT sandwich (330), bratwurst sandwich (340)

  • 670 calories

Dinner – Costco pepperoni pizza (710)

  • 710 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80), beef jerky (180)

  • 260 calories

Total for the day: 2040 calories (limit 1800 + 500 from swimming = 2300).

Yes, I made it to Costco today.  I have my flatbreads and those are very low calorie.  I am happy about using them tomorrow.  Looking forward to what I am going to eat tomorrow, is what gives me the ability to say “no” to more today.  It’s amazing to get so much fulfillment and satisfaction out of eating less!  

-The Doctor

20190408 Report

I had another night of interrupted sleep last night – invaded by two children at different times.  However, my total food intake was great and I had prepared wonderful meals to keep me going all day.  Here’s my food intake from today:

Breakfast – Bratwurst wrap (340)

  • 340 calories

Lunch – 2 homemade chicken enchiladas (500)

  • 500 calories

Dinner – Sausage chili,  (350) egg noodles (220), and peas (30)

  • 600 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80), Nestle Li’l Buddies vanilla (110)

190 calories

Total for the day: 1630 calories (limit 1800)

I started off with a Johnsonville bratwurst sandwich.  Each brat is 260 calories.  Usually I have it on a small square of flatbread for 40 calories extra, but today I only had sandwich bread.  It’s so easy to have brats prepared ahead of time.  I just cook a pack of five in my cast iron skillet in the oven (with a whole diced onion) at 400 degrees, then just keep them in the fridge until needed.  

My lunch enchiladas were left over from last night.  Enchiladas are great because you just count up all the calories you put in the dish and divide by the number of enchiladas.  Portioning made simple!  Notice I do round the numbers a bit, but I always round up.  

Homemade sausage chili is also really meaty and satisfying.  My goal as always was to be hungry (but not too hungry) and be really looking forward to the meal.  It was worth the wait and I got noodles and peas too.  With chili you have to use a liquid measure (if you made 8 cups of chili, a one-cup serving has one-eighth of the total calories) but noodles are easy.  I just weigh them.  2 ounces of noodles dry equals 4 ounces cooked.  

How do I keep from eating more at night?

Eating at night is my kryptonite.  If I am going to lose control, it’s between dinner and bedtime.  BUT I have learned, by observing and negotiating with myself, a way forward.  If I am really looking forward to breakfast, I am willing to sacrifice snacking to get my reward in the morning.  A Jimmy Dean sausage and egg croissant sandwich sounds really, really good…..maybe with hot sauce (no calories extra!)

Notice I didn’t eat near my limit of 1800 calories tonight.  I don’t feel hungry and I don’t need to eat to the limit today.  

I have found a great balance.  I’m not hungry now, but I will be in time for breakfast.  I am willing to put up with eating a small portion of chili tonight because feeling hungry in the morning is a wonderful way to start the day.  When I have binged at night, I always notice how bad I felt in the morning.  Now I get to feel good, both because I am anticipating a great breakfast and because I am listening to myself and working with myself to achieve a lifetime goal.  I am on a journey to lose 120 pounds and everything is coming together for me.  

-The Doctor

20190407 Report

Not a good sleep last night – lots of kids waking up and invading the parental bed.  Late bedtime, too (my fault).  I overshot my calorie goal, as I usually do when really tired.  I’ve read the theory that food can substitute for sleep, and it is more tempting then. 

My daily food intake and calorie count:

Breakfast – pizza slices (300 cal), chocolate almonds (160), 1 slice bacon (70)

  • 530 calories

Lunch – BLT wraps (300), fried chicken piece (300)

  • 600 calories

Dinner – Homemade chicken enchiladas (550)

  • 550 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80), ad hoc wraps (200)

  • 280 calories

Total for the day: 1960 calories (limit 1800)

How to start a diet 120 pounds overweight

I don’t like to dwell on it, but I have failed on a lot of diets.  Now, I am focused on the future.  But here is just a bit of background:

I weighed 325 pounds in January, 2019.  I have been overweight for the last 20 years.  I have weighed more than 300 pounds for the last 10 years.  Many diets have not worked for me.  But there is hope – I have lost 40 pounds so far by developing a new way of thinking.  What I have discovered is that if you change your mind, your body will follow.  I am already thinking like someone who can control their weight.  You can, too.  

