Daily tracking

20200709 Daily report with extra crow

Crow is the wrong word.  But you can see it that way.  

I’ve been trying to get my head in the right place, but it’s not going according to plan.  Yesterday I talked about making a success of weight control by creating the world I wanted to live in.  I didn’t make it today!  Luckily, tomorrow is a new day and soon there will be a new week.  

Dinner once, breakfast three times

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Costco pepperoni pizza half slice (355);

  • 355 calories

Lunch – 11oz pork vindaloo (480); 

  • 480 calories 

Dinner – 9x Swedish meatballs (48); cucumber salad (100); lingonberry jam (50): noodles (100); 

  • 680 calories

Snacking – chicken wrap (200); pretzels (150); chocolate (110); almonds (140); 2x kit kat bars (80);

  • 760 calories

Total for the day: 2275 calories (limit 1850)

400 more than I wanted

These days, feeling full doesn’t feel nice and comforting the way I used to believe it did.  Now, it feels strange.  It also gives me a bad feeling, like failure.  Luckily, it’s for today only.  Tomorrow is guaranteed to be a new day that could be good.  

Today, I felt hungry when I woke up – unusual.  I also got quite hungry around 10AM, but didn’t do anything about it until 11.30 when I had lunch.  Then I was hungry again at 2, and I had a chicken wrap with lettuce and tomato, at 3PM.  I can see I was already making myself feel deprived!  Too much waiting.  This kind of thing has gotten unusual, most of the time my food routine is predictable.  In the past I have tried to satisfy these kind of sudden, urgent hunger feelings.  Sometimes that works.

At dinner I was quite hungry, and felt like having more dinner.  I did!  But after dinner, I felt, not quite hungry, but rather deprived.  And here I am, 700 calories later.  

Tomorrow I will try again.  That’s the beauty of the system: every day is a new day that you can get right.  My goals are achievable, but difficult, and that challenge makes this worthwhile.

-The Doctor

20200708 Daily report and deprivation avoidance

When you are getting yourself invested in weight control, you have to set things up to avoid feelings of deprivation.  There is no surer way to fall off a diet – weigh control or otherwise – than to make it punishing and painful to do it.  You have to create a world you want to live in, and then you can watch in amazement at how happily you want to go live there.  

In my world, this is Wednesday.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Half Costco pepperoni pizza slice (355);

  • 355 calories

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

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 9oz chili (390); bagel (330)

  • 720 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); 80g ice cream (200)

  • 280 calories

Total for the day: 1955 calories (limit 1850)

I like this world better

Yesterday, I let myself feel deprived.  I tried to make up for extra calories I ate the night before.  That didn’t work.  It never works.  Every day is a new day, and part of the meaning of that is you don’t make up for yesterday’s problems today.  Today has its own problems.  Just try to make today work.  Yesterday is gone.  You can learn from it but you can’t cheat your way out of it.  You ate too much yesterday?  Well, don’t try to make up for that by eating less today.  Eat what you are supposed to.  Maybe weight loss will take a little longer, but falling off your diet and getting resentful about it won’t work at all, ever.  

Today, I tried to return to normal, but I was still feeling deprived so I let myself go over the top – 1955 calories total.  Normally I try to stay under 1850.  Well, tomorrow is another chance to have a perfect day, and I want to concentrate on that world.  Letting yesterday go is a hard lesson to learn.  You can still learn from it though.

Feeling deprived can come for a number of reasons.  It can be emotional.  It can be illness.  You might slack off and not take care of yourself well – normal human laziness.  It can be a combination, or totally unknown!  If it happens a lot you should try to figure it out, and prevent it from interrupting your weight control lifestyle.  

But in the best world I can create, I am motivated to eat by physical hunger that comes at pretty regular and predictable intervals.  I anticipate satisfying that hunger with a measured amount of the food I am most hungry for, and make sure that it is ready when I am most ready for it – when I am getting pretty hungry!  The food tastes wonderful when I am hungry and when I am anticipating it.  It’s a satisfying experience to eat what you want when you are just ready, and you might have three wonderful meals like that in a day.  In this world, you will control your weight and be pretty happy about it.  Eating like this is a richer and higher experience.  

