Review
In Part I of this series on how to start a diet when 120 pounds overweight, I described the philosophy for a new system of successful weight control based on self knowledge, negotiation, and fulfillment.
- Make the decision (to sacrifice your old self)
- Accept the realization (thin people monitor and control their weight)
- Create a plan (monitor your weight, and control your food intake.)
- Learn about yourself (negotiate to find what you really want, keep yourself satisfied)
In Part II of this series on how to start a diet when 120 pounds overweight, I explained how to transform yourself and be reborn as a new person with weight control as a top-level value.
- Don’t go on a diet – sacrifice your old self instead
- Change your mind and your body will follow (the other way around doesn’t work)
- Avoid the willpower trap – your new life must be worth living (not maintained by force)
- The new you – what do you value, and how does that make you different than before?
In Part III of this series on how to start a diet when 120 pounds overweight, we will focus on paying attention – learning how to pay attention to what your body is telling you, and negotiating with yourself to find the way forward. You must align the different levels of your being so that being in control of your weight makes your life rewarding and meaningful. More than the old life did!
Paying Attention
If you have read this far, you have already decided to let go of your old self and embrace a new self. The new you is committed to a lifestyle where you truly value being in control of your body’s weight. That value outranks most of your other aims in life. You will sacrifice your old future in favor of the new future. You will become a person capable of losing weight successfully and keeping it off.
The new you accepts that the price of lifetime weight control is a lifetime of paying attention.* All thin people monitor their weight; all thin people control how much they eat, one way or another. You are no different. You are proud of your new life and take pride in controlling your food intake and weight. You are working body and mind together to increase the fulfillment you get from life. The struggle to stay in control of yourself gives meaning to your existence. Success here will make you powerful. You can apply what you learn to other parts of your life.
*Don’t fall into the willpower trap. You’re not meant to be on a diet for the rest of your life, using willpower to keep eating things you don’t want. The effort is to keep paying attention to your body and mind and keep them working together. Don’t slack off.
A new hierarchy of values
Here is what a new hierarchy of value might look like, and how it will play out in your life:
- Your new value is to be in control of your body’s weight. It outranks most everything else.
- Your new aim is to monitor your weight every week and control your food intake.
- Your new goal is to be hungry in time for every meal**.
- Your new lifestyle should increase your sense of fulfillment and overall satisfaction with life.
**Note that this goal does not include being hungry between meals. Nobody wants to live like that.
When you have made these changes, you will start to feel that your old goals for food and eating were not truly fulfilling, but shallow, and left you feeling unhappy. Fulfilling the old goals came with a mix of immediate cheap satisfaction but also shame (to be enjoyed later). It’s amazing for me to look back and imagine the way I used to think and be. Figuring out this lifestyle change has made me much more satisfied with my life and happy with myself. I can trust and love myself again, after many diet and weight failures over the years. I recognize that I had become unhappy with myself and a bit depressed about my future. Now, that has turned around.
Track your food intake daily (and your weight)
Now, pay attention. What follows all flows from the decision to let go of all your old baggage and construct a new set of values and goals for yourself. For your new self, controlling your weight is one of your highest values that you live by. You make all your decisions through that lens. It’s a lifelong hobby and you have decided it is so important that you will not let anything get in the way. No excuses. It’s not willpower, it’s just who you are now.
There are two MUSTs to be in control of your weight: (1) monitor your weight and (2) regulate your food intake. After all, if you don’t know what you had for lunch and breakfast, you will have a hard time figuring out how much food you can have for dinner. If you don’t know, how can you control it?
Other people address the problem of controlling intake by restricting what foods they can eat. Keto diet is a very trendy example (on the keto plan, you only eat meat and fat and certain vegetables, very little sugar), but there are others. Atkins. South Beach. Weight Watchers. But it’s all just regulation of food intake in various disguises. On those kinds of diets, I found I needed portion control on top of restricting the kinds of foods I was allowed to eat. I found the restrictions unfulfilling. I wasn’t proud of telling people I was on South Beach or Keto, either. I wanted a life more fulfilling than that, and found it.