Battered but trusty, The Doctor's home scale.

1. Dieting starts with a decision

It’s not the decision you are probably thinking.  Are you thinking it will be “I decide to lose the weight”?  It isn’t that simple, or everyone would be thin.  If you have the mindset that you can will yourself thin, you’re wrong.   I wouldn’t like to meet the person who could will 120 pounds away.  The decision is also not “I choose to be responsible for my weight.”  Definitely not!  Now you’re in a moral contest with your diet ideal, and you will lose, and start to really be disgusted with yourself.  Dieting through self-loathing!  Good luck with that. 

No, the decision you need to make is, are you willing to let go.  Obviously, you are willing to let go of the extra weight, especially if it is 120 pounds!  No, you have to decide if you can let go of your stubborn pride, some strongly-held values, your mindset, and your comfortable old life.

  • My pride made me overweight, I wouldn’t admit the need to change. 
  • My hierarchy of values made me overweight.  For example, I wasn’t willing to throw away or waste food.  Being thin wasn’t in the same league.       
  • My mindset made me overweight.  I ate to feel full.  So I would eat to feel full at every meal.  Result: constant calorie overload. 
  • My old life made me overweight and kept me overweight.  I usually ate without paying attention, and ate until I felt completely full.  I would read or watch TV while eating.  What did it matter?  I only needed to eat until I was stuffed.  At every meal.  That was my source of eating satisfaction: being full.  All that had to go.

2. Successful dieting starts with a realization

No, the key realization isn’t “I could be thin”!  My realization was a bit deeper than that, and had moral and mental components.  The moral part was figuring out that being thin or overweight isn’t a moral condition.  I will explain that in a moment.  The mental realization came from observation.  I am a scientist by training and profession, so observation is a very important tool.  By observing the behavior of people who were thin and stayed thin, I realized that thin people mostly monitor their weight throughout their lives.  They also control their food intake throughout their lives. 

Morally, I was in a nonproductive mindset before I figured out this diet.  I saw losing weight as a matter of willpower and moral fiber.  Thin people were full of willpower and were filled with strong moral fiber.  Overweight people lacked willpower and would quit before reaching the goal.  According to this moral mindset, I just needed some willpower to transform myself.  I would use my willpower, and somehow my food intake would just balance out due to my superior moral condition.  I would lose weight and keep it off, through strength of moral fiber. 

Terrible, isn’t it?  You can see how that mindset will set you up for failure.  With that thinking, you will be overweight, AND feel bad about yourself.  Willpower just doesn’t work that way, and being thin does not imply superior moral fiber or moral being.  Take the moral scolding out of your thinking.  It just reinforces failures and makes you hate and resent your own being.  Don’t set yourself up for failure.  Set yourself up for success instead.

The setup for success comes from the other half of my realization.  To start a long term lifestyle change that will result in the loss of 120 pounds, you must accept that it’s a lifetime change, to monitoring your weight and regulating your food intake.  Ask a thin friend or family member.  They monitor their weight all the time!  Maybe they judge their weight by the fit of their clothes, or belt, or using a scale, but they do it.  They also monitor their intake of food, no matter what they call it. 

My grandfather never counted a calorie, but lived to 101 years and never weighed more than 135 pounds in his life.  What willpower!  Actually, he just had the same things for almost every meal of his long life.  His dinner was invariably a small hamburger patty, a baked potato, and string beans.  Not of lot of them, either.  Lunch was a ham sandwich: 2 slices of ham, one of cheese.  Breakfast was cold cereal.  He did have dessert every night, but it was never more than a bite or two of brownie or cake.  He exercised every day and monitored his weight every day.  He also didn’t spend a lot of time wondering what he was going to have for lunch or dinner.  He had a system that worked for 101 years.  Ask yourself: where was the willpower in that system?  The only moral decision is that being thin is more important to you than other things. 

3. Successful dieting needs a plan

I am not saying you should plan like my grandfather did.  I personally transformed myself into someone who is looking forward to each meal and is hungry at mealtimes.  After the first 100 years I think I would get a little bored of his regime.  I can only think that for him, being thin and staying thin was more important than almost anything else.  Seen in that light, eating the same amounts of the same things every day is a very simple and reliable way to make sure your food intake is under complete control.  No calorie counting, no carb counting, no cholesterol or LDL worries.  Just eat the green beans, potato, and beef patty.  He could look on, amazed, as his acquaintances and coworkers agonized over their waistlines and talked about steaks, rich desserts, and holiday food. 