Create a world you would like to live in and you will try hard to get there.

-The Doctor

20200706 Daily report with skipping

I didn’t post yesterday!  What a thing to forget.  I had taken pictures, too.  If I get a chance I will go back and post it.  

Talking of which, this weekend I made pancakes from scratch.  They are much better than boxed pancakes and no harder to make.  I did notice that putting blueberries inside them doubled the cooking time, though.  I count each 3-4″ pancake as 75 calories.  I use a Splenda-based syrup so essentially no calories there.  The blueberries were rather tart so the pancakes were, too.  Anyway, the buttermilk pancakes cooked up tall and fluffy, exactly the kind of thing you can look forward to. 

There may be butter. I'm not saying.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – last 1/10 piece of Texas blueberry cobbler (280)

  • 280 calories

Lunch – 12 ounces pork vindaloo (525); pretzels 110

  • 645 calories 

Dinner – sloppy Joe (500); fries (100);

  • 600 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (70); chocolate almonds (200); Reese’s PBCs (160);

  • 430 calories

Total for the day: 1955 calories (limit 1850)

Catching up on calories?

I don’t know why but I was very hungry today starting around 3PM, and then again at 5PM.  I had breakfast around 10AM because I wasn’t that hungry!  

Anyway my calorie total is high today (1955) and yesterday it was low (1745).  It evens out, but I didn’t mean for it to work out like that.  I was just hungry this afternoon and evening.  Since my stomach has been a bit off I wonder if this means it is back in business!  

Anyway, back to pancakes.  Part of the Doctor’s insight into system of weight control comes from the observation that small rewards are motivating.  It’s hard to motivate yourself to accomplish anything with punishments.  I think that’s why many people fail when trying to tame vices like overeating, smoking, drinking.  Psychologically they are punishing themselves because they see those vices as essential comforts and withholding them as punishments to be resented.  It’s hard to do things out of resentment.  

You have to do the work, though.  Rewards don’t come to you just because you wish for them.  If you can’t force yourself to lose weight, you can make it easier and rewarding to lose weight.  You can set up your life and your diet so that there are lots of incentives.  I reward myself every day by making sure that the food I get to eat is food I want and enjoy.  That’s the trade: I eat for physical fulfillment, which is a measured amount of food.  In return, I make sure that food is worth eating and worth waiting for.  It avoids the trap of forcing myself to eat less food using willpower.  Scott Adams talks about changing how you see the world – decide you are going to eat healthy, for example.  That way, each meal is a chance to succeed.  If your goal is to eat less you will fail every time because you could ALWAYS eat less.  Terry Pratchett calls that playing games with words!  You use the words to describe the world in a way it’can’t ignore.  Change yourself and change the world.

-The Doctor

20200703 Daily report and blueberry time

This morning I did some baking and then some stovetop cooking, even though it was going to get to 96 degrees outside today.  More on the cooking later – it was my first time pressure cooking.  On to the baking.  It was Texas blueberry cobbler, which I have never made before but was recommended by one of my throngs of devoted readers.  The chief benefit is that it’s easier than making a pie.  It’s not your typical cobbler but turns out like a cake with pockets of blueberries and blueberry-soaked….cake.   So it is no runny at all, like a pie or cobbler would be.  It also has a stick and a half of butter in the recipe, which is an America’s Test Kitchen adaptation.  So even if the blueberries are marginal in terms of flavor, it’s still a nice lemon butter cake.  I cut it into 10 pieces of 280 calories each.

Texas style blueberry cobbler
Much easier than pie, quicker too.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 1/10 serving Texas Blueberry Cobbler (280);

  • 280 calories

Lunch – 4oz chili (170); toasted bread (100); ham (100); salami (130); provolone cheese (70);

  • 570 calories 

Dinner – 5oz rice (160); 8oz pork vindaloo (350)

  • 510 calories

Snacking – none so far!

  • 0 calories

Total for the day: 1360 calories (limit 1850)

Yes, I will have a few more calories

1360 calories for the day is pretty low for me.  I will be having something else.  On the other hand, I do have a weighing day tomorrow so not too much!  Part of weight control is being careful about rewards.  You accomplished something – you kept your mind in the right place and kept your calorie intake where you wanted.  You can’t then punish yourself by getting hungry and resentful.  When you are restricting your calorie intake you have to pay a lot attention to your subconscious and its needs.  