Set a day and time to weigh yourself, and maintain a written record of the results (at least once per week). To regulate your food intake, keep records of every food you ate and how many calories you ate. This is known as a food journal. There are workable alternatives: my grandfather solved the problem of monitoring intake by eating the identical amounts of the same things for practically every meal. He didn’t record anything, but he did weigh himself every day. He never exceeded 135 pounds and lived to be 101 years old. That solution didn’t work for me. It sure worked for him.
A journal also has a space for your weekly weighing, exercise (if you do that), calculations, and comments – kind of notes to yourself on how you were feeling and how things worked out for you. The comments are valuable. Treat your insights about yourself like gold.
Find out what rewards and satisfies you
If you try, you can force yourself to believe that you like eating rice cakes and wilted greens. It’s probably not true, though. That’s your WILL talking. You WILL get on a diet and lose weight! You WILL eat what I say! That kind of will. It has its uses. But when you are living a lifestyle of controlling your food intake and your weight, you can’t force yourself to do it by willpower, not for long. You may have experienced this already. Your body and mind will rebel against the tyrannical will, and you will break your diet and then you will hate yourself. That’s the different parts of you not acting together. And hating yourself is no way to get your body’s cooperation. You need all of the parts of your mind and body working together to do this. Try it – it is very rewarding.
Once you have an accurate record of your eating habits for several weeks, you can start finding out things about yourself. What are you eating and why? When are you eating? What foods were you really looking forward to? What wasn’t satisfying? When did you need to snack? Did you binge? If so, when and why? That is all very valuable information about yourself.
Looking back through my food journal entries for breakfasts, I quickly zeroed in on various forms of bacon, sausage, eggs, and steel cut oats as my favorites. I did eat other things too, but these were the most satisfying to me and kept me happy until lunchtime. (There were variations, like breakfast sandwiches, BLT sandwich wraps, egg fritattas and tortillas, on top of plain bacon and omelets.) I am most interested in controlling my weight and being satisfied. On that score, I am happy to report that I always look forward to breakfast, even under calorie limitations. Bacon is only 70 calories per slice, and eggs are 80 calories each. Breakfast of three eggs and three slices of bacon is totally ok and 450 calories. You will lose weight on three of those meals a day and enjoy the total satisfaction of eating them. Maybe you will like different foods. But remember the idea is that you look forward to your meals and they must satisfy you until it is time for the next one.
Hunger can be your friend
Eating to be full – that comfortable and enjoyable sensation – is a low-quality goal that I embraced for many years.
What is a higher quality goal? My higher food goals are to make sure I will be hungry for and excited about my next meal; and to pay attention to every bite I am eating and enjoy it. That means I have a reason to stop eating when I reach the end of the portion I have decided on. Amazingly, if you are paying attention and listen to what your body is telling you, you don’t actually get much taste enjoyment out of a second portion of even your favorite food, if the first portion was at all sufficient. The only enjoyment from eating more and more comes from feeling full, and possibly the sense of completion that comes from finishing the entire dish. That’s not a high goal! Your body is trying to tell you, if only you would pay attention, how it wants to be fed. You can use that.
Hunger is the best pickle. -Benjamin Franklin.
What was Franklin saying? Do you see it? He is saying that your food tastes best and is most satisfying and fulfilling when you are hungry for it. If you regularly overeat to feel comfortable and full, there are two consequences: you will not be truly hungry for the next meal, and it won’t taste nearly as good.
On the other hand, it is not a higher goal to starve yourself, either. That is very demoralizing and self-defeating. You should eat sufficient and measured amounts of foods you are really looking forward to. If you get a chance, read Mark Twain’s story “At the Appetite-Cure”. Twain knew that hunger was the best pickle! In the story, after Twain finally lets go of some bad thinking and embraces hunger, he is rewarded with steak, potatoes, bread, and coffee, rather than tripe and old boots! And he enjoys them and appreciates them more than he ever has.