For you to lose weight successfully and keep it off, you need a plan.  The plan will let you live out the consequences of your moral and mental transformation. 

Create a plan to do two things:

  • Monitor your weight
  • Control your food intake

3A. Monitor your Weight

I weigh myself every Saturday morning.  I blog about it, as a matter of fact, under the category Saturday Weigh-in.  I am in the middle of an incredible personal quest to lose more weight than most people on Earth weigh.  I am not at all interested in this diet petering out, and once I have achieved this remarkable weight loss, I have even less interest in gaining any of it back again.  So weigh yourself systematically. 

Some people, like my grandfather did, weigh themselves every day.  But once a week is a minimum.  I like the anticipation of a weekly weighing.  I was also worried that if I had a bad day and overate, I would get all discouraged.  This point is so important I have taught it to my kids: weigh yourself every week.  We make a family activity out of it, but it is an important tool for their lives too. 

3B. Control your food intake.

There are different levels of control.  You could decide that being thin is so important to you that you will only eat pre-portioned frozen dinners or pre-packaged weight loss meals every day for the rest of your life.  There’s also what I will call the Grandfather Method. 

Speaking personally, none of that works.  I tried may variations of the idea over the last 20 years of unsuccessful dieting.  I tried having weight loss shakes for meals, and I also tried eating only low carb foods with a limit of 30 grams of carbs per day.  Neither was satisfactory.  I had to find a different way, and I was willing to do some work and put in some time to achieve control. 

My own solution is calorie counting and recording the totals in a spreadsheet.  I’ll go into more detail elsewhere, but I am careful to count calories before I eat, and then record them immediately after I eat.  No matter what else is going on, if my hair is on fire (metaphorically), I will record what I eat before doing other things.  So I recommend a serious commitment to controlling food intake.  I spend an hour a day doing this and I am happy to do it because being thin is high up on my list of values. 

I don’t use any dieting apps or websites for this.  I figure out the calories, eat the portion, then right after the meal, record everything in a Google spreadsheet.  I use the internet-based spreadsheet because I can access it anywhere I have internet, like work, restaurants, and on vacation.  If I waited until the end of the day or the end of the week, I wouldn’t remember what I had or how much or when.  I might leave things out by accident or on purpose.  And I tell the absolute truth in the spreadsheet.  If I overeat, I put all the food in there and the calorie count.  (In the section on self knowledge just below, I will talk about the temptation to punish yourself for overeating or having a bad diet day or week.)    

Through trial and error, I picked a number of calories I am allowed to eat every day.  Exercise is a tricky subject I talk about in another place, but when I exercise, I increase the number of calories in my daily limit.  I also keep track of my average weekly calorie intake and compare that to what I would have to eat to maintain my weight. 

Have a plan to monitor your weight and regulate your food intake.  It has to be a plan you can follow forever.

4. A successful lifetime diet plan relies on self-knowledge.

If you’ve spent any time on a diet, you know that there is part of you that doesn’t enjoy it.  It doesn’t play along with what you say or follow your plans.  When your diet fails, you blame yourself, or that part of yourself for your supposed lack of willpower.  Well, imagine that part of you is important, even crucial, to your dieting success.  If you are mean to yourself and treat yourself badly, and think of yourself as a weak-willed slob, that’s not a plan for success.  It’s more self-loathing. 

You have to really listen to yourself, figure out what you need and want, how to work with that, and then reward yourself for doing well.  Never, never punish yourself for overeating.  Try to learn instead.

By punish, I mean: have you overeaten and then withheld breakfast or lunch the next day to make up for it?  That’s punishing yourself.  Skipping dessert, or withholding some food you really like?  Usually in retaliation for overeating before?  That’s a punishment.  It makes it really hard to get your subconscious desires lined up behind your diet.  By carefully paying attention, I have found I can figure out why I overeat and keep ahead of it.  For example: if I get really, really hungry, I will overeat.  I will also eat in a big hurry and want to feel full.  That’s destructive.  But when it has happened, I don’t punish myself anymore.  At the next meal, I eat normally. 