I’ve said this before, but there’s a part of you – call it the subconscious – that has to be treated like someone you care about.  You can’t force that part of you to do things you want, like lose weight, exercise, stop smoking, or improve whatever vice you have.  What works is to stand that relationship on its head.  Normally the conscious willing part of you says something like “eat less!”  and the burden falls on your subconscious self to carry that out.  That part gets resentful fast.  Better for the conscious part to take up the burden and do most of the work.  After all, it is giving the orders!  Using this trick, I have managed to lose a lot of weight and not feel resentful or deprived.  It does take work and discipline.  But the kind of work and discipline is not intuitive or obvious to those of us in an uncontrolled/weight gain mindset.  

There is a thin way of thinking.  Wach people who have stayed thin and you will see how they do it but not what they get out of it – why they are doing it and how they are thinking about it.  That takes a bit more work.  But if you talk to them, you will get important clues.  A thin person is often quite proud of their weight discipline, though I have found many of them are shy/modest or pretend that what they are doing is no big deal.  The best person to talk to is someone who has struggled with their weight and managed to keep it under control.  They know how to think about it and are successful.

You can be successful with weight control too.  Just work out how.  It won’t just happen by itself!

-The Doctor

20200702 Daily report with ice cream perhaps

These days I am having success with a skimpy breakfast plan.  I have a quite small breakfast and a normal lunch, then a snack, and after dinner there are often 300 or more calories left in my budget that I can spend as I like!  The amazing part is that with my focus on hunger as my reason for eating, I am often not even using the whole 1850 calories I budget per day.  On a regular diet I would probably be eating right up to, and a bit over, the limit, and being unhappy about it.  But by setting my mind right first, the 1850 becomes more of a guideline than a goal.  If I get hungry I check my food journal and say “no wonder, I’ve only had 700 calories so far today” or “I shouldn’t be that hungry, I’ve already had 1600.”

Half a pound of chili and some garlic bread - dinner.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – baked beans (180)

  • 180 calories

Lunch – 5oz cooked rice (160); 12 ounces vegetable curry (330)

  • 490 calories 

Dinner – 8oz chili (340); 60g garlic bread (250)

  • 590 calories

Snacking – pretzels (100); 2x Reese’s PBCs (80); 110g ice cream (250);

  • 510 calories

Total for the day: 1770 calories (limit 1850)

Yes, I decided to have ice cream

But I didn’t have a cone.  And I do like my waffle cone with the right kind of ice cream.  They are 80 calories.  But I didn’t need it today.  To really enjoy it, I would have to be hungrier. 

In preparation for the 4th of July weekend, I bought a pineapple and a watermelon and some blueberries.  With any luck I will make blueberry crumble tomorrow morning.  It will be a hot day, so cooking in the morning is sensible.  And I will have watermelon and pineapple in the refrigerator, ready for the predicted 97 degrees!  I have decided that blueberries and watermelon are essentially calorie free (not 100% true) so I often don’t record eating them.  Plus I don’t have them that often.

Weight control is partly about having things to look forward to.  But at the highest level it is about resetting your view of food and eating.  Instead of thinking like an out of control person who will gain weight, you can learn how thin people think.  There’s lots of emphasis in the diet world on aping some of the behaviors of thin people, but a lot of it won’t work if you don’t have the thinking right.  If you think like a person who has successfully stayed thin through their life, those behaviors will make more sense and you can implement them consistently and with purpose.  Your body, a lagging indicator, will slowly catch up to your change of mind.  Watch thin people and figure it out.  Talk to them and they will tell you all about it.  

My system is complicated.  Not every overweight person is willing to solve their problems by keeping a food journal for the rest of their life, and many people who stay thin don’t do that.  But I have a special situation with my former weight gain.  I feel like my ability to judge how much food is enough, and remember what I have eaten, is unreliable.  The journal evens the odds.  It is my hobby.  

Listen to what the thin people are telling you.  Keep an open mind.