The higher goal has the two necessary parts: you must be looking forward to what you will be eating with great anticipation – for that reason, you must be hungry for it. It makes it taste so much better and it is worth sacrificing and waiting for. You are sacrificing the feeling (your old goal) of feeling full! Once you have taken the first bite, the temptation to rush through and get another portion will be there. Therefore you must temper your instinct and instead eat slowly, enjoying every bite with the knowledge that you will not want any more – it just won’t ever taste as good as when you were hungry. It will be a waste. Put the rest away to enjoy it later. If you make sacrifices (get hungry) and they are constantly wasted (on food you don’t really want), you will not make sacrifices anymore. This is part of the negotiation you will have to have with yourself. How do you reward yourself for stopping with one portion? The reward is that you know the next meal will be worth the sacrifice, too. You may have to have trust-building exercises with yourself!
Notice that the goal is not “I want to be thin.” That is not enough and it is never enough. If wanting to be thin made people thin, we wouldn’t be struggling to get there. We are working to transform your values and how you see food. We are increasing your enjoyment, not decreasing it, and refining your tastes and goals. You are giving up something (the low quality goal), but you are gaining back much more. As a side effect of your mental revolution, you will become thin over time. Isn’t that a nice way for dieting to work?
This is why diet food is such a bad idea, in my opinion. Who would look forward to it? Is it worth sacrificing for? Will you really enjoy it? No! That’s completely self-defeating. All foods can be part of my diet, as long as I am hungry for them and maintain my enjoyment as a means of portion control.
Plan out your food and have it ready
Make sure the foods you want are in the house and ready to eat. That means planning ahead. I like bratwursts by Johnsonville, so I cook them ahead of time with onions and keep them in the fridge. I can have them ready for lunch in minutes. Wednesdays I go to a Greek restaurant and have a gyros sandwich of 600 calories. The point is: have a plan and keep the food you want close to hand. Once you are hungry, you will want food NOW. You won’t have time to go to the store or order something. I know I will get hungry for lunch at 11.30. I plan the day around the times I will be hungry. Obsessive? A bit. But my weight is coming under control. That’s a trade-off I can accept.
You have to have snacks ready, too. Sometimes you will get hungry between meals (or get delayed, lose track of time, and so on) and will need to satisfy yourself immediately. I am really bad about snacking. I forget to take snacks with me, and if I do remember, I put off eating them. It’s an area I will have to work on more. That’s a downside of embracing hunger as the goal – it’s really hard to ignore once it happens. Having sacrificed satisfaction through being full, you need to keep yourself satisfied using the high quality approach, so pay attention to your hunger all the time. Obsessive? A bit. But my weight is coming under control. That’s a trade-off I can accept.
Find the right people to support you
Surround yourself with supportive people. This may or may not include your parents, spouse, or your best friends. Pay attention to who supports you during your efforts. You have a goal: find a higher purpose and meaning in your life and then live out the consequences through your lifestyle choices. Some people you think are friends, might be unsupportive, even destructive, if you announce you are improving yourself. Maybe it makes them jealous or they feel ashamed of their own shortcomings, who knows? You can’t change your lifestyle successfully with those people in your life. They might find ways to sabotage you and take a perverse pleasure in keeping you low, in your failures, bad days, and other shortcomings.
This negativity can take various forms. The person might just act uninterested, which is a signal for you to stop talking about your transformation and successes and find someone else to talk to. A more negative approach might be to start putting you down or saying negative things, or dismissing your accomplishments. Even well-meaning people can say things that you don’t find helpful. My mother sometimes said things I found irritating – but she is trying to be supportive. I have asked her to say different things instead, which she is willing to do.
If you have unsupportive, jealous, negative, or plain toxic people in your life, try talking to them about the weather instead. Avoid the subject of your diet success and new lifestyle and don’t bring that up to them. Find people who will encourage you and be happy for you that you are accomplishing your goals. Keep your vision high. Find meaning in pursuing your goal through your choices and new values.
Don’t let anyone hold you back, not even family. Get some people who are happy for you and want you to succeed. They are around if you look, and they are worth the finding.
-The Doctor