Try to learn: I mean you can learn about yourself by figuring out when you will overeat.  When it is really cold outside and I feel cold, I will overeat.  When I don’t go to bed on time and don’t get enough sleep, I also overeat.  If I am significantly late for a meal and get too hungry, I will overeat.  And if I have any food insecurity, I will overeat. 

Food insecurity means I have to have food available that I really want to eat and am looking forward to.  When I am hungry and head to the kitchen at meal time, it is really demoralizing to have to only find food I don’t really want.  Remember before when I said my values include not wasting food or throwing it away?  That had to change.  I learned I have to reward myself at every meal for eating less food.  The reward is I get to eat foods I really crave.  I am willing to accept that trade at all levels of my being. 

I also decided to build in some significant rewards.  As I lose each 10 pounds, I pick something I really want to eat as the reward.  I might flip through the recipes at America’s Test Kitchen (I am a subscriber).  My reward for losing 30 pounds was making a cake.  A gingerbread cake.  With ermine frosting.  It was really good, even on the installment plan.  Rewarding myself builds confidence and self-trust: I say I will reward myself, and I do. 

That’s the really nice part about this project.  I have learned to really value working with myself, figuring myself out, and learning to trust myself.  It is very rewarding and satisfying.  Losing weight is almost beside the point, given the beauty of my new self-relationship.  I’m not a weak willed failure, but a person capable of making the changes needed to improve my appearance and lifestyle. 

Compared to all this, my old lifestyle seems really pointless.  Why would I go back to it and gain weight?  I have learned to get much more out of myself.  Aim high!

-The Doctor

 

(To read all the posts in the Start a Diet series, click here.)

Weighing yourself

Hello everybody.  One of my commitments to myself is a weekly weighing.  I recommend it. 

When I started this diet, I was actually too chicken to get on the scale (I weighed 325 pounds a few weeks before I started).  It took a week before my courage returned.   Now I do it every Saturday, before breakfast.  My weight last week was 288.8 pounds on the trusty Homedics scale.  So, how did I do this week?

Wonderful!  I made fantastic progress.  The weight loss professionals would have a fit, but I won’t.  This means I have lost a total of….

Pounds!!!
0

That’s a big milestone.  I will reward myself for all my faithful staying on the diet!  Now, this part may confuse you.  I am going to reward myself with food.  Am I going to break my diet?  No, I am not.  Let me explain.

My last reward was for the milestone of weighing less than 290 pounds.  The reward was going out to lunch, with friends, at my favorite Indian buffet restaurant.  That day, I had a really small breakfast, an enormous lunch, and no dinner.  I lost almost three pounds that week.  The key here is that my reward reinforces my diet.  One of my insights about myself is that I could transform my relationship with food.  Instead of eating until I was totally full (my old goal), my new goal was to be hungry for my next meal.  The meal had to be completely worth waiting for, worth being hungry for, and worth paying attention to.  But it couldn’t be so large that it prevented me from anticipating my next meal, being hungry for it, and enjoying it in turn.  

My weight loss plan is built around the idea that I must really be looking forward to my food.  A little hunger at the right time is a good thing.  (The trade-off, as I will explain later, is that I cannot be late for meals.)  So, having a reward meal or dessert  that I am really looking forward to actually reinforces my system.  I have to be hungry for the special meal, anticipate and enjoy it, but not go so wild that I can’t be hungry for the next planned meal. 

I hope you are beginning to see how this works.

It’s great progress, but I can’t help feeling a little depressed.  I am still 80 pounds overweight.  Losing weight is really slow, if you let yourself think about it that way.  Usually, I don’t indulge in that kind of self-pity.  After all, 80 pounds overweight is a lot less than 120 pounds overweight!  Plus, I have never successfully lost weight on purpose before.  Really, I have a lot to feel happy and thankful about.  I have never felt so positive about myself.  It is really meaningful to see different layers of my being lining up behind this effort and gives me a lot of positive feedback and a boost to my morale as I keep plugging away. 

But there is a tiny seed of doubt every time I get on the scale.  Will this keep working?  So far, it has.

-The Doctor

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