-The Doctor

20200701 Daily report with a $5 Gyro

It is important to have things to look forward to, but that has to be done right.  When I was uncontrolled in my food intake and gaining weight, I looked forward to meals.  Since I had learned to associate feeling full with comfort, completion, fulfillment, I could look forward to all those things at nearly every meal.  But that wasn’t good fulfillment.  I figured out later that those emotional goals associated with food are kind of shallow.  I call them ‘cheap thrills’ now.   

A worthier reason for eating is also a simpler one: because you physically need the food.  It is a worthier reason because it allows for higher goals.  You can fulfill your senses, like with a favorite food, instead of gratifying your emotions.  You can anticipate, not your emotional fulfillment (which should really come from accomplishments and pride in your work well done) but physical fulfillment, which comes no matter how you feel about things.  

That is, enjoy the food, rather than how eating a lot of it makes you feel.

Big Greek Cafe $5 Gyro Wednesdays!!!!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – pancakes (150)

  • 150 calories

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

  • 600 calories 

Dinner – 5oz cooked white rice (160); 12 ounces curry (330);

  • 490 calories

Snacking – pretzels (250); cheese (80); snickers ice cream bar (180);

  • 510 calories

Total for the day: 1750 calories (limit 1850)

Erratum and datum

On Saturday I said I reached a new low weight of 235.2 pounds, but I was wrong.  The previous Saturday’s weight was also 235.2 pounds – look at the picture.  So I didn’t lose any weight that week, possibly.  I mean, it doesn’t count much since I was a bit ill and had a lot of water weight changes at that time, but I did claim it was a new low.  It wasn’t.  Will I be all better Saturday, in terms of water weight?  We shall see.  My calorie counts have been great and under control for this week and last week.  But we shall see.  That’s what Saturdays are for.  

Like I have said many times, since starting the weight control lifestyle, feeling full has gotten to be uncomfortable for me.  That is completely opposed to my old incentive, when I was gaining weight.  Feeling full was the goal!  That is no longer the goal.  I am seeing the world in a new way, like I imagine a thin person does.  It is working out, and I tell myself that my body is a lagging indicator.  That means my weight is slowly catching up.  

I have also been thinking about dieting and what a waste of time it is.  I have lost a lot of weight without going on a diet.  I can’t make those work, it’s the feeling of deprivation and my reasons for eating that were the problems.  I imagine there are lots of people who feel this way.  Maybe you would reply that I am on a diet – defined as losing weight by eating less food.  But I define a diet differently: an attempt to force yourself to eat less food, while staying exactly the same person on the inside, who gained that extra weight in the first place.  You see, you will gain the weight back again once you stop forcing yourself.  A diet is contrary to your being.  Weight control is an attempt to redefine your being.  Your body catches up to your mind. 

Change your mind, change your body!  Never the other way around.  

-The Doctor

20200360 Daily report, now with free retort!

My improved heat resistance continues to surprise me.  I used to break out into a sweat just going outside in the hot summer weather.  That was when I weighed a lot more.  Now, I have a whole week (and maybe a whole summer) of very hot weather ahead, including days in the 90s.  What will it be like once I weigh 40 pounds less?

That brings up the whole business of fitness.  Being thin and having your weight under control is one thing.  But you can’t stop there.  Some level of physical fitness is important also. 

Lunch meat sandwich with pickles and mustard - watch out for the bread!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 60g toast (140); hummus (100); olive tapenade (50);

  • 290 calories

Lunch – 120g bread (280); ham (100); cheese (70); salami (130);

  • 580 calories 

Dinner – 6 ounces cooked spaghetti (300); 

  • 300 calories

Snacking – tea with half and half (80); pretzels (150); chocolate (130);

  • 360 calories

Total for the day: 1530 calories (limit 1850)

Wizards and wonders

Terry Pratchett once wrote that if you were the kind of person who keeps adding pickles and chutneys and condiments to your sandwich and don’t even notice when the meat slips out and falls on the floor, you might be of the wizardly kind of mind.  He knew a lot about wizards, since he invented so many of them and filled his books with them.  That’s not me though, as you can see from the picture above.  Anyway, I’ve noticed that the most calories on your sandwich can easily come from your bread.  I do like some pickles and condiments, though.  In my mind those things are “free” even though they do have calories at some level and those can add up. 

For example, my BLT wrap has a fair amount of lettuce and a few tomatoes, and a bit of horseradish sauce.  I don’t normally count them with the bacon and the wrap, or just put 10-20 calories in my record without really measuring or counting.  There are limits to how far I will go for weight control!  And my sandwich today had pickles, mustard, and horseradish sauce.  When I make hamburgers or pork burgers it is the same – I don’t count the lettuce, onion, tomato, or horseradish mayo.  I do count it when it seems like a lot.  When I make Spanish tortilla (eggs onions and potatoes cooked in olive oil) I count the tablespoon of mayo I put on the side.  That’s 110 calories!  At least, if you use good mayo.  

So far this has not stopped me losing weight.  I have guessed that as you get thinner and thinner, it gets to be more and more effort to maintain your weight.  I wonder if there will come a point when I am counting olives and salsa and marinara sauce and ketchup on a sandwich.  I kind of hope not. 

My pressure cooker has arrived!  I have plans for it.  Keep watching!

-The Doctor. 

20200629 Daily report – hot weather edition

Well!  According to my website’s software, my blog’s readability is low.  This is because the writing is too complex.  I apologize to my reader.  I won’t make that mistake again!  Until tomorrow, when I forget.  

I made chili for dinner.  Usually I do the all the big cooking on the weekends, but yesterday I decided I had cooked enough with the vegetable curry.  I was feeling a bit lazy.  Actually, I only tasted the chili.  It didn’t seem appealing to me.  My guess is I have picked up an intestinal bug – other members of the Doctor family have been complaining also.  And I had that unusual weighing on Saturday.  But it didn’t keep them from eating it!  Just me.

They ate it as fast as I made it!

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – 2x servings of raisin bran crunch with milk  (250)

  • 500 calories

Lunch – tea (80); 2x toast (100) 3T hummus (35); 2T olive tapenade (25);

  • 430 calories 

Dinner – bread (150); pancakes (150); chili (50);

  • 350 calories

Snacking – pretzels (150); chocolate (110); ice cream (350);

  • 610 calories

Total for the day: 1890 calories (limit 1850)

Sunday weighing, hot weather

Saturday my weight loss was minimal.  I wondered if it was a fluke.  On Sunday I weighed myself again.  I was just making sure that my Saturday weight was real.  Apparently it isn’t!  I weighed 237.6 on Sunday.  That’s a swing of more than two pounds in one day.  So I am pretty sure my stomach is out of order.  

In the last year, whenever I got sick I just indulged myself and ate pretty much as much as I wanted to feel happy.  Then I went back to my weight control discipline once I got better.  Maybe that way, I got the idea that dieting while sick didn’t do much for my weight.  Now, I am trying more to get away from eating for reasons other than physical hunger/need.  So this weekend and today I tried to keep my reasons for eating simple and direct.  I did change the kinds of foods I was eating.  Some things just seemed more appealing.  And I pretty much have been keeping to my calorie count.  

It was another hot-ish day (88, humid) and I had to go out in the afternoon – the hottest part.  When I weighed a lot more, it was very uncomfortable to be in the hot weather and I felt hot all the time.  Even indoors, it took a long time to get cool.  Since I have gotten more disciplined, even though I am 40+ pounds away from my goal, the heat bothers me less.  I wonder what it will be like once I am even thinner!  It will take until next summer to find out.  Even if I lose 2 pounds per week, it will take 20 weeks to get there.  There is no guarantee I can keep that pace up.  That means it might take even longer.  

Something to look forward to!  Make sure you have something you are looking forward to.

-The Doctor

20200628 Daily report – late night

It’s pretty late in the day for me to be starting a post, but it was a busy day.  Part of that busyness was preparing for the week to come.  I cook on the weekend, mostly dinners for the rest of the week.  I also have a menu of things I can cook quickly, to fill in any gaps.  Today, I made a vegetable curry.  It takes a lot of time to prep and cook it well, but it is a family favorite.  Look at all the prep work!  And there’s more: you can’t see the potatoes because they are hidden under the onions, and I didn’t bring the garlic cloves over, either.  The ginger was all finely grated, and the spices dry-toasted in a skillet.  These ingredients are just for the flavor building – more goes into the final dish: peas, and cream.

And then the resulting dish takes a fair amount of technique to build flavor – vegetable-only dishes need that extra work.  

Prep work for the first few steps
Worth it. Family favorites are.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – Pancakes (200); pizza (300);

  • 500 calories

Lunch – 2x Kirkland bratwurst (280); half whole wheat wrap (55);

  • 615 calories 

Dinner – 5oz white rice (160); 12oz vegetable curry (330);

  • 490 calories

Snacking – kale and beans (50); pretzels (200)

  • 250 calories

Total for the day: 1855 calories (limit 1850)

Preparing and planning for control

My lifestyle is an attempt to control my food intake and my body’s weight.  The bargain I have made with myself, and have been able to keep, is that the food has to be worthwhile.  If I am going to be saving my calories for mealtimes, then I have to do the work to make sure the meal is worth the wait and worth looking forward to.  It’s much better than trying to force myself to eat less or to avoid certain foods, which feels like deprivation to me.  And nobody reacts that well to force over the medium and long term.  This way, it feels like I am taking care of myself, by doing a lot of work to make sure I will be happy with the food.  

It is late.  I’m going to bed, but I am going to bed well satisfied with my plan for the week and the cooking I did today.

-The Doctor

20200626 Daily report with meats and sweets

I was looking at my food journal for 2020, and I don’t eat as much meat as I thought.  There’s a fair amount of vegetable dishes, rice, noodles, pizza, and some stews and soups flavored with meat.  But it’s rare for me to have meat as the main part of the meal.  My BLT is as much, or more, LETTUCE and TOMATO than bacon.  The Big Greek Cafe gyro does have a fair amount of meat.  But look at Wednesday.  I had the gyro, and I had a ham and cheese sandwich for breakfast, and for dinner I had a vegetable taco salad with beans and cheese, sour cream, tomato, salsa, on a tortilla. 

I noticed my meat pattern because when I woke up today, I did get hungry at all until 11AM.  When I looked in my journal – yes, Thursday I had brats for lunch and meat mania platter for dinner.  The calories were under control but it was a lot of meat in one day!  I am not used to it.

Meat for dinner! Spare ribs.

My food intake and calorie count

Breakfast – tea (80)

  • 80 calories

Lunch – Leftover meat mania platter from yesterday with meatball (80); sausage (150); and chicken (100); plus some chicken pieces from Costco (100);

  • 430 calories 

Dinner – 250 grams baby back rib meat, not counting the bones (500); 

  • 500 calories

Snacking – pretzels (120) and cheese (80); 2x Reese’s PBCs (80); Snickers ice cream bar (180); 

  • 540 calories

Total for the day: 1570 calories (limit 1850)

Am I done?

1570 calories for the day is not a lot, and I have to be careful that I don’t start feeling deprived or resentful, by eating too little and not meeting my physical needs.  That’s not good for the weight control mindset.  To fix that, I may have more tea later.  I had some for breakfast, and I count the half and half I put in my tea: 80 calories.  So it may end up as 1650 calories for the day.  Still, not a lot of calories.  Either way, my average calories per day this week will be under 1800.  Oh, I didn’t try to count the barbecue sauce that came on the ribs I had tonight – that would add a few calories.  

Anyway, with all this meat in my system I also feel the need for sweets afterward.  I keep all kinds in the house, so I that don’t feel like I am punishing myself.  Many people say that when you are trying to lose weight you should remove temptation from the house.  But I have ice cream, bar chocolate, peanut butter cups, other candy bars, etc., lying around.  It doesn’t bother me, since I have managed to convince myself that I am not deprived.  So there is not much temptation there.  A lot of temptation is born of resentment.

What I do find difficult is the slow pace of weight loss.  You can practice weight control all week and not look any different at the end of it.  I had lost almost 70 pounds before any of my friends or acquaintances noticed or mentioned it.  I shouldn’t complain, since it clearly took a long time for my weight to increase all that way.  

I just bought a cookbook for pressure cooker meals.  You’ll be seeing a few of those recipes soon!

-The Doctor